They tried long term peace negotiations, twice, and both times the other party attacked them anyway, the second time in the middle of the negotiations.
Any regime, democratic, human-rights-respecting, or not, would reach the same conclusion: if they don’t make them pay a significant enough price they’ll be attacked again in six months or so, or whenever Trump and co feel like it.
Good point. With adversaries as dishonest as the present Israeli and US governments, negotiation is very dubious. Iran supports and engages in terrorism, but AFAICT they haven’t violated or abandoned any agreements they’ve made.
Iran has never agreed to negotiate with Israel, and has definitely never entered into any agreements with it. Any violations were America’s alone. If Iran had invited Israel to the table the situation might have been very different now.
(Besides, launching an attack before an agreement is reached is underhanded, but technically not a violation of any agreement. Violence is always on the table in negotiations - otherwise why bother to talk?)
In the U.S. the public have never been privy to a public address from our head of state explaining the plans for this war.
I presume Israel has had more direct messaging from their government. What is Israel’s present exit strategy?
Are they even looking for a peace treaty?
At this stage, are they pushing regime change, or is it still just some vague notion of crippling the military?
To the extent that we have, at all, it’s been in little sound bites in press opportunities and social media posts, which are often contradictory from one day to the next.
Fair enough.
The backwards logic never fails to amaze and entertain.
Yes it’s unreasonable to expect a full ceasefire prior to the conclusion of negotiations in which a ceasefire is one of the bargaining chips. But it’s also the very definition of bad faith to massively escalate into a full blown war including killing most of the people who were negotiating with you, without any apparent provocation.
As for not being technically against any agreement – yeah nothing would be, because there was no agreement yet. Iran having and detonating a nuke wouldn’t be against any agreement. No one was making that claim.
More than you, but not nearly enough. The government has been talking about destroying Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities and preventing them from rearming; and yes, they’re still talking about regime change, but they’re starting to admit that if it happens, it’ll happen organically, after the fighting stops. But beyond that, we’re not getting enough information from our government. Bibi, despite his image, tends to react to events rather than lead them, and I also suspect that he’s terrified of Trump, and of saying anything that contradicts his next random statement. I’d almost feel sorry for the man if I didn’t despise him so much.
But there’s no need to sell a war to us, because we were already at war - what ended on February 28 wasn’t peace, it was a lull in the fighting. Iran has been at war with us directly since it attacked us two years ago, and indirectly through its proxies for almost 45 year. Today I watched my old neighborhood, where I lived for almost 20 years, get bombed, again, this trime with cluster munitions. The plaza where I taught my son to ride a bike now has bomb craters in it. So yes, as much as despise my current government, I still want to win this war. We can’t keep on living like this.
The thing is, we still don’t know what happened. Sure, we have reports from diplomats, but diplomats say whatever is in their country’s interest to say. They’re not honest reporters of anything, at least to the public.
Maybe talks were going swimmingly, and Trump decided to launch an attack on a whim. That’s certainly possible - I’d give that a 50% chance. But maybe they talks had reached a deadlock, the American negotiators said “Show some flexibility or the ceasefire’s over”, and the Iranians decided to call their bluff. We don’t know how things went down. I hope some day we will.
My fear is that, if the standard for winning is no more attacks in Israel, then we are in for years of stalemate fighting.
The attacks in Israel don’t even need to be directly attributable to Iran. Iran is regularly credited with operating through proxies, so basically any terrorism within Israel is going to prolong the war.
You and I have different a concept of a bluff. Whatever that was, backstabbing or underhanded ball, diplomatic sucker punch or trojan horse decapitation, a bluff it has turned out not to be.
Well one of those claims has supporting evidence – what the people mediating the discussions have said. And the other not only has no supporting evidence, but is in fact contradicted by the only data we have.
To people trying to be objective, that matters.
Moderating:
First, I’m going to point out that less than 24 hours ago, I quoted the exact language used when we split the threads, and then emphasized the huge distinction based on Chronology.
A majority of the posts since then have instead been heavily focused on the events leading up to, and speculation about the causation of the attack, especially in terms of negotiating in good faith, both past and future.
I know it’s hard, but in the same post I quoted in part, we P&E mods stated that while we were going to be giving some slack, that posters who persistently ignored the split were likely to draw more serious moderation.
We are on the cusp of that moment. Again, in the same section I quoted less than 24 hours ago:
I am not issuing any warnings, or calling any poster out by name. I believe that most posters are trying to comply, and posting more trying to address what they see as bad assumptions, or from different POVs. But the aggregate result is nearly indistinguishable from willful refusal to follow moderator instructions.
The P&E mods are working on ways to balance the apparent desire for looser moderation vs. functional discussions. We still expect posters to comply with the existing moderation and rules until such time as they may be changed.
Nevermind, I didn’t see the mod post above mine.
Is bombing Iran expected to win anything? Suppose you blow up a bunch of ballistic missile factories; they will build more.
Why are the Iranians bombing Israel? Do they expect to win anything?
The Washington Post reports that the goal of this war is changing to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, now that regime change and even stopping nuclear weapons are out of reach.
So, basically, the goal now of the war appears to be to restore the pre-war status quo. Great job!
6 posts were merged into an existing topic: Speculation About Trump’s Underlying Reasons for Bombing Iran and Other Targets
3 posts were merged into an existing topic: Speculation About Trump’s Underlying Reasons for Bombing Iran and Other Targets
The Washington Post provided accurate reporting. That’s not being in charge of the war. And how do you think “capturing nuclear material” is going to go?
Iran, though, does have a plan if its power plants are attacked.
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