Either option is better than an Iran that’s building up its ballistic missile stockpile higher and higher while maintaining a holding pattern just shy of a finished bomb.
There’s also the scenario where Iran is cowed and gives up its nuclear ambitions.
In my opinion they should have given Trump more time to try and work something out.
You can be sure that the 400kg of already enriched uranium has been moved out of harm’s way, and so all they can do is set things back a few years until Iran reconstitutes its efforts.
And as I said previously, Iraq, Syria, and Libya should be a lesson that toppling the regime could very well make things worse. Imagine ISIS with 400kg of 60% enriched Uranium.
The only way this ends with Iran completely “safe” is boots on the ground. And there is no way the American public will go for that. And frankly, I don’t blame them. It absolutely would be Iraq 2.0
I must have missed this in the news, which of those three dictatorial regimes ended up with nuclear weapons rather than collapsing?
Israel is free to take charge of the nation building. An Iran forever a year away is preferable to Americans in another 10 year, $5 trillion, 200,000 dead quagmire.
Again, this current action won’t stop Iran from getting the bomb. It’s a delay.
If you’re waiting for Trump to try to make a deal, you’ll be waiting a very long time. Trump has never been able to make deals.
No, but he’s proven adept at reinstating previous deals and renaming them. NAFTA reborn as USMCA
Which he immediately, day one, violated with flimsy invasion, murderers, drug runners as a pretext.
I hear talking points about mushroom clouds over NYC once again. It kind of reminds me of something in the past.
False flag incoming soon is my guess.
If Israel wants to bomb Iran into having no ballistic missile capability, they’re going to have to either actually do the regime change or just bomb them continuously. Ukraine is manufacturing its own ballistic missiles while at war with Russia. You can’t suppress ballistic missiles the same way you can nukes.
It’s hard to simultaneously believe that the regime is genuine in its suicidal desire to nuke Israel and also believe that if they got trounced badly enough by Israel they would permanently give up their ambitions.
It’s the old “They’re cowards who will give in if attacked, but we’re brave and will strengthen our resolve if attacked”. Amazing how many people throughout history who have been shocked when that turned out not to work.
The Ukrainian Hrim-2 that you’re talking about has less than a tenth of the range that it would take to get from Iran to Israel.
Because of all the times that false flags happened in real life, as opposed to the fever dream of conspiracy theorists?
Well, presumably they’d have gone through a few Supreme Leaders by that point, who’d have learned the lessons taught by their predecessors…
There’s a tiny bit of a difference in the intrinsic motivation to complete a task between the side whose goal is to survive and the side whose goal is to wipe the other side off the map for ideological reasons.
They’re building them for the first time. If Iran’s regime survives and Israel stops bombing them, how long do you think it would take to get the factories up and running again
OK, so ultimately your endgame is regime change. Eventually (after going through multiple leaders so presumably their leadership is being taken out) Israel will have bombed its way into moderate leadership. Hopefully there are no unintended consequences of this!
Major barrage from Iran today. A number of missiles got through. At least 2 serious injuries, and 40 light ones.
One of the sites hit is the Soroka Medical Center near Beer Sheva.
There is suspicion that dangerous chemicals have leaked at the hospital, which is being evacuated.
And IMO, regime change probably means civil war. And that means literally any outcome is possible. So unless you’ve got someone willing to go in and do the nation building, it’s likely worse than what we have now.
Moderating:
This is creeping close to your topic ban. You are now banned from this thread. And I’m taking it to the mod loop for possible further action.
Iran has been warning that they will deploy new forms of weaponry against Israel’s civilians, and today we saw one of these threats carried out, as the Iranians have now deployed cluster munitions in their unguided strikes on population centers:
Some of the framented munitions hit a home in Azor, a town right by Tel Aviv. One of four apparent impacts from the earlier barrage came from clusters striking a home.
Now the big worry is that cluster munitions may have made it to the ground unexploded, even from missiles that were shot down. They could explode and injure or kill if disturbed.
I’m waiting for the protests regarding Iran hitting a hospital in Israel. I won’t hold my breath…
Feel free to bring it up in a Pit thread and I’ll happily tell you all my thoughts.
Resistance isn’t perfect! 
Meanwhile, Iran has fired another, medium barrage of around 15 missiles, which look to have potentially all been shot down.
Militarily speaking – this conflict, so far, is demonstrating one of the same lessons of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: authoritarian governments are necessarily based on lies, and a military based on lies cannot function well.
This should be a lesson for the US and Israel as well, considering their (our) leadership is currently as dishonest as any in the world (including Iran and Russia): if government based on lies continues for long enough, their (our) militaries will cease to be among the best in the world (I think this has already started to impact Israel, considering so many of their failures in Gaza, as well as Oct 7th itself).