Comment by gpt5

4 days ago

Not true. The US has been negotiating with Iran for over a year about a nuclear deal before the war started. This has all been public.

If only the prior P5+1 / Iran JCPOA deal of 2015 that constrained HEU and was backed up by multi country inspectors and tamper resistant / revealing on site instrumentation hadn't been thrown out the window by some fool.

Why on earth would anyone trust a country that reneged on a hard fought deal and followed that up by bombing during negotiations to restore what was lost.

  • Maybe because signing a new deal is better for your country and your people?

    Like what's the worst case scenario that happens to iran if they just signed a new deal? How would it have been any worse than the current situation?

    The deal doesn't even require a high level of trust - worst case they just go back to the previous situation. Making a deal only has an upside, even without trust.

    Just like employment at will - and yet having a job is better than no job in most cases.

    • Yes of course but you are forgetting Iran needs to arm itself to the teeth before the new deal, so that when American does dealy things during the deal they are repelled. Just like the last few times America did a "peace deal" with Iran and then started dropping bomb deals upon them.

      2 replies →

    • So why is the US bringing all the drama here then?

      Is it really just for a return to the pre-Trump status quo, only this time with the same deal not cosigned by Obama?

      5 replies →

1-800-come-on-now

The current POTUS tore up the last nuclear deal with iran in 2018 for domestic political payoff. I can't take protestations about 'we've been trying to negotiate!' seriously when they come from the same people that created nearly a decade of strategic uncertainty (preceded by years of trash talk) and whose negotiation style oscillates between brutal violence and self-pitying wheedling.

I don't want to be partisan, but the incumbent POTUS is the epitome of dishonesty and the political polarization in US domestic politics is so extreme that even US allies are talking about a generational loss of trust. It would be irrational for a historical antagonist like Iran to bank on negotiating a new agreement with a country that refuses to bind itself by any international norms; it seems to me that it would be far more rational for Iran to breakout in pursuit of a nuke, and having once performed a successful test, reap the benefits of strategic stability that have gradually accrued to North Korea despite its ongoing pariah status. That is to say, once they have a nuke and other countries can no longer casually attack them, more of their economy can be redirected away from acquiring a strategic deterrent and into more normal kinds of economic development.

  • Hi, USian here, as I assume you are.

    Not only has the US proven itself to be incredibly untrustworthy -both recently and in the past-, the protracted war in Ukraine demonstrates what happens when you give up your nukes and a member of the "nuke-havers" club decides that they want your territory. We're at the point where any country that has a militant nuclear-weapons-equipped neighbor and has both the ability to develop nuclear weapons and the state power to keep control of them would be stupid not to build them.

    It's a shame that several of the countries that are supposed to be "the adults in the room" have decided to abandon the various gentlemen's agreements that made nuclear-weapons nonproliferation agreements sensible.

And it started bombing twice during those negotiations. They started war after Iran made concessions. And bombed during first negotiations.

The US idea of peace was regular bombing - I have heard people from defemse sector even use the "lawn moving" term publically. I dont understand an expectation that foreign country should be ok with that.

Plus, Trump dont do good faith deals, he promisses and breaks deals next day.