Remind me - exactly how licit is Israel’s nuclear program?
To be fair, there are LOTS of reasons why other countries might want to be rid of Dictator-X. Trying to get nukes is an easy casus belli to depose them but it is not the only reason.
But! Getting nukes is a great shield against them coming after them for all the other reasons. High stakes gamble.
It seems insane to me that we live in a world where people think it would be good if CEOs feared for their lives but bad if dictators did.
It may shock you to know that dictators are already aware of this which is why they spend so much of their time trying to come up with ways to prevent people from doing that.
Which is why the job of the international community is to make it clear that trying to get nukes is an instant ticket to losing your regime or nuclear program, one or the other.
No one here thinks dictators should exist at all. However we live in a world where they do exist and we’ve given them plenty of reasons to pursue apocalyptic weapons as we haven’t given them much reason to put trust in their neighbors.
Team America: World Police! Make the Aughts Great Again!
Brought to you by Netanyahu and Trump! Surely nothing can go wrong!
Warmongers, unite! Unite for Trump and Netanyahu! Together we can bomb our way to a peaceful world!
If there is a dictator living near me, and he spends all day screaming about how I must be destroyed utterly because by my very nature I should not exist, and I give him reason to trust me, I feel like I’ve deeply fucked up.
YMMV.
This is really the key point. Even if were a warmonger, and thought such military action could lead to peace, I would never be so stupid as to trust the likes of Trump and Netanyahu to accomplish it.
I also am curious about the timing.
I seem to recall reading about some enhanced percentages of enriched product mentioned?
I have no idea what to believe these days or who trust with any reporting.
Tehran certainly is being bombed, but by the Israelis, not the US. And Iran is giving back the same, with gradually more effect.
That is one of the possible futures, yes.
On the other hand, starting a shooting war over either of those could have been a bad decision, too.
Frankly, I don’t think there’s a good solution to any of this, we’ll have to try to pick the least bad alternative.
So you’d be OK with a coalition of, say, the US, Russia, and China deciding Israel shouldn’t have nukes anymore, right? Sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander, after all. Or does that only apply to nations you don’t like?
And just fuck all the “little people” caught in the crossfire, amirite? If you have to kill tens of thousands of civilians well, it’s their own damn fault for being born in the wrong place or having the wrong citizenship or otherwise just not being you.
Because not wanting to start a war, or just hesitating or thinking twice before starting a war that could potentially kill hundreds of thousands is such a bad, evil, thing. 
/sarcasm
By their very nature dictators are paranoid and fear for their lives - if they didn’t they wouldn’t survive long.
You do realize that same “international community” has at times opposed the very existence of Israel, right? Are you so sure you want to put these things to a vote?
And how do you propose to make that threat iron-clad? Bombing is of limited utility, we’ve know that since WWII. Few people have the stomach for obliterating entire populations of civilians to get at the problem people. Boots on the ground seem to be the only way to have a chance of this working but nations are understanding reluctant to expend significant blood and treasure on regime change. In part out of fear of someone else wanting to change their regime. How, exactly, are you expecting this to work?
^ This.
Say what? Gradually more effect?
In case you hadn’t noticed, infrastructure in Israel is being hit more often by Iranian missiles, causing significant damage. The Iron Dome is good but it’s not perfect. Throw enough at it something will get through. The more Iran throws at it the more likely something is to get through. Granted, Israel’s abundance of bomb shelters and alerts has kept injuries and deaths to a minimum, but the damage to buildings is very real.
From Tel Aviv in the past couple of days:
Photo 1
Photo 2
There’s plenty more where that came from, although of course you have to note whether it’s the same building over and over or a new one that’s been hit.
Apparently (according to the media) instead of directly attacking the US Iran is venting its fury on Israel today.
Yeah, that’s what I’m asking you to explain. More often? How do you figure?
Iran is launching fewer barrages, with fewer missiles in each, and the barrages are further and further apart. They don’t launch multiple barrages a night anymore, unless those barrages are in the single digits; they don’t even launch a single barrage a day.
Since the American strikes, they launched one wave of 25 missiles (30 hours after the prior barrage), and then 17 hours later they launched a single missile. Why? Because the IDF has been smashing their missile launches to pieces.
So please, I ask again: how do you figure that Iran’s attacks are having ‘gradually more effect’? It seems to me like their greatest impact was in the initial barrage, and since then their capacity has been reduced further and further.
(Note, the graph above undersells the decrease in missiles, because the blue bar doesn’t show the total number of missiles but the average number per barrage - you have to multiply it by the red line to get the true number of missiles in a time period).
More broken buildings and rubble - is that really that difficult to understand?
Against Gaza Israeli could bomb with impunity. Prior waves from Iran had little effect. Now you’re having buildings destroyed. It’s not how many missiles per barrage that counts, it’s how many get through and the amount of damage they cause. Which, pretty clearly, is more than they used to do a couple weeks ago.
33 missiles per wave is the most Iran could manage? That surprises me. Seems really low (by which I mean if I were Iran and contemplating overwhelming Israeli missile defenses I would want to fling a lot more than 30 missiles at them at a time…but I am not a dictator so maybe it made sense to them).
ETA: I thought I read here or somewhere that Iran had over 300 launchers.
Ok, so you were just saying that some damage is still being caused to Israel, even if the rate at which that damage is being inflicted has been greatly reduced?
Sure, I don’t disagree with that. That’s how wars work.
I know we try to be super one sided on our analysis of this conflict, but plenty of rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel over the course of this war. The North had been evacuated for pretty much the entire duration because of damage from Hezbollah.
A couple of weeks ago before the fighting started? I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.
Both sides take damage in war. Who’s winning this one, even before the US got involved?
Their missile bases have been under heavy Israeli fire since this war began. They were one of the top targets in the initial airstrikes. I’m sure when they made all their initial wartime calculations, they didn’t expect their forces to be so heavily degraded and pressured. If their air defenses had held up, they could have put a lot more missiles in the air, and continued launching wave after wave rather than having to scoot and shoot.
I’m sure they had static launch sites when the war started, too, but they didn’t get to use those.
Hamas vs. Israel? Clearly Israel
Iran vs. Israel? Not so certain. Probably Israel in the end, but with a lot more maiming and death than against Hamas or Hezbollah.
I’m really curious about your math, since Hamas has killed far more people than Iran so far.
Or is this analysis completely vibes based?