Reread your parent comment, the concept of a threshold nuclear state is that they are constantly a month away, for years. That's the entire point, being effectively a nuclear state without holding a nuclear weapon

Lots of genocides have been carried out with primitive weapons, even recently. Remember, the protesters in Iran were mostly unarmed...

Yes, although it had merit it was far worse than what can be signed now, especially the sunset clause was problematic

> Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?

that's the nature of nuclear weapons, your conventional force can be abysmal (pretty much NK situation vs US) and yet you can create epic destruction

> And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?

Yes, the thing here is the long term goal of signing a deal, whose main goal is removing the existing highly enriched uranium from Iran and restricting their ability to redevelop nuclear capabilities. Essentially this is the part where "Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means" (to highly paraphrase), because the alternative to a deal is maintenance attacks such as these every two years

- Military - their regional proxies destroyed, missile and drone stocks low, provably weak air defences.

- Economically - the currency is worthless, extreme inflation for seven years and hyper inflation for a few months, the economy is currently producing nothing due to unrest, they have a massive water shortage of their own making. They have no goods worth exporting. Their oil is sanctioned, meaning only China will buy from them and at a steep discount. And oil is extremely cheap at this minute.

- Politically - they have no friends willing to bail them out. Russia has no money to spare. China doesn’t care about anyone outside of China. North Korea is even poorer. All sections within Iranian society detest the mullahs running the government. They’re hanging on by killing tens of thousands of protestors.

Trump bets that Iran’s leaders are at their weakest since their war with Saddam ended in 1988. Meaning now is the best time to negotiate a deal where they hand over their fissile material and uranium enrichment equipment. In return they could get a heavy water reactor(s) that produces energy but no fissile material.

If he lets this opportunity slip Iran could fix all of their many problems in a year or three. Manufacture more missiles and drones. Build up their proxies once more. Maybe the price of oil recovers. Russia’s war ends and they aid Iran best they can. The economy recovers and the Iranian people stop trying to overthrow the government. Maybe a conflict starts elsewhere that draws America’s full attention.

Will Trump get that deal? Probably not. That fissile material is the only leverage the mullahs have. If they give it up they’ll be toppled like the other dictators who gave up their weapons programs - Gaddafi and Saddam.

But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?

Especially not when they’re mass murdering protestors and funding islamic extremism left and right

Iran signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

No. If they wanted self-defense and sovereignty they should have become stronger not weaker after the revolution.

North Korea invaded South Korea, stole a US Navy ship (the Pueblo, which they still proudly exhibit), dug large infiltration tunnels under the DMZ, kidnapped hundreds, or even thousands people from SK (and Japan, to a lesser extent), and have assassinated, or attempted to assassinate, multiple SK heads of state, and perpetrated acts of terror like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858

What did the US or SK do to them before their nuclear program that constituted "bullying?"

The NPT did not exist at the time of the US developing nuclear weapons, and it explicitly allows US (and other pre-existing nuclear powers') weapons.

Israel, like India and Pakistan, simply never signed it, forgoing the international nuclear technology market as a consequence but also avoiding a treaty obligation not to develop them.

Neither of these states have at any point said anything on the modern era that can be implied to be a threat to nuke anybody.

Part of that is because it would be a bad strategy for them, but nonetheless "nuclear blackmail state" and "nuclear state" is not the same thing.

Perhaps you will argue that the US or Israel or Pakistan or North Korea have conducted themselves in a way where they do not have that moral right either, but that is a different debate, and either way it is moot because they do have them.

https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=YfWRzjcflhWHR276

(Note: Iran did move some stuff away before the attack)

- it costs money and attention

- good is not the same as perfect (there are some casualties from time to time)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/26/trump-ele...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

You can take that to your bookie.

Over 30% of Biden 2020 voters said arming genocide was going to affect their vote.

That's BIDEN VOTERS.

80% of Democrats wanted an arms embargo.

Arming Israel meant giving up millions of votes in swing states, in an election that was lost by extremely slim margins in those states.

And before you ask, it was also clear from polling that ending support to Israel would have cost nearly zero votes from her base.

And the reason the Harris campaign didn't know this is because they didn't want to know. Campaign staffers were instructed to mark anyone who raised Gaza as "no response". Attendees of the DNC conventions were literally plugging their ears and shielding their eyes from protests, or even laughing about them.

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2026/02/10/how-iran-gained-the-ab...

