Is the job of a leader (or the administration) to foresee threats before anyone else can see it coming? Is their job to make sure that it does not manifest?
It is interesting that when they does it, the majority is against it, precisely because no one else could see it and can agree with the action of the administration?
So it seems that if someone is a very good leader, they will be ridiculed by the very people they are trying to protect. I think this happens if the unit in question is a family, or a country.
I am not picking sides in the on going crisis. But just making an observation.
- Many don't understand that stewardship of nuclear weapons alone is a major undertaking that Iran cannot be trusted to manage. US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches.
- Many will refuse to accept solely because 'orange man bad'.
- Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity.
The ballistic missiles are the danger, and Iran already has those. There is no missile or reentry vehicle in Iran's possession that can credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear weapon.
> US & USSR alone has several near-miss detonations/launches.
According to Seymour Hersh, Israel was close to using their nuclear weapon as well. Why not focus on their disarmament first to deter Iranian retaliation?
> Some are paid to criticize on influential online forums and HN makes no effort to moderate or police such activity.
Yesterday the Iranian embassy in the UK called for attacks in the UK. Today there were stabbings. Iran likes to demonstrate that they can reach out a touch someone.
Case in point. Clearly neither of those are nuclear-level threats, the IRGC and Mossad have both fomented public violence for decades at this point.
Their Tom & Jerry reenactment is not casus belli for the US or Europe. You'll note that no Article 4 has been invoked over Iran because it's not a legitimate security concern for any of NATO's members.
They are a demonstarted threat that Iran is willing/happy to call for terrorism around the world, and that their threat is real and will be carried out.
That the Islamic Republic of Iran's words such as 'conduct terror attacks in the UK right now' and 'death to America' have the actual threat of death behind them and aren't just 'rhetoric' as HN claims.
One that HN won't care about, but that Iran targets and kills jews, not just Israeli jews, but all jews, anywhere in the world, as their political agenda.
It's not HN. Most of the world doesn't care about it. You can't cry foul over threats to civilian populations amid the annexation of Lebanon. America doesn't get to operate from a position of moral authority after it's overthrown a democracy it didn't like and threatened to wipe a civilization off the map. NATO service members aren't excited to fight on behalf of the nation that invented the Hannibal Directive. HN is just a sample of this overwhelming majority, many of whom are American taxpayers with an opinion they'd like to voice.
I'm sorry that you struggle to find empathy for your minority political opinions. Don't blame it on HN.
40+ years of 'death to America' from supreme religious leaders met with silence. The double standards/hypocrisy just keep piling up. I guess you have lower standards for shia holy leaders than you do from Trump. You must REALLY hold Shia mullahs in low regard.
How much blatant terrorism started via Iranian Ambassadors in the UK becomes a level the UK should respond to? You obviously don't think knifing a few jews is worth consideration.
The pro-Iranian side don't actually care about terror attacks by one country carried out in another. The pro-Iranians don't actually care about targeting specific ethnicities for murder simply because of their ethnicity.
Wait the hannible directive is about Iranian embassy staff instigating ethnic killings in the UK? Seems like your just injecting a random unrelated propaganda point. The fact is the Isalmic Republic of Iran's actual policy is to carry out attacks to kill random jews around the world (like the attack they attempted today in the UK).
The UK and America destroyed Iranian democracy and installed a police state in it's place. There is no "death to Europe" or "death to jews" anywhere in their slogans, because they specifically want to destroy their neocolonial occupiers. As an American myself, I empathize with individuals that fight for the freedom of their people. The founding fathers of America extolled the values of self-determination, and I agree with their reasoning more than I see the logic in Trump's expensive, taxpayer-funded war.
Look at your argument from the European or Indopacific perspective - why does a nation like China or India need to participate in a joint blockade? What is the value in attacking Iran for a nation like Pakistan or Egypt? The American goal of "stop them from making a nuke" is clearly not possible from an air campaign, and nobody but Israel is in Iran's crosshairs. The Gulf states all have fragile economies that won't survive the type of asymmetrical conflict that America is equipped to wage. Even rebel groups like the Kurds don't see any promise in attacking Iran, and have told American diplomats that they're on their own. They all know that the promises are empty, and a broken or Balkanized Iran would be the end of their regional stability.
Interventionism is not a helpful policy for Iran's people. Arabs know it, Europeans know it and most of the Americans and Israelis know it too. The status-quo is only confusing if you assume that the Arab and European states are run by morons that want to destroy the Middle East.
Wait, what does this have to do with hanible directive? I'm confused you are all over the place.
>There is no "death to Europe" or "death to jews"' "nobody but Israel is in Iran's crosshairs"
Iran's UK embassy called for attacks in the UK yesterday, and attacks in the UK happened today against random jews.
'The status quo is fine because Iran only calls for the death of the USA and Israel, and that is justified and totally isn't responsible in part for anything that is happening , and Iran only tried to kill a few people in Europe, and they are only jews, and Iran can't target Europe (other than the attempted murders instigated publicly by their diplomats in the UK)'.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not Iran's fault.
And if it was, Iran didn't mean it.
And if Iran did, the US/Israel/random UK jews stabbed deserved it.
