> The point is preventing another North Korea style nuclear blackmail state
The US and Israel are currently nuclear blackmail states. The rational move for Iran to prevent itself from being bullied is to have nukes like North Korea.
> In this situation it is a fair request by the US
Fair if you're the US, sure.
Especially not when they’re mass murdering protestors and funding islamic extremism left and right
What recent months show us, is that it's a rough world - there are no friends. I'm rooting for European countries to accelerate their nuclear weapons programs. In an ideal world, of course I would be against. But the world is far from ideal. The current alternative is being dictated the rules by Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin. Thanks, but no.
Neither of these states have at any point said anything on the modern era that can be implied to be a threat to nuke anybody.
Part of that is because it would be a bad strategy for them, but nonetheless "nuclear blackmail state" and "nuclear state" is not the same thing.
The NPT did not exist at the time of the US developing nuclear weapons, and it explicitly allows US (and other pre-existing nuclear powers') weapons.
Israel, like India and Pakistan, simply never signed it, forgoing the international nuclear technology market as a consequence but also avoiding a treaty obligation not to develop them.
North Korea invaded South Korea, stole a US Navy ship (the Pueblo, which they still proudly exhibit), dug large infiltration tunnels under the DMZ, kidnapped hundreds, or even thousands people from SK (and Japan, to a lesser extent), and have assassinated, or attempted to assassinate, multiple SK heads of state, and perpetrated acts of terror like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858
What did the US or SK do to them before their nuclear program that constituted "bullying?"
Perhaps you will argue that the US or Israel or Pakistan or North Korea have conducted themselves in a way where they do not have that moral right either, but that is a different debate, and either way it is moot because they do have them.
Iran signed Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
In many ways I think it would be better than the world controlled by the US axis.
Then again, I am not from the US nor Israel nor any muslim country. I just hope the countries I care about stay out of this Iran deal.
This would allow me to quietly hope that Iran somehow wins this in the long run. I have this tendency of supporting the aggressed party in uneven conflicts.
Automatically presuming that the weak side is the morally right is such a skewed an naive world view.
However, in this case, the US-Israel axis is undoubtedly the agressor, and morally indefensible.
In the Russian invasion against Ukraine, I can hope Ukraine succeedes without ascribing morality to the Ukrainian government.
Hell, the US ambassator to Israel basically admitted to it in an recent interview with Tucker Carlson.
Also, lest we forget, the US has a huge laundry list of supporting insurgencies and actively sponsoring coups everywhere. Especially in Latin America.
To be frank, Iran sounds pretty tame in comparison. If your argument is that they are evil, I would counter they are definitely the lesser of two evils.
So.... Go Persia?
Let’s perform a thought experiment. Israel is 8 million Jews, half of the country is an unpopulated desert, our largest border is with Jordan which is barely defensible. And you think that we want to conquer Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and parts of Iraq? With what army? How can we support such a conquest? How will we defend that border? Sharing a border with Iran? How will 8 million Jews handle the 40 million Muslims that will allegedly be conquered? This makes so little sense that believing it just exposes your radical bias.
I hope you are counting the current prime minister with your fingers.
> And you think that we want to conquer Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and parts of Iraq?
I think Israel is an extremely aggressive country, yes.
> How will 8 million Jews handle the 40 million Muslims that will allegedly be conquered?
Conquered? No, the 40 million would be murdered if Israel has its way.
Speaking of numbers is very disingenuous when it an bring along the US to this fight.
I said that Israel has genocidaire ambitions towards its neighbors, I never said anything about conquest.
Population numbers would matter only if Israel had ambitions to rule over the people. When your intention is murder the numbers are only a challenge to your goal.
Desire? Absolutely. That's what they have been doing with the Palestinians after all.
As I said before, I have no dog in this race. I personally prefer the countries I care about to not get involved in this conflict, and hope the US-Israel axis lose somehow.
I stole that silly axis jargon from you. It is very fitting there now.
Do you think all people in your country should get the same rights?
And I’m not entirely sure what point are you trying to make, that terror countries like the houthis should have nuclear weapons, or that people in a country should not have equal rights.
When someone is attacking me obviously I want the bigger and stronger weapon.
No. If they wanted self-defense and sovereignty they should have become stronger not weaker after the revolution.