If China didn't anticipate the US attacking Iran after Maduro was deposed and the resulting impacts on their oil supplies, then they are asleep at the wheel.

I'm not sure what's the logic behind that PR-wise, but regardless, it didn't happen.

Trump this time around didn't inherit a major us deployment in a conflict area. No Iraq, no Afghanistan. Also, he's doing military strikes by himself, no Congress involved.

Syrian and Libia were both essentially civil wars with an oppressive regime with Syria using allegedly chemical weapons.

Your source is a very weird site. Countries Obama bombed 2026??? What does that even mean. Is it just a typo in the main heading and the title?

Regarding politicians: Gustavo Petro was the most vocal protester; now that Trump told him in the White house to shut up, he is wagging his tail happily.

(2) It's only the constitution that requires an act of congress, and that document is not considered applicable by the current king.

perhaps we could negotiate a peace deal in which israel and iran both agree to give up nuclear weapons and allow for IAEA inspections

So when is the US intervening in Ukraine then? Russia is literally doing human safari with drones hunting down civilians in Kherson.

Spoken from the comfort of your cozy apartment, with the AC on, light music in the background and a drink in your hand.

This is especially false in Iran in relation to USA intervention, since both the democrats and the fundamentalists still remember how the USA & UK deposed their last democratic leaders and (re) installed the brutal dictatorship of the Shah, who both parts of Iranian society hate and remeber being oppressed by today.

But the clans are way, way weaker than they were when they did their coup against Mosaddegh, so it will be extremely expensive for the US to keep control this time.

Iran and Russia have various partnership agreements, but are not allies. And Russia has already demonstrated that it doesn't support what are, on paper, close allies in the CSTO, so not defending a non-ally strategic partner really doesn't move the needle on their credibility.

Which they did just start to do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war

The previous campaign lasted a whole 13 days and WW3 didn't start. I'm not sure why anybody thinks it'll be different now or why Russia or China would bother going to war for Iran. That makes zero sense.

(Crazy idea, maybe the people shouldn’t be left in the dark about their government’s war plans by having a deliberate legislative body debate and vote on it)

The whole of Europe is affected, it might seem contained only if you live very far away. Every European country is affected in one way or another.

It's not a stalemate if Ukraine ends up losing 30% of its territory. That's Russian victory.

And are you really claiming the CIA was not involved in instigating a coup to bring in the Shah?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748l0zv4x8o

Just look at the fallout from the Epstein files where at best we can hope people will be embarrassed into resigning their current position.

Just to be clear I’m not pro war! I take Iranian regime as the first and foremost responsible party in this mess and then US! My people stuck in this disaster of a power struggle.

The only reason to enrich uranium to 60% like Iran was doing is for nuclear weapons purposes.

Iranian officials publicly refused to give up their nuclear program, no need to trust the US here.

Yeah, I agree that was probably a bad idea, doesn't make what I stated above any less true.

> 2. Trump claimed that his previous attacks on Iran within the last year “completely and totally obliterated” their nuclear program, “obliterated like nobody’s ever seen before” - both direct Trump quotes. Trump was quite clear that Iran’s nuclear program had already been destroyed like nothing had ever been destroyed before.

Yes...Trump lies all the time, that's nothing new.

The US then lied through their teeth to the security council about wanting to conduct a humanitarian operation and instead acted as the rebels' air force, helping them win and subsequently leaving the country in utter ruin.

The question is really whether negotiations were going on in good faith with the actual goal of realistic compromise.

None of us know that side, I would assume.

It was pretty clear the negotiations had stalled based on statements put out by Iranian officials.

Iranian officials made public statements refusing to give up their nuclear weapons program so they weren't negotiating in good faith either. Terrorists like the Iranian regime can never be allowed to have access to nuclear weapons for obvious reasons.

We have Ramadan here now. No one cares. Arab influencer come and make videos and are shocked

Everyone eats and drinks during the days we don’t care

Nonsense. Iran has been stirring up trouble in the region for a long time.

I believe there's a much better change of democracy / sane regime in Iran, than there ever was in Iraq and other Arab states.

IT was a dictatorship, of course, but not a theocratic one.

> Trump is democratically elected, for now.

He was convicted felon before the election, I cannot believe that he won.

Which is fine.

