We’re kind of starting out from a fucked position entirely because of Trump. We’re talking about the man who unilaterally scrapped the treaty we had with Iran regarding their nuclear capabilities. A man who ignores his own director of national intelligence who told him Iran doesn’t have the capability to build nuclear weapons. A man who got us involved in a fight that isn’t ours. I can’t help but think this war is inherently fucked specifically because of Trump’s involvement.
He’s already fucked it up. There was no good reason for the United States to even attack Iran. Peace is difficult when you attack without good reason.
Fundamentally, no matter what sorts of things you’re talking about (wars, economy, social issues, whatever), it’s very hard for a President to fix things, and very easy for a President to break things.
Shitty aside from the fact that it was working. As evidenced by the fact that Iran didn’t get a nuke.
I find it pathetically funny that, during the last presidential campaign, pro Palestinean/anti-Israel factions actually supported Trump because they thought he would favor them more than Harris who represented the party of tolerance. I also find it funny that core MAGA was against getting involved with Iran but is now enthusiastically in favor of it simply because Trump did it.
I say all this because it makes me feel that Trump appears to have Carte Blanche to do anything he wants, and he is capable of doing pretty much anything. The implications of that are very scary.
Did Iran maintain enrichment capability and a nuclear stockpile that ensured they could go nuclear with little warning at any time?
Did Iran get sanctions lifted and funds returned allowing it to grow its ballistic missile program unchallenged, with Iranian plans to reach stockpiles of 20,000 ballistic missiles - a level that would pose an existential threat to Israel even without nukes?
Did Iran get to use its new money to sponsor an Axis of Terror across the region which it used to actively attack Israel for years now?
I’m not buying that it was a good deal.
You could have convinced me that it’s a shitty deal, but Iran is such a powerful threat able to inflict so much damage on anyone who attacks it that we should accept this incredibly shitty deal anyways. If you asked me three weeks ago, that might be what I’d have told you. But the Israeli air force proved me very, very wrong. So I was wrong to support that incredibly shitty deal; I wish we had been more hawkish about this much, much earlier.
The biggest criticism I have for Netanyahu’s foreign policy now* is that he claims he always knew this is what we needed to do in Iran, but if so, why did he never do it until Oct 7 forced his hand?
*The biggest criticism overall remains the judicial reform bill.
“False Equivalency.” It has worked very well for the Right ever since they used it in Trump’s first campaign. They either fabricate something and then say, “Aha! Look at that!”, or they draw unrealistic comparisons between, say, filching a candy bar and armed robbing a Federal Reserve Bank. “Look, they’re both criminals!”
Iran gave up 99% of its 3.5% enriched uranium and 100% of its uranium at higher enrichment levels under the deal.
Also I don’t buy that lifting sanctions “allowed” Iran to increase their other military capabilities do the degree some opponents claim. While under the strongest sanctions they’d ever faced immediately preceding jcpoa, they had thousands of medium and long range missiles. Also while Iran was under those sanctions, their proxies won a war against Al Qaeda in Iraq, were winning against Isis in the same country, their main proxy in palestine (Hamas) won a civil war against its rival in Fatah, its proxy in Yemen was winning its civil war against Al Qaeda and was on the road to Saudi Arabia giving up on trying to fight them.
It was a good deal because it focused on Iran’s capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. It’s only a bad deal if one thinks it should have covered other things, like support for terrorists. As a restriction, and verifiable check, on nuclear weapons development, it verifiably was doing its job, up to the point that Trump tore it up.
But they kept the capacity to reenrich as much uranium as they want to whatever level they want at any time. Obviously, since they went ahead and did that.
Well first we have to agree on the fact that the deal did not allow Iran to maintain its nuclear stockpile.
I’m not fine with any capability of Iran to run its terror regime but given that sanctions can’t do everything, they already had good reason to fear that America would do what we later did and I don’t want the us going to war with every bad guy, I realize that it isn’t realistic to ask them to give up all deterence just for lifting of sanctions. Ultimately the main capability is knowledge which they were going to maintain regardless so my sticking point wouldnt be centrifuges. If there was room to extract more from Iran I’d have prefered to extend the deal longer rather than having to figure it out again a decade later.
I didn’t say Iran could maintain its entire uranium stockpile. What I said was:
Whether or not the nuclear stockpile they maintained was a fraction of the side of what they had previously, do you deny that it was sufficiently large that, combined with their enrichment capacity, they could go for a nuclear bomb at any time with very little warning?
I’d think it’s hard to deny that given that they did eventually do it, no?
I don’t care if it’s 90% or 50% or 1% of their original stockpile - it’s still far too large.
I mean, isn’t that exactly what I’m saying, too? The deal was never going to be enough to make Iran dismantle their program entirely - apparently, you agree with me that this is distinctly not fine. Therefore, the only reason why we would accept a deal that is not fine is if the cost to the alternative (war) is simply top high.
Do we disagree on anything so far?
As the IDF proved, the cost of operating against Iran is not too high. The IDF was preparing for a mass barrage that could overwhelm the defences and end with thousands of civilians dead. That’s what I was afraid of when I supported a deal with Iran.
But the IDF proved that this fear was unfounded, and that Iran is basically a paper tiger. What remaining reasons are there to accept a deal that we agreed is deeply lacking, if the cost of war is not overwhelmingly high?
I think we’re long past the point where anyone in MAGA is rational or actually coherent, it’s a cult, he’s a cult leader, and the dogma is whatever he said last. You’re right that there were plenty of people who failed to support Harris because she was too tolerant from their POV, but they weren’t 100% MAGA, and more than a few of them are learning that their “gesture” was very much cutting off their nose to spite their face. Of course, plenty are still at the “look what you made me do” stage - anything to dodge their own responsibility.
This part is where Trump seems to be falling down on the current situation (back to the thread) - because he’s used to MAGA and the various PTB (afraid of the IRS, lawsuits, funding cuts, or other Federal Obstructionism) accepting his proclamations or at least trying to humor him, he assumes that the rest of the world will do so. This means, when crossed, he reacts like a 5 year old being told that just because he wants cupcakes for dinner, he can’t have them.
I don’t think any diplomatic solution is going to come out of the American government as long as it’s ruled by Trump or even his successors by whatever means.
They’ll always have a huge stockpile of unenriched uranium under their feet and they already know how to turn it into 80+% enriched uranium. They can rebuild the hardware.
I don’t think I agree with you on how far these limited strikes set Iran back. I’ll wait for what analysts say but I’d bet this set Iran back by something like 2 years.
There’s also something of a “mineshaft gap” dynamic - the effectiveness of the limited strikes will always be tied to whether Iran can successfully dig a tunnel deeper than we can bomb.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN in a statement: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.
I can see why DJT hired her. She talks (and lies) just like him.
It may be both, suppose you use top secret sources to reach the wrong conclusions, your report would still be top secret in order not to reveal the sources but the conclusion would still be wrong.
Maybe it wasn’t leaked. Maybe someone at Mar A Lago was taking a leak and found it there.
Also, 10 minutes or so after the bombing, Trump announced that we had utterly destroyed Iran’s entire nuclear capability. He wouldn’t just make that up and lie, would he?
