This conveniently ignores decades of context. The CIA-backed coup that toppled Iran’s elected government, the sweeping sanctions, support for Saddam during a brutal war, assassinations and cyber-attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Painting Iran as the sole aggressor skips the part where outside powers kept breaking the "rules" they imposed. Also forgetting that Iran's current repressive and theocratic government is itself a direct consequence of US interference.
You can let this context paralyze you into feeling that there's no morally right response to any action anyone takes in this complex world. Or, you can just say: what they're doing is wrong, so we're going to stop it. If you don't learn to do the latter, you'll spend the rest of your life beholden to the tyranny of the people who do.
I think my own thought isn't 'what they're doing is wrong' but 'what they're doing is dangerous'.
Thus in my view it kind of doesn't matter whether what they're doing is right or wrong, and the sensible goal is to simply prevent the dangerous stuff without necessarily judging them. Thus limited bombings focused on nuclear enrichment plants, rather than some wider campaign.
The problem as I see it is that it may not work, and that nuclear bomb development might be quite easy.
Right right; and Americans have not forgotten how "he has nukes" was very much a reason for starting the post-9/11 forever wars across the rest of the middle east. Of course; no nukes were found. If there's any foreign (or domestic) policy decision the vast majority of Americans agree on, its avoiding putting American boots on the ground in the middle east.
1. No one should have nukes.
2. That probably won't happen in our lifetimes, so the second best world is: No one new should have nukes, and those who do have them should have as few as feasible, and fewer every year.
3. Global superpowers, obviously including the United States but others as well, have the moral authority to police the restriction of nuclear weapons development in other countries. We should work with international agencies, we should start with diplomatic solutions, progress to economic sanctions, then progress to unilateral, targeted, kinetic strikes. Try non-violent means first. Minimize loss of civilian life.
4. There is no distinction, in my mind, between "trying to develop nuclear weapons" and "successfully developing nuclear weapons". There is no distinction, in my mind, between 60% enrichment and 90% enrichment, or whatever. Non-nuclear countries should attempt no stage of development, at all, and if they do, should see their efforts stopped by any means necessary. Very hypothetically: If a non-nuclear nation lays a single brick to build a structure destined to aid in nuclear weapons development, I would support destroying that brick; there is no stage too early to intervene. Obviously this is hypothetical and there are realistic feasibility concerns with that, but when speaking morally/ethically.
5. All of this is true regardless of the governance structure or ally/enemy relationship of the country, but it should be obviously true, in triplicate, for a nation ran by religious extremists, who has a history of funding terrorist groups who attack our ships and allies, spanning decades, who tramples on the human rights of women and minorities in their country... to be frank, we have launched full-scale invasions of countries far better. If Iran wants a shred of my pity, their leadership could start by making any effort to join the 21st century in any way except weapons development. But, they don't. Why anyone defends them for any reason is so far beyond my understanding that I'm convinced half the people in these comments are russian disinfo bots.
>4. There is no distinction, in my mind, between "trying to develop nuclear weapons" and "successfully developing nuclear weapons". There is no distinction, in my mind, between 60% enrichment and 90% enrichment, or whatever. Non-nuclear countries should attempt no stage of development, at all, and if they do, should see their efforts stopped by any means necessary. Very hypothetically: If a non-nuclear nation lays a single brick to build a structure destined to aid in nuclear weapons development, I would support destroying that brick; there is no stage too early to intervene. Obviously this is hypothetical and there are realistic feasibility concerns with that, but when speaking morally/ethically.
I see this as an unacceptable position. Sweden will probably develop nuclear weapons, either on its own or with EU partners. I would prefer this effort to not be resisted.
Poland probably will as well. So position 4 is I think insane.
Instead, Iran should be prevented from developing nuclear weapons because they are crazy, and should only be prevented from doing so because they are crazy. There are some current nuclear weapons states that should have been prevented from developing nuclear weapons, but that is tolerable.
Furthermore, I think position 1 is also false, since I believe that nuclear weapons actually provide deterrence and prevent conventional war.
If the Iranians weren't crazy it would be good that they had nukes, and it would stabilize the entire Middle East, reducing the belligerence of other entities.
What? Do you really believe the world seriously beholds itself to "do as I say not as I do"? There's no such thing as international law. There's just self-interested nations who have always only done what is in their best interest. There's no higher authority.
So, in your reality, China says "but, but, you guys got to invade Iraq and attack Iran unprovoked, that means we get to invade Taiwan" and we just have to sit back and let it happen because... reasons. Nope. That's not how it works. We don't hold everyone to the same standards, and we certainly don't hold ourselves to the standards we police the world to hold itself to. That's the way it works.
I don't believe in fair. I do however believe that maybe we can learn and change and expect our leadership to do the same. Cooperation and diplomacy lead to far higher long term returns than might makes right as we have seen time and time again. What we are seeing now however is a policy of maximizing the minimum which will force others to do the same and leads to everyone, including the US, being far worse off.
Please do not lose grasp on what we're talking about here: These were nuclear enrichment facilities with the goal of enriching fissile material for nuclear weapons. These were not civilian, or even conventional military, targets. There is a gulf of difference between one overnight mission to dampen the nuclear prospects of a dictatorial, authoritarian, religious-extremist regime, and China launching a multi-modal invasion of a near-peer ally.
I believe the complete dominance of the preemptive attacks shows how little capability they actually have to use any such weapons and that likely trickles down to any development of those weapons. I no longer believe in the 'They have WMD and will take over the world in days' wolf cries. Iran is not some nice country being picked on, but the entities attacking them also aren't being truthful in their reasons either. I have no love for any of the parties in this fight at the moment. They are all wrong, but one side did throw the first punch so they are, in my view, the most wrong here and the US just backed them.
And I believe that you don't need a modern weapons platform to smuggle one of these weapons into your enemy's territory and cause major damage. Iran has a documented and clear history of funding and outfitting organizations who would love to do exactly that. There's broad global agreement that Iran has the ambition to develop nuclear weapons, and that these facilities were key to that ambition.
Its astounding to me that there's this much discord on these strikes. Sure; everyone sucks, politicians suck, blah blah blah, we're on the same page on that. That's not an excuse to do nothing and persistently disagree with every decision any government makes.
Diplomacy isn't 'doing nothing'. Trump 1.0 destroyed efforts that were working and Israel has proven time and time again that they don't care about diplomacy so long as they have bombs to throw. My points are still valid, this strategy of preemptive attack is a terrible signal to the world and won't solve the long term problem.
> There's no such thing as international law. There's just self-interested nations who have always only done what is in their best interest.
If you think about that a little bit more, you may see that internal laws can change the best interests if coencequences are big enough. And maybe that is the point.