"In theory, the term need not imply anything about the particular government to which it relates, and most social scientists use it in a normative and neutral manner. The term, though, can be used in a political context. It is used colloquially by some, such as government officials, media journalists, and policy makers, when referring to governments that they believe are repressive, undemocratic, or illegitimate or simply do not square with the person’s own view of the world. Used in this context, the concept of regime communicates a sense of ideological or moral disapproval or political opposition" [1].

[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/regime

What topsy-turvy land have I wandered into?

They've funded Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis for decades. They've assassinated dissidents on foreign soil. They sentence people to death for apostasy and flog women for not wearing hijab correctly.

The sanctions aren't about race. They're about behaviour.

http://lifegoesonintehran.com/

For what it's worth, I think the American activists on this issue bungled the messaging to disastrous effect (in the same way we bungled criminal-justice reform). It's a saturated issue with low political salience outside a specific (and increasingly constrained) demographic.

A win in Iran will be a short-term boost, in America and in Israel. Then we'll go back to being pissed about rising prices.

https://www.reddit.com/r/war/comments/1rh2f41/the_residence_...

They've seen the writing on the wall about independent nukes for decades.

* WWII front collapse being more of a political failure than a military one: politicians dictating unachievable military strategies)

It's true that many countries are trying to have relationship with both sides or are trying to keep all options open - which is the most reasonable strategy, I think - but there are still two power centers emerging between which those countries are aligning themselves.

Russians are not under food rationing yet.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol (that was in 1939).

I tend to agree with both of you, and that by extension, we will never see another world war unless society as we know it collapses significantly.

Topical the Israelis just killed Khamenei.

I think the strategic rational for unification completely swapped about 20 years ago. Up until the early 2000s it was likely in South Korea's, and the US's, interest to find a way to topple NK and unify the peninsula. The two populations had blood ties and common culture. Technologically the gap was growing but still reasonable. It would have been close to an east/west Germany type of situation where unification took effort but ultimately was clearly beneficial. China (and Russia) would have been losers in that unification would have brought a western friendly government even closer to their border. Additionally, NK still had a chance of re-energizing and becoming a real threat to SK.

Now however NK is in such bad shape that unification would be traumatic. South Korea would take on a problem of epic proportions, caring for and bringing a population of that size back into the broader world would be exceptionally costly and definitely not guaranteed to end well, possibly destabilizing SK in the process. Their cultures have grown apart making it hard for them to understand each other. The blood ties are not really there anymore. China and Russia would likely be the winners in that everyone sees NK as crazy and anyone helping them is hurting the world so they could get rid of that baggage. China especially would gain by having rail access to massive shipping assets to deliver goods even cheaper to the world. Finally, the US would loose a major rationale for stationing forces that close to China. They could, rightfully, say that NK isn't a threat and the massive US assets in South Korea and Japan should be drawn down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarations_of_war_during_Wor...

Of course it took longer for it to blow up into a truly global war (Pearl Harbor etc), but a conflagration across Europe is hardly a "small regional war".

> That would make the US turn tail. Not start a war with China.

The right kind of missiles hitting the right kind of boat could lead to a very grave escalation.

I think he meant one of these:

1) Biological agent, but not meant to be a weapon.

2) A biological weapon, but one that fails catastrophically.

https://theconversation.com/an-illegal-bioweapons-lab-was-fo...

https://abc30.com/post/illegal-reedley-biolab-connected-lab-...

Here's a paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17154

That alone hints that it is very hard to bring a dictatorship down with just aerial attacks - the ground component is also essential. Something tells me it is going to be the same here.

Only a land operation or a total collapse of the government, with the armed police and military joining the opposition, can topple the Iranian regime.

Trump is the kind of person who would kill protestors to stay in power. We all know it

I don't think you intended to use this the way you did

Care to elaborate? As far as I know, this is false. All Israeli citizens 18 or older can vote; there are no voting restrictions based on race, religion, gender or property; prisoners can vote (unlike in many US states for example); permanent residents who are not citizens cannot vote in national elections but may vote in municipal elections (not the case in the US). National turnout ranges between 65% and 75%.

Minorities are well represented: Arab and Druze citizens vote and have representation in the Knesset.

I struggle to find any dimension in which your statement is correct.

Does it?

Just ask the folks who tried on January 6.

> The US will have significant regime change in November if polling holds.

Assuming elections are held fairly. "Trump, seeking executive power over elections, is urged to declare emergency":

* https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2...

In my thinking regime change doesn't only refer to the complete collapse of the political system, just change in direction of the leaders.

