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Miscellanea: The War in Iran

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Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#121

Post by user_7832 »

pas wrote: post #104
beloch wrote: post #71

A few thoughts. 1. The straight of Hormuz is crazy because of the sheer amount of options Iran has to threaten shipping. It's so narrow that they can even hit ships with artillery fire . No need for missiles or drones at all! Lobbing kinetic shells may sound primitive, but anti-missile defences are designed to deal with large projectiles with minutes or hours of warning, not shell-sized projectiles that hit within se…

Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which they could have spent on water desalination for example. Yes having the deterrent is strategically beneficial, but working toward it paints a huge target on your back, while you need to pay for development, endure sanctions, etc. Any state considering such weapons development already knows this. So this war is not new information. And it's far from over yet.…

> Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which they could have spent on water desalination for example.

(Side note: That... seems like a very high figure to me?) For comparison the US spent close to $1 trillion in 2024 on the military. It could have saved lives and spent that money on healthcare. But that's not how govts work. Iran didn't get a drawstring bag with 2T in it and chose to throw it all on nukes.

Additionally, you're trying to bring a (totally valid tbf) logical argument ("Desalination is critical and an excellent place to spend money that's not going into saving lives") to a government that behaves like a cornered wild animal. It will act to save itself first, even if attacking the aggressor hurts itself too in the process.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#122

Post by aa-jv »

defrost wrote: post #34
socraticnoise wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it interesting that the country that takes the nuclear threat most seriously and tries to prevent it is also the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons?

Russia? France? The UK? India? Pakistan? Israel? China? There are many countries that have used nuclear weapons. If you're talking about the USofA they didn't try that hard at preventing Iran from enriching - they tore up a perfectly good and well functioning monitoring agreement at the start of Trump's first term.

The USA is the only nation so far which has committed mass murder with nuclear weapons. It seems to want to reserve itself that exclusive right.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#123

Post by surgical_fire »

krapp wrote: post #119
surgical_fire wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US and Israel have been pummeling them continuously, and they're not done Is this the winning condition? Killing Iranians, all else be damned?

The win condition is that the Republican Party maintains control of government after the midterms and suffers no consequences for raping children on Epstein's island.

While I always avoid making any comments on US internal politics - I constraint myself on only commenting on foreign policy since it affects things beyond US proper... That does seem to be the case, all else be damned.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#124

Post by Thiez »

avereveard wrote: post #112
sveme wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The strait was navigable until three weeks ago. There are very few conceivable paths towards reestablishing this. This is absolutely not the same effective result.

[flagged]

You realize that the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf are different places, right? Your link does not support your argument.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#125

Post by aa-jv »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #94
bluealienpie wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor the hundreds of thousands murder by Israel in a genocide, which is why his strategic analysis doesn't see the gulf states are at risk of collapse if they engage Iran on what is perceived to be on Israel's behalf.

So the US can't help stop a slaughter because they don't help stop all slaughters in the world, is that your logic?

The US doesn't stop a slaughter unless it is strategically relevant to the US' special interests - and it does promote slaughters if they are strategically relevant to the US' special interest.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#126

Post by pas »

user_7832 wrote: post #121
pas wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which they could have spent on water desalination for example. Yes having the deterrent is strategically beneficial, but working toward it paints a huge target on your back, while you need to pay for development, endure sanctions, etc. Any state considering such weapons development already knows this. So this war is not new information. And it's far from over yet.…

> Tehran "spent" 2T USD on the nuclear weapons program, which they could have spent on water desalination for example. (Side note: That... seems like a very high figure to me?) For comparison the US spent close to $1 trillion in 2024 on the military. It could have saved lives and spent that money on healthcare. But that's not how govts work. Iran didn't get a drawstring bag with 2T in it and chose to throw it all on…

> It will act to save itself first, even if attacking the aggressor hurts itself too in the process.

Of course, but as we see simply focusing on ground forces, drones, and anti-air defenses would be strictly better. (Because they wouldn't be this sanctioned, and they could even have a civilian nuclear energy program too.)

> 2T USD

It's a number coming from an Iranian trade official.

I heard it in this video: https://youtu.be/OJAcvqmWuv4?t=1084 and unfortunately there's no source cited, but I think it's this one: "As former Iranian diplomat Qasem Mohebali admitted on May 20, 2025, “uranium enrichment has cost the country close to two trillion dollars” and imposed massive sanctions yet continues largely as a matter of national pride rather than economic logic."

https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/nuclear/iaea-report-and-geo...

see also https://freeiransn.com/the-two-trillion-dollar-drain-irans-m...

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#127

Post by JeremyNT »

orwin wrote: post #117
pm90 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its what happens when you surround yourself with incompetent yes men.

It's not all. I tried as much as I could not commenting on it, but the delusions of _a lot_ of hn users on the subject, even a few whose opinion I respect, were unreal. People who are not MAGA btw. And I'm not sure most of those realise how delusional they were, even now. They will probably rewire their memory to forget what they believed 3 weeks ago, compress the time they were wrong. I initially thought the 'manufa…

Their key insight is that you don't have to manufacture consent when so many voters just love the guy in the White House and will stand by him no matter what.

Why waste time convincing anybody of anything, when support for the war will just converge on the president's approval rating anyway?

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#128

Post by solatic »

Author seems to not care about the prospect of the Iranian regime developing nuclear weapons, putting those weapons into the hands of its terrorist proxies, and sitting back while those proxies turn Western Europe and Palestine into radioactive wastelands (yes, Palestine, because it is not possible to restrict the fallout to just Tel Aviv, and the regime has shown itself to be far more anti-Israel than pro-Palestinian, the prospect of Palestine being a radioactive wasteland for a century is an acceptable price for destroying Israel). The US and the rest of the West should, apparently, just accept this as inevitable historical destiny, because $5/gallon gasoline or putting boots on the ground are apparently so utterly reprehensible.

Author's analysis, as critical as he is of American presidents breaking their promises, is completely absent of analysis of what would happen if American presidents broke their promises to never allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Never mind that JCPOA had a sunset clause that would allow Iran to resume nuclear enrichment to weapons-grade after the sunset clause.

The author's analysis pretty blatantly exposes reality: the West is losing because it does not have the political stomach to win. Instead of deciding that maybe society should try to develop that political stomach, instead of paying attention to a Trump who got elected in large part on mantras about how America was losing and it needed to start winning, no, Author says this was all a horrible idea and implicitly we should just sit back while our enemies progress along the road of putting nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.

Re: Miscellanea: The War in Iran

#130

Post by orwin »

fruit2020 wrote: post #56
bluealienpie wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was never about nuclear weapons, Netanyahu has been saying Iran was one week away for over 30 years. Europe goes along as an excuse to support politically unpopular war to maintain US support for Ukraine.

What would you expect Europe to do? It’s not like they openly support this war. The Iranian diaspora supports it, there is the secularism element, but the US doesn’t care about the Iranian people anyway

The diaspora somewhat supported it for a week. Then a desalination plant was hit, and I guarantee the support grew way, way weaker. Now we're 3 weeks in, and the only Iranian I keep contact with is extremely sad that the outcome is this bad. I won't tell him 'i told you so', because unlike people on HN who argue for the operation, he doesn't deserve it, but to the 'regime change' supporters: I told you so.
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