Comment by gpt5

8 hours ago

The reason it is hard is not due to a power balance. Both of those countries could have sent nukes with minimal efforts.

But their goal is targeted and precise attacks, that effectively destroy targets based on specific, and high quality intelligence.

The other part is that defense against missiles is significantly harder and more expensive than sending missiles. Iran, while relatively poor, has dedicated a significant part of its economy for missile development and production.

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gpt5

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tootie  7 hours ago

> their goal is targeted and precise attacks

Day one and they've already bombed a school and killed dozens of children. The goals, strategy and tactics have not been clearly communicated. You can pray they are using high quality intelligence, but history tells us they are not at all concerned with collateral damage. They likely want to degrade Iran's military capabilities, but they also want them cowed and bleeding.

  • fortzi  4 hours ago

    Israel is interested in the fall of the Iranian regime, a thing that can only happen if the Iranian people will rebel against it. The last thing Israel wants is to have the Iranians rally behind the state’s flag.

    Based on this cold calculation, bombing a school full of children would be counter productive, even if you believe the Israelis are just collecting children's blood to make matzahs (passover is just around the corner!).

    On a more serious note, do you know the actual source for this claim? I don’t mean the news outlet, I mean what entity gave this to the news outlet.

    • ordu  2 hours ago

      > Israel is interested in the fall of the Iranian regime, a thing that can only happen if the Iranian people will rebel against it.

      I personally don't believe in such appeals to rationality of parties waging wars. The issue is: if you wage a war, you can't control precisely what is going on. No one can. Like MH17 was shot down by pro-Russian separatists: who was interested in it? No one was, but still MH17 was shot down.

      Israel bombed schools, it probably did it without clear intent to bomb them, but at the same time it means it is not very concerned about a couple of hundred of underage causalities. Like it was (and it is) not at all concerned about Palestinian causalities in Gaza. Moreover to my mind, it is the strategic stance of Israel: to be as brutal as possible to make neighbors to fear Israel. Israel does it for decades, it does it every time it wages a war. It means that now it just cannot wage a war without demonstrations of brutality. Even if it wanted to it just cannot, because on all levels of command people were taught to demonstrate brutality, and they were not taught how to wage war surgically. You can't overcome such a training on so many levels with a carefully crafted prompt.

      > do you know the actual source for this claim? I don’t mean the news outlet, I mean what entity gave this to the news outlet.

      https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/28/israel-strikes-two-...

      "Mizan News Agency, the judiciary’s official news agency, reported the death toll..."

      "Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shared a photo of the attack, which..."

    • tovej  3 hours ago

      Why would you doubt this? Have you not seen what Israel has done in Palestine and Lebanon?