I know they’ve tried but does Iran really have any viable nuclear capability? Or is it just like Iraq where the hydro-electric aluminium tubes are justification?
They have the capability but they’re not there yet. They’re trying to get there, but every time they make progress Israel bombs them back to square. It’s been an effective strategy to stall Iran’s ability to get nukes.
I mean it’s some pretty serious overstepping… Nobody even does that to North Korea, even though they get ever closer to developing a ballistic missile, something capable of delivering a nuke (which they do have). But nobody is bombing NK… Why? Because that’s a fucking act of war!
Bombing Iranian facilities is just an egregious breach of their sovereignty. If on the other hand, some country tried that against the US, it would be a major international incident as soon as they crossed into our airspace, regardless of whether they deployed a single munition. But if they did hit a target, a completely unproportional retaliatory bombing campaign would ensue.
And the only reason Israel gets away with this dangerously aggressive behavior is that they have the military might of the US at their back. They believe they’re untouchable because they assume the US will always be an ally. And truth be told, it’s all a terrible policy for their own longevity. Some day, eventually, we’ll have a president with a conscience and a Congress that supports them, and then we’ll stop giving weapons to Israel. And on that day Israel will finally have to take responsibility for their actions, and we’ll see what their neighbors really think of them. Until then, they continue to dig themselves into a deeper hole, convinced that it’s the safest way forward.
To be fair, they really don’t have any other option. They’ve already made the US a long-term enemy both culturally and politically, and, despite that, Iran still seeks to be a key geopolitical player. There aren’t many other avenues for that in the short term, which is all that usually matters for a dictatorship.
Things will be shaking up in the next few years, so let’s see whether they’ll continue to be perceived as antagonistic to the world at large as the US shifts into goblin mode and khamenei kicks the bucket, hopefully loosening oppression.
Building Nuclear Weapons solve exactly zero of their problems. Just look at North Korea as an example. I also don’t really like the prospects of another civil war in the Middle East.
Iran’s core problem in Geopolitics, lack of foreign investment despite an increasingly educated population, is due to their own underinvestment in agriculture and stifled private-sector growth due to government corruption and collusion. Most of their exports are oil and gas in most years. They recently had a multiple year recession where GDP continuously shrank.
Compare them to other middle eastern regions like Afghanistan which provides the majority of the world’s real Saffron and a hefty sum of Gold, Turkey which exports Cars, or Syria which exports Olive Oil. Iran has the climate and resources to expand and diversify in a lot of sectors but instead it continues to cut government subsidies and increase taxes, it’s just not sustainable.
I honestly don’t know enough about economics to dispute anything you’ve said. I will point out that this dispute is nearly entirely unrelated to nuclear capabilities, though. Were both Israel and Iran to both disarm their nuclear capabilities, they’d both still seek to tear into one another for a host of theology-adjacent reasons.
I know they’ve tried but does Iran really have any viable nuclear capability? Or is it just like Iraq where the hydro-electric aluminium tubes are justification?
They have the capability but they’re not there yet. They’re trying to get there, but every time they make progress Israel bombs them back to square. It’s been an effective strategy to stall Iran’s ability to get nukes.
I mean it’s some pretty serious overstepping… Nobody even does that to North Korea, even though they get ever closer to developing a ballistic missile, something capable of delivering a nuke (which they do have). But nobody is bombing NK… Why? Because that’s a fucking act of war!
Bombing Iranian facilities is just an egregious breach of their sovereignty. If on the other hand, some country tried that against the US, it would be a major international incident as soon as they crossed into our airspace, regardless of whether they deployed a single munition. But if they did hit a target, a completely unproportional retaliatory bombing campaign would ensue.
And the only reason Israel gets away with this dangerously aggressive behavior is that they have the military might of the US at their back. They believe they’re untouchable because they assume the US will always be an ally. And truth be told, it’s all a terrible policy for their own longevity. Some day, eventually, we’ll have a president with a conscience and a Congress that supports them, and then we’ll stop giving weapons to Israel. And on that day Israel will finally have to take responsibility for their actions, and we’ll see what their neighbors really think of them. Until then, they continue to dig themselves into a deeper hole, convinced that it’s the safest way forward.
Existing is justification. Anything to keep the illiterate masses cowed.
Let’s not make them out to be saints, either. They’re very squarely aligned witb China and Russia.
To be fair, they really don’t have any other option. They’ve already made the US a long-term enemy both culturally and politically, and, despite that, Iran still seeks to be a key geopolitical player. There aren’t many other avenues for that in the short term, which is all that usually matters for a dictatorship.
Things will be shaking up in the next few years, so let’s see whether they’ll continue to be perceived as antagonistic to the world at large as the US shifts into goblin mode and khamenei kicks the bucket, hopefully loosening oppression.
Building Nuclear Weapons solve exactly zero of their problems. Just look at North Korea as an example. I also don’t really like the prospects of another civil war in the Middle East.
Iran’s core problem in Geopolitics, lack of foreign investment despite an increasingly educated population, is due to their own underinvestment in agriculture and stifled private-sector growth due to government corruption and collusion. Most of their exports are oil and gas in most years. They recently had a multiple year recession where GDP continuously shrank.
Compare them to other middle eastern regions like Afghanistan which provides the majority of the world’s real Saffron and a hefty sum of Gold, Turkey which exports Cars, or Syria which exports Olive Oil. Iran has the climate and resources to expand and diversify in a lot of sectors but instead it continues to cut government subsidies and increase taxes, it’s just not sustainable.
I honestly don’t know enough about economics to dispute anything you’ve said. I will point out that this dispute is nearly entirely unrelated to nuclear capabilities, though. Were both Israel and Iran to both disarm their nuclear capabilities, they’d both still seek to tear into one another for a host of theology-adjacent reasons.