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Comment by Bender

19 hours ago

3. Acceptance of Iran's nuclear enrichment rights

Among many other items this would never be accepted. This momentary cease fire is just regrouping time for everyone involved and that has always been the case for Iran.

It is acceptable, if only enriched for civilian reactors, not weapon grade what they did - and Iran was about to agree to that condition before their leadership was wiped out. If the new leadership will agree, remains to be seen. But I believe china or russia are also not strongly interested in a nuclear armed Iran.

There no feasible escalation path for the US. Trump has alienated allies and much of his anti war supporters. A forever war quagmire in a country 3x larger than Iraq is unlikely, as is carpet bombing. So what's left? A JCPOA style agreement with a Maga bumper sticker on it, with heavy concessions to Iran to prevent them from racing to a bomb, which is the best option from their pov at this point.

  • Carpet bombing would be a waste of munitions. Iran to your point is massive and surface level bombing would mostly take out civilians. The civilians have been through enough. Most of Irans military and religious leaders are in missile cities that are 500 meters+ under mountains of rock, the same places they are creating nuclear material. These bunkers are immune to bunker busters and nukes. That will require ground troops and likely a lot of them. How that plays out specifically I have not a clue. I can only hope that they share body-cam footage and that casualties are kept to a minimum. If there is one thing I can give Iran credit for that is building some amazing and very impressive bunkers using US dollars.

    with heavy concessions to Iran to prevent them from racing to a bomb

    This game has already been played out many times before. Obama unfroze 1.7 billion, Biden gave them upwards of 6 billion. All together the US has given them upwards of 60 billion to pinky promise they wont build nukes. Never pay a bully, ever. They used that extortion money to build bunkers, pay their proxy soldiers to attack Israel and all the gulf states and to work on their bunkers. There will be no more of that. Shame on anyone that falls for those shenanigans again.

    • The Iran nuclear agreement was absolutely working for the year or so it lasted. International inspectors finally got to see things. Iran did not have a significant nuclear program during Trump's first term when he killed the agreement.

      After Trump killed the agreement, what was Iran supposed to do? If the US can just ignore a diplomatic agreement, there's no reason for Iran to follow it. That means diplomacy is basically off the table. So they built a nuclear weapons industry again.

      If Iran just wants to kill kill kill, why did it shut down it's chemical weapon industry? Why no dirty bombs? Why no gas attacks? Why is Iran, fighting an actually existential war, pulling it's punches? Why is it not hitting desalination plants like it can? They demonstrated that they have weapons that could hit Europe.

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    • > Never pay a bully, ever. They used that extortion money to build bunkers

      Which bully are we talking about here? I'm guessing Donald Trump, who took millions in "donations" to demolish a 3rd of the white house to build a new bunker with a stupid ballroom on top (which will never get built, but the GOP will just shrug when asked where the money went).

      We are talking about Donald Trump, right?