Comment by tristanj
14 hours ago
This is not pointless. It exists to exchange a future nuclear war with Iran with a conventional war today.
The US and Israel can fight a conventional war with Iran. In a nuclear war, Israel would be destroyed by nuclear missiles in the two days. The possibility of a nuclear Iran is an existential crisis for Israel, and Israel will do anything possible to prevent Iran from gaining nukes.
Most people do not comprehend this conventional war is happening today, (with unclear goals), to prevent a nuclear one in the future.
Hitting desalination plants across the gulf isn't much better than a nuclear war. If anything, the takeaway from this conflict is that nobody is ready for even the modest number of conventional ballistic missiles produced by an impoverished and dysfunctional state.
You think Iran's takeaway from this will be that they don't need nukes?
They always wanted nukes. So this war doesn't change already strong resolution to get them but can reduce resources available for this.
So instead of using diplomacy to ensure Iran stopped short of acquiring nukes - which had been effective - the US preemptively has attacked them, disrupting the region, killing civilians... to continue to prevent them from getting nukes.
What is the cost to the US to go on this excursion in an effort to simply maintain the status quo wrt nukes? Of course there's the real cost in treasure and the damage to its gulf allies, but there's a continued erosion of soft power and a deeply weakened relationship with other NATO countries.
So the upside here - the reason to suddenly switch from "diplomacy" to "aggression" was - what exactly? Oh, it's that Israel saw its opening, Netanyahu wanted a boost in his polls, and the old man in charge of the US was glad to do what his friend asked of him [0].
People want to believe that there's some purpose here, that there's method in the madness. But that continued belief relies on being blind to the reality before us.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/07/us/politics/trump-iran-wa...
> It exists to exchange a future nuclear war with Iran with a conventional war today.
That's just ridiculous. Nobody can predict the future, so trading uncertain war in the future for a certain war today is completely irrational. (And for the same reason, the war today is unlikely gonna be easier than the war tomorrow.)
Besides, Iran has avoided having nuclear weapon, because it causes too many civilian casualties, and that's against their beliefs. In this, they're more civilized than Americans (and Europeans), despite that this might be considered to be an irrational view by barbarians like you.
I think you're just coping with the fact that this war was utterly pointless, destructive for almost everyone in the world, and a poor attempt to increase power by a small group of people.
You've got the wrong premise. Iran was actively developing nuclear weapons, and officials even admitted to it when interviewed.
https://www.memri.org/tv/former-iranian-majles-member-motaha...
Former Iranian Majles member Ali Motahari said in an April 24, 2022 interview on ISCA News (Iran) that when Iran began developing its nuclear program, the goal was to build a nuclear bomb. He said that there is no need to beat around the bush, and that the bomb would have been used as a "means of intimidation" in accordance with a Quranic verse about striking "fear in the hearts of the enemies of Allah."
"When we began our nuclear activity, our goal was indeed to build a bomb,” former Iranian politician Ali Motahari told ISCA News. “There is no need to beat around the bush,” he said.
Read the last two lines of that interview. Khamenei interpreted Islam as forbidding even building the bomb, and he is the moral authority on this, like it or not.
Japan could also have built a nuclear bomb, but chose not to. They decided that out of nothing else than their moral beliefs.
You simply don't want to accept than other cultures can be (in some respects, and even regardless of what individuals think on average - that's probably similar for large enough groups) more ethical than your own.
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