Comment by flyinglizard
18 hours ago
Yes, because "what choice did Iran have" other than:
1. Routinely calling for death to Israel and America, turning it into part of the national curriculum and sowing hate
2. Funding, training, supplying and directing multiple violent proxy organizations around the region which attacked Israel and undermined their own countries (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in West Bank and Gaza, other organizations in Iraq)
3. Enriching Uranium to clearly non-civilian grade in multiple militarily hardened facilities;
4. Directly attacking multiple Jewish targets around the world (like the AMIA and then embassy bombings in Argentina)
5. Attacking neighboring countries with ballistic and cruise missiles, like the attacks on Saudi Aramco in 2019
6. Holding international shipping and energy markets hostage by threatening to attack ships and tankers in the Persian Gulf
7. Abusing their own citizens, including public executions, persecutions and extreme violence
8. Providing support to Russia in their efforts in Ukraine, and especially drones used for indiscriminate dumb attack waves against civilians and infrastructure
Now we have people arguing that if they had just gotten nukes then they could have continued doing all of that.
> Now we have people arguing that if they had just gotten nukes then they could have continued doing all of that.
And where are they wrong?
> where are they wrong?
Probably in all of it. Iran wouldn't have a MAD arsenal, they'd have a small handful that they could pop on a ballistic. We know we can shoot down Iran's missiles. And we know they can't reach America. I'm entirely unconvinced that we wouldn't have launched an attack on Iran even if they had nuclear weapons, because we think we can intercept them, and if we can't, they aren't hitting the homeland.
And on the off chance this defense doesn’t work? No system is perfect. Put another way, would the risk calculation for an attack on Iran be as easy as it is right now?
The point of having nuclear capabilities is to make the risk calculation more difficult. It doesn’t mean you need to have state of the art capabilities.
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The difference between shooting down a conventionally armed missile and shooting down a nuclear armed missile is that the former will explode in the air or not at all, whereas the latter is quite likely to still be able to detonate when it hits the ground.
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> 4. Directly attacking multiple Jewish targets around the world (like the AMIA and then embassy bombings in Argentina)
Why would Iran attack Argentina? There's plenty of Jewish Iranian citizens. Did they run out of people to attack?
> Why would Iran attack Argentina?
There is a hardline element in the IRGC that personally profits from autarky. If the Iranian markets opened to the world, it would decimate their incomes.