Democracy is the directness by which social participation equates to governance. The US is a federal republic with only two parties each bound by the same hostile funding system that benefits political contributions over the vote. That is far from democratic.

True however AFAIK they have never once been in this situation. Iran has spent 40+ years digging in and hunkering down. There were plenty of bunkers in WWII but this is a whole new setup, deeper under mountains, higher quality concrete assuming they knew what they were doing and dug in much deeper. To get this done in 5 days will be quite a feet. If they manage to do it I will be very impressed.

It's providing peace and stability after that happens where they tend to run into problems.

I think you are correct, what happens afterwards is usually a crap-fest. That would require a lot of boots on the ground to maintain stability for a very long time. It's not a great example but Korea is one such example. The payoff may be worth it if many of the Iranian funded terror groups are drained of resources as a result. Keeping boots on the ground for years will require funding from congress. Short of that it will just be another power vacuum filled by yet another zealot. The "if's" are doing a lot of heavy lifting in my comment.

This is a short one showing the 2nd to last generation of tunnels. [1] The latest tunnels are painted white including some that are under water. The older tunnels are not painted and one can see what appears to be reinforced concrete. When completed every tunnel is lined on both sides with missiles. This one [2] shows a couple generations of the tunnels. Found the old CNN video. [3]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YQ1R7ZAKxE [video][1m]

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQtSPFrnKvo [video][5m25s]

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_Gu_TjmV0E [video][2m12s]

You could be entirely right. Honestly I hope you are right. We lost far too many in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was probably just being cynical. I trust the decisions of the senior leaders in the military but their commander and chief tends to trust the wrong advice.

The only possible correction I might add is the Air Force probably will not drop bombs but would have to fire missiles. The openings are on the sides of mountains and require horizontal access or I suppose incredibly massive bombs. Earth shattering bombs. Something closer to tactical nukes which the US has not stockpiled in a long time AFAIK.

And how exactly would Iran be 'ours' without boots on the ground in this scenario?

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/us-and-israel-launch-a-ma...

> All we know is that they did launch a missile that blew up a school. That's it. Just a little woopsies!

Ignore what schools are for and who are in them and what communities exist around them. Ignore that a school is clearly not a fucking military target. Ignore the workers digging through rubble and the reported deaths.

No, despite the past 25 years, the US and Israel's governments are not only trustworthy, but the only source of truth. There are no deaths in Ba Sing Se. There were nuclear missiles hidden in that school!

And, of course, I'm sure we'll hear next that any deaths were terrorists. And if any photos of lifeless kids come up, clearly they're some kind of pinatas or AI! And if their names and life stories come out and there are funerals - duh, state actors!

My country has completely lost its fucking mind. Which I guess makes sense enough after spending my entire adult life watching people basically shrug over little kids being gunned down at school.

Which, dang, that reminds me how Sandy Hook was also a conspiracy and I've had to suffer listening to the same exact "state actor" thing with that.

I've listened to podcasts discussing the Israel military. One thing that people need to realize is that the IDF and it's leaders are skewed incredibly young. The mandatory service paired with the fact that people often don't stay in service means that they have 30 year old colonels and 35 year old generals.

They don't have the sort of career and institution knowledge like the US military has.

I have no special stake or knowledge of this, but Israel hasn't treated Gaza or Palestinians as their "mortal enemy"... more of a problematic-but-largely-contained source of rockets and hateful rhetoric, at least until 2023.

https://www.ilgiornaleditalia.it/news/politica/765547/ddl-an...

To be fair, this is also explained by the Delcy Rodriguez strategy: the bastard you know trumps the bastard you don't. Israel could have become complacent thinking they had a deal with Hamas and, as long as they kept the money flowing, the Palestinians had no rational reason to attack. (Which they didn't. October 7 was a stupid move.)

I don't see this any different to terrorism apologia (the trauma of 1mn dead in Iraq and another million in Afghanistan, for example). I guess, if the leaders wear suits & ties and hide behind the garb of democracy, then we should all understand why military they command commit crimes against humanity.

  Every perpetrator of terrorism sees himself as a victim. Such is the case not only with individual terrorists, who often compete with their enemies over who is more victimized, but also with terrorist groups and nation states.

The problem isn't the "trauma". The problem is the excuse.

> they are as well unable to recognize how scarred and traumatized is Israeli society from centuries of events

First, 400mn Arabs (or 2bn+ muslims) aren't a monolith or brainless zombies. Second, the "centuries of events" is just European guilt. Nothing to do with the Arab world.