So again - look at your position from the Indopacific or Arab perspective. Why would violence against UK citizens compel them to join the war against Iran? What do they have to gain in exchange for the risk to their economy, service members and homeland security?
The UK has already chosen a side, they're not being singled-out by random.
When did a discussion on US war cost become constrained to the Indo-Pacific point of view and how does that tie back to your hanible directive comment?
You seem to have shifted focus after I countered your claim that Iranian violence wasn't a threat to Europe with an example of Iranian violence in Europe from today.
Violence instigated by the official Iranian embassy delegation to the UK. Conducted/called for publicly by Iranian officials in the UK. Conducted against random jewish people because they were jewish and in the UK (a valid target for random civilian attacks in your opinion I guess because 'The UK has already chosen a side, they're not being singled-out by random.')?
Funny how you jumped from number 1. Iran isn't a threat to Europe all the way to 6 on the narcissists prayer with 'The random UK jew deserved the stabling because the UK picked a side'.
You're the one that threadjacked this discussion, I was hoping you'd be able to explain how the UK's political decisions impact the conflict.
My original statement is that Iran does not present a credible nuclear threat to the United States. The justification for the war is an outright lie, the "dangerous new world" saber rattling has been criticized by defense analysts for the 40+ years it haunted Israeli state media. Retaliatory terrorism in the UK is not going to cause the global stage to reevaluate their position in the US/Iran conflict, your original comment upstream is just more reason not to enable America's war.
> and how does that tie back to your hanible directive comment?
I mentioned the Hannibal directive once in this thread, to illustrate the dirt-poor optics of war with Iran. You've brought it up three times now. Insecure much?
I think the bigger question that you should be asking is what is America going to do for the next 5 years without the stockpile of munitions that the just burned through.[0]
China has every incentive to goad Israel or Iran into starting another round in this conflict so that America will deplete even more missiles. Iran destroying one of these[1] and an AWACS should startle everyone and with the right supplies from China Iran has the capacity to take out even more of them.
So if in two months this conflict heats up again and we're looking at half of these radar systems destroyed and minimal amount of missiles available, would you consider it well worth it?
Because that's a very plausible scenario and I'm very concerned about what the world will look like by the end of the summer if that comes to pass.
Remember when North Korea and Pakistan had to be prevented from developing nuclear weapons at all costs because they would obviously use them ASAP to kill as many people as they could because they were crazy?
Remember when multiple US administrations have internally pushed for nuking Korea and Vietnam, and yet we are apparently still allowed to have nukes?
Remember when Iran used to have a fully operational biological weapons program that they have dismantled as confirmed internationally.
Iran has enough Uranium to make bombs. The physics package that actually detonates things is not as hard as enriching Uranium in bulk.
Why hasn't Iran used a weapon of mass destruction yet in this almost existential war? I thought they were nuts? I thought they wanted to nuke all the infidels?
the right question to ask is how much worse is the situation now that tensions have been radically escalated without any meaningful path towards Iranian disarmament.
Peace in that region of the world, since you can't just bomb Iran consequence free anymore?
MAD has had its virtues extolled, yet assume it won't work with another country because somehow they are even more irrational (if true). Even though that is exactly for whom the MAD strategy is designed and operates under.
It is only the build up of Iran getting a nuclear weapon that is used to go to war.
The game theory here seems rather simple, honestly.
And if Iran is seen as hostile, we need to look at the countries for whom the USA allies with and what wars they launched in the region. And they are plausible nuclear capable where their neighbors are not.
I think Israel is currently a larger aggressor, literally flattening more towns through demolition.
This superficial analogy comes up a lot but these two states don't share anything in common aside from internal repression. They're diametrically opposed in their external behavior.
Look at a small sampling of Iran's external actions in the region through the Quds force. The hundreds of thousands of Syrians killed by Hezbollah or the almost 300k dead in Yemen due to the Houthis. Iran's actions in 2019-2022 against CENTCOM bases in Iraq and elsewhere. The puppet Iraqi president propped up by PMF.
North Korea doesn't do anything like this until very recently when they started sending troops to invade Ukraine. They don't organize their state around an expansionist death cult ideology.
NK doesn't behave different due to owning a nuclear weapon. Before the 1990s they were like this too.
North Korea routinely attacks South Korean and US assets in its area like the sinking of Cheonan. North Korea is strongly allied with its other neighbors China and Russia.
Iran is not organized around an expansionist death cult. They have not expanded or attempted to expand at all. They are involved in lots of neighboring conflicts because they are in a region with lots of conflicts. We are also involved in lots of conflicts there.
There is no possible closer comparison for a nuclear Iran than nuclear North Korea.
It's despicable and dishonest to pretend they're different in a relevant way. You can hate Iran till your dying breath, but it has no bearing on the economic question.
Oh wait, that the Trump and his war criminal friends. They make the problem, blame it on someone else, and then claim they fixed it while making life worse for everyone else. Meanwhile Trump and his corrupt oligarch cronies are profiting massively.
howmayiannoyyou 1 hour ago [dead] | root | parent | next [–]
Regurgitation of talking points doesn't change the irrefutable fact that the JCPOA only kicked the can down the road & Iran was cheating the entire time - as they now admitted during negotiations.