You can bomb the leadership all day long.
Without boots on the ground the regime will probably continue.
I don't see how this stops Iran from building nukes. Sure they may have a temporary set back.
But do you think this will change their minds?
Can they even negotiate a resolution with the US. Given that the current administration won't honor its own agreements.
Did Trump issue an ultimatum here? And demand something?
> After the last war, it also is no longer a threshold state
That's also wrong. Trump claimed Iran's enrichment capabilities were totally destroyed, but they weren't.
> In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal
America already had a good deal. Trump got rid of it.
Iran had a signed agreement, trump cancelled it. Israel literally killed Irans negotiators just a few months ago. What is this nuclear level ignorance.
North Korea aspires be to be a Israel-style nuclear blackmail state.
Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s
Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?
And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?
- Military - their regional proxies destroyed, missile and drone stocks low, provably weak air defences.
- Economically - the currency is worthless, extreme inflation for seven years and hyper inflation for a few months, the economy is currently producing nothing due to unrest, they have a massive water shortage of their own making. They have no goods worth exporting. Their oil is sanctioned, meaning only China will buy from them and at a steep discount. And oil is extremely cheap at this minute.
- Politically - they have no friends willing to bail them out. Russia has no money to spare. China doesn’t care about anyone outside of China. North Korea is even poorer. All sections within Iranian society detest the mullahs running the government. They’re hanging on by killing tens of thousands of protestors.
Trump bets that Iran’s leaders are at their weakest since their war with Saddam ended in 1988. Meaning now is the best time to negotiate a deal where they hand over their fissile material and uranium enrichment equipment. In return they could get a heavy water reactor(s) that produces energy but no fissile material.
If he lets this opportunity slip Iran could fix all of their many problems in a year or three. Manufacture more missiles and drones. Build up their proxies once more. Maybe the price of oil recovers. Russia’s war ends and they aid Iran best they can. The economy recovers and the Iranian people stop trying to overthrow the government. Maybe a conflict starts elsewhere that draws America’s full attention.
Will Trump get that deal? Probably not. That fissile material is the only leverage the mullahs have. If they give it up they’ll be toppled like the other dictators who gave up their weapons programs - Gaddafi and Saddam.
But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?
It was one of the primary triggers for the protests. People are very upset about the economy and willing to protest and die for it.
Yes, although it had merit it was far worse than what can be signed now, especially the sunset clause was problematic
> Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?
that's the nature of nuclear weapons, your conventional force can be abysmal (pretty much NK situation vs US) and yet you can create epic destruction
> And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?
Yes, the thing here is the long term goal of signing a deal, whose main goal is removing the existing highly enriched uranium from Iran and restricting their ability to redevelop nuclear capabilities. Essentially this is the part where "Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means" (to highly paraphrase), because the alternative to a deal is maintenance attacks such as these every two years
Iran is a bad guy state ... but the "fair" atgunent hwre dont apply.
No. There's a number of reasons for this. #1 is Israel's policy of "strategic ambiguity" and #2 is that it might be illegal to even mention it in Israel. Israel prosecuted a whistleblower nuclear scientist for leaking state secrets, for example.
> And who have they blackmailed with the nukes?
The US, for one:
"Similarly, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, IDF was again outnumbered by the invading Arab armies. Then Israeli PM Golda Meir authorized a nuclear alert and ordered that nuclear warheads be readied for launch from missiles and aircraft. The Israeli ambassador to the US, Simcha Dinitz, met with Henry Kissinger to inform President Nixon of “Very serious conclusions” if the US did not airlift arms supplies to the IDF. Nixon complied with this demand due to the threat of the use of nuclear forces. This was the first successful use of the Samson option as a threat and tantamount to nuclear blackmail."
from: https://thesvi.org/deconstructing-israels-samson-option/
I also recommend: https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/wait-why-is-israel-allow...
The Samson Option enables Israel to blackmail the entire Middle East, and do so silently. Turkey or Egypt can't afford for Hezbollah to overrun Israel, because Ankara and Cairo might get nuked, even if they had nothing to do with contributing to Israel's existential crisis. It basically forces the whole neighborhood to keep each other in check out of sheer self-preservation. Credit given where credit due, it's a smart approach on Israel's part.