Maybe trauma you are talking about it's just excuse to control opinion of voters and manufacture consent but under the hood its just all about power and being rich (not always but in many cases).

> So, without a generation of leaders able to recognize and understand the role of history and those traumas and empathize with the other sides we're trapped in those loops of aggression.

The sad reality (imo) about this truth is that the qualities needed to be a leader aren't empathy. There was a vid about it which went more into detail but When you observe leaders, you find that they are extremely weird and sometimes psychopathic.

To me it also feels like if a leader is emphatetic towards the other part, other leaders more extreme would spring up saying that he's an enemy from within or something equivalent to it.

The empathy of the leader is one of the most disregarded qualities. I would go so far as to say that leaders aren't even empathetic towards the general population of their own nations/community sometimes.

It's really sad but the Empathy you mention and cowardice can look the same to many & the Empathatic leader would get booted out of/not given a chance.

For example, within America itself, I feel like John mccain was a good guy and I would consider him empathetic in the sense that I remember seeing interviews of him saying that he and Obama just have some minor differences in policy making when there were people attending his rallies asking that they don't feel safe about Obama.

I am just gonna say that This leader of republican party was lost for what is now Donald Trump.

Oh I just watched the rally/interview again[0], when he said that you don't have to be scared of Obama, he was audibly booed by the public. (But also they clapped once when he said later in the campaign that Obama was decent person?)

It isn't impossible to have empathetic leaders but I do think that perhaps as a civilization, we would need to take class act/honesty/integrity more into account than we take in the current system which to me all across the world sometimes feel like picking the lesser evil/not-greater-good at times though I can only speak for myself.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjenjANqAk

Take the Greeks (that's my people! Us!) and the Turkish. I guess people in the West don't remember this but the Israelis are not the only people in the Middle East who have a word that means "disaster" (Shoah, for the Israelis; Καταστροφή- Catastrophe for us), that when anyone says it everyone knows exactly which disaster is spoken of. They are not the only people who lost the land their ancestors inhabited for thousands of years (Ionia, for us Greeks), who lost their greatest city (Constantinople, the City), who lost their greatest temple that was turned into a Mosque (the Hagia Sophia). Us, Greeks, too, have suffered these ignominies at the hand of the Turkish. Our common history with the Turkish is one of war, destruction, violence and blood. So much blood.

Genocide? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide Check. Ethnic cleansing? Check. Death marches through the deserts? Check, check, check.

And yet, since the Catastrophe, in 1922, we have been at peace with the Turkish, even through serious hot episodes in the Mediterrannean, like Cyprus. That's 100 years of peace, after 1500 years of history of war.

It can be done. The trauma can be overcome, if both sides agree to it. To quote none other than Moshe Dayan: if you want to make peace you talk to your enemies, not your friends.

> You invoked scale. Those are the numbers. They don't say what you wanted them to say.

1200 Oct7 vs tens of thousands in annexation and retaliation.

The numbers speak for themselves. No need to cherry pick.

And how can you claim October 7th wasn't an act if war? The main thrust of the attacks were targeting military installations. Much more than Israeli actions in Gaza before or since, which have clearly been done in service of genocide since Israel was created.

The Palestinian genocide has not been a regular war, it has been an absolute extermination campaign that is still ongoing.

How are we supposed to get an understanding of the scale of these events while totally disregarding Israeli actions?

>Can you provide some support for your moral position?

Yes, of course. A bunch of people from Europe decided to move to Palestine and start a religious ethnostate there. In doing so they expelled and murdered lots of local residents.

The surviving locals are understandably less than happy about this, and have continued to fight to defend their lands to this day.

Since then, the those people have caused far more harm to non-jewish Palestinians than non-jewish Palestinians have caused to the those people.

>allows us to sidestep the issues with Gazans’ support of Jihad, other extremist doctrines, and the extermination of Jews?

It's perfectly natural that Gazans would support the extermination of jews. In the extreme environment that Israeli jews force Palestinians to live in, it's fundamentally ridiculous to even describe it as an extremist position.

In a comfortable European context it's certainly extreme, but that's a fundamentally dishonest way of portraying it.

Bombing of US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 was funded, and organized by Iran. Just take half day off, and read a bit on the role of Islamic Republic in Middle East in the past 40 years. I guarantee your stance of "US attacked first" will change to the "unclear" at the least.