Cheap Iranian drone downed $25M US Army helicopter–maybe by chance

You're conflating the old 'Iran is N months from a bomb' predictions (which you have good reason to be skeptical of) with documented IAEA stockpiles. Iran had 440.9 kg of 60% highly-enriched U on June 13, 2025 per the final IAEA report, and that is new material, not decades-old, since Iran didn't produce any 60% until April 2021. Iran had no 60% material prior to 2021.

60% enriched material is very highly enriched, it's approximately ~98-99% of the way to weapons grade, in terms of total work required.

You mean responding to your point about ICBMs that was obviously wrong?

If I were to provide a reasonable argument for you it would be that Iran would have received their money and refused additional diplomatic relations and negotiations and then when the prohibitions expired continued to work on a nuclear bomb. The goalpost was already moved long ago as they moved on to missiles after enrichment was stopped. If it had included missiles they would move on to something else.

But we'll never know because Trump sabotaged the agreement and torched any potential future diplomatic solution, engineering the situation where war seems reasonable to people like you. And its not like Iran wouldn't want to continue selling their oil or continue trading globally.

I keep "circling back" to the money as you keep spouting nonsense about it. Is your argument really that because the US didn't steal their money they "paid" it to Iran? Or would you like to explain yourself? Or are you just misunderstanding what the word paid means?

Its irrelevant that US intelligence agencies said they were complying with JCPOA that could have been extended? Who should we listen to, Netanyahu? Who has been screeching about Iran having a nuke by next week for 4 decades.

> Trump is politically savvy enough to not desire this option.

Every single preceding president before him is "politically savvy" enough to not desire it. Trump is unique in that he is actively considering it, when Iran does not legitimately threaten the United States with their nuclear weapons or ballistic missile program. Regardless of how you feel, the allegations of this being a proxy war are hard to write off.

> The social unrest strategy was never implemented.

It was certainly implemented at least once, the Mossad admit to abetting the protests in Tehran. The effectiveness of this strategy is called into question now that many of those high-profile dissidents are jailed or dead. And we know for a fact that the Kurds want Trump to pound sand, so they're not some sort of ace-up-the-sleeve as many expected.

> The marines can't land at Bandar Abbas

That wasn't the point I'm making. How will the US amass troops for any invasion without triggering flight risk for the HEU?

> Why would Iran voluntarily give up its Uranium stockpiles to Russia?

Because they've already done it once before? https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/world/middleeast/iran-han...

> it is not possible to build a nuclear weapon without a significant amount of accompanying infrastructure

Like the tens-of-thousands of centrifuges that Iran manufactures domestically? I don't think the US can stop them from building those without some form of diplomatic understanding. They can tear up their underground facilities, but those can also be rebuilt around shorter cascade loops and simpler, weapons-oriented enrichment.

> doing so would set back the Iranian nuclear program by ten to twenty years

I do not see any citation or explanation for this. It might set back parts of their civilian program, but it wouldn't prevent them from developing their HEU into a dirty-bomb style of weapon.

> While in the country, the US would also dismantle the Iranian missile stockpile

> it never addressed the Iranian missile problem

That's Israel's issue. Iran has not targeted the continental United States once, nor do they have any apparent intention to. Iran has domestic solid fuel production, metallurgists and steel presses that all have to be removed, which is a huge undertaking that doesn't prevent them from making more. Simple MLRS style rocket artillery can be made out of scrap, in an invasion scenario it wouldn't prevent Iran from building and deploying new missiles.

It's very easy for the United States to document and enforce a diplomatic solution to Iran's missile attacks, if the goal is stopping them. The JCPOA did not include missiles because it's a separate issue altogether - this would have been an opportunity for Trump to find a politically savvy solution to this, but now we're creeping towards a forever war.

I said nothing about gas bills. You should not punish all the children in a murderer's city because the murderer doing bad things means you're allowed to do bad things.

That's not how ethics works. We give the state the ability to mete out punishment in cases where that punishment or the threat of that punishment helps the citizens' safety. Administering collective punishment does the opposite.

Where are you finding ML-grade GPUs that you can actually use to train a modern model for *$350*!? Dude, let me know so I can find some.