Exactly who is the Dragon here? You think Israel’s bloodlust is done with Iran? They want much more Territory across the Middle East. They are occupying parts of Cypress right now, And have craving for parts of Egypt and more.

>> A bunch of countries got them, then decided that no one else is allowed them.

you're both correct.

Also note the Iranian monarchy signed the NPT in 1970, while the Iranian Revolution was in 1979. When your national origin story is built on the illegitimacy of the previous government, why would you consider yourself to be constrained by the actions of your illegitimate parents?

When the west has had such overthrows, we've tended to declare the acts of the previous administration null-and-void https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_9_August_1944

Not saying the current Iranian government is good, just acknowledging that legitimacy is determined by the victors, and the current regime has been victorious over the previous, just as last night's B2's were victorious against the air defenses. Might makes right, morality is increasingly a propaganda story, and history really is written by the victors.

Russia attacked ukraine because they didn't. Iran got attacked because it didn't. North korea isnt attacked because they have. That's the moral of the story.

It's "make nukes first, ask questions later"

Invasion of Afghanistan only happened after diplomatic efforts to get the Taliban to surrender Bin Laden. Iraq invasion was pushed through UN. Likewise, the Balkan war in 1990s was UN-sanctioned.

This? I mean, never mind the question of nukes, I don't think anyone declared war. Iran is a buffet of pick-your-own-target, in the middle of a negotiation that was supposed to end the nuclear program peacefully. I'm not saying it because I like Iran (I don't) but because it sets the tone where countries just do what they want, if they can get away with it. It's a step back from a world, where at least in theory we were supposed to stay within the frameworks of principle-based laws.

You might argue that this was always a façade only, and the powerful did whatever they wanted, bending the law around it. Maybe. But I'd like to think it set a limit to how far they can bend it. Now? I'm not so sure.

If a mafia boss defines anything he gets away with as legal, that's not aligned with what we commonly think of as legal justice and thus a pointless distinction.

It's not just a Trump thing.

[0] https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2019/04/five-...

With these strikes, it seems more like Israel has ample intelligence on the US government than it has on the Middle East, since even DNI concurred that there was no proof of WMDs.

It was ginned up BS that led to the worst foreign policy blunder in 100 years, directly creating ISIS, deaths of 500k Iraqis and kicking off the migrant crisis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...

The Iranian regime is very centralized and with Israel and the USA having air superiority and having penetrated it completely from an intelligence perspective (see Israel's perfect knowledge of the whereabouts of the previous chief of staff and the newly appointed chief of staff) it's going to be very hard for it to survive if a decision is made to remove it. There are a handful of key people that once gone there is not going to be any continuity.

The current regime is allowed to continue because of fear of chaos if it is removed, not because there isn't a capability to remove it.

Regardless, a sovereign country was bombed tonight just because they can. This, IMHO, can have very bad outcomes for the peace worldwide since it means that anybody who can bomb someone can just go ahead and do it. No more international order.

What's next then? Bomb Brussels because EU doesn't buy chicken from USA? This stuff isn't OK.

The regime change in Iran can be a silver lining if it changes with something more cooperative. But yes, I agree that this is unlikely.

The key element is where the will of the people points - Milosevic was already unpopular and the bombing further united the people against him.

The few Iranians I know are against the regime, but I don't know how the wider picture looks.

Perhaps forcing regime changes on other countries shouldn't be a quick decision.

Just recently Trump tried to troll the Germany’s leader for it and only got a “Thank you for defeating us”.

The truth is that Iran’s regime is indeed a very shitty one and a lot of people have grievances with it but the problem is, this is about Israel and they are not any better and didn’t stand at a higher moral ground with their illegal occupation and actions that many consider genocidal.

It is also completely unnecessary. There are two options. Either the current regime makes a "deal" or it's going to get crippled to the point of irrelevance or removed.

Iran and Iraq are very different. Different culture, people and history. It's also worth remembering Iran is not homogeneous, only 61% of the population are Persians. There are Azeri, there are Kurds and various other ethnic/region minorities.

Iran is extremely vulnerable. It has internal issues, constantly oppressing/suppressing its people. Its economy is in terrible shape. Most of its economic engine can be easily taken out (its main oil terminals). The bulk of its military can be destroyed from the air, it has little defensive or offensive capability. They know it.

You think we need to occupy them? This isn't Iraq.

Yes, we stopped them. How many nuclear weapons does Iran possess today? 0? Despite having a vast, VAST head start on North Korea - like decades worth of experience and capabilities. The ONLY reason they don't have one today is the diplomacy that convinced them to not move forward faster.

>How many countries don’t have nukes that aren’t being invaded. Canada, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica etc.

I think my favorite part is when the first country on your list is one who has been threatened repeatedly by the current US administration.

What exactly do you think Canada is going to do should Trump decide to follow-through on his threats of making them the 51st state? Make some strongly worded notices of condemnation with the UN while Ottawa is being razed?

Costa Rica has nothing anybody wants. If the US tomorrow declared they are no longer protecting Japan, they would likley find themselves invaded by Japan before the end of the year. The only reason Italy is safe is because they're part of the EU, and the EU has... you guessed it... access to nuclear weapons.

The nuclear physicists got the glory for the Manhattan Project, but the enrichment was the vast majority of the time and cost[1]. Similar ratios apply today. There is zero question that Iran's government is spending a significant fraction of its GDP on enrichment activity that would be economically absurd except as a step towards nuclear weapons--they acknowledge it proudly!

That doesn't mean these strikes were necessarily a good idea. There's no question that Iran was working actively towards a bomb though, even if "building a weapon" gets redefined narrowly to exclude almost all the actual effort.

1. https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/05/17/the-price-of-the-...

Presumably if Saddam had built a large reinforced concrete bunker deep in the side of a mountain hours from the nearest city, that might be a place fairly high on your checklist?

My project managers often ask how long a project would take. I might say something like "two weeks after we're approved to start".

The PMs will wait a few months, approve the project, and then look flabbergasted when it is not instantaneously completed! "But you had all this time! Months ago you said it would take weeks!"

But what does this generic knowledge have to do with anything, when the military action is already decided for geo-political reasons? The only decision to make is what pretext to use.

In a way, the 'iraq wmd' justification has proven it's value as a pretext - so why not tweak it and use it again?

Edit: If you mean "Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)" [1], that report explicitly mentions up to 60% which is not weapons grade.

[0]: https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-iran-nuclear-weapon-2... [1]: https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-24.pd...

Do you have a citation for this?

Has the Iranian government ever explained why they are enriching uranium?

No the US was claiming: "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so." in it's 2025 Threat Assessment. The reports believes they were not working on them and Khamenei has the final authority to restart the program which he had not done. However, they believe there was growing pressured to do so.

Trump just gave the guy reason to green light a weapons project he had so far not wanted.

[pdf] https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-202...

Do you like it when people quote you out of context? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44342393

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_Iran

So apparently it's humourous to kill.

It's not like for like, but if you have a rabid population with low education being told to say stuff like this, they will, just because of social pressure and brainwashing.

Related, example of that brainwashing at scale:

- Killing people bad, but patriotic as a soldier.

- Killing people fine on TV, procreational entertainment bad.

- People told what to wear bad, but telling people they must be clothed, good.

- Religion says no killing, or protect those not of the same religion. People still kill, seen as no conflict of interest at all.

- Hording wealth seen as successful, yet society and the world has people suffering and illegal immigration as a consequence of not having it.

- People who don't work are grifters, but most people secretly want to quit their job and not work. Told to see the non workers as people sponging off society.

- Forced to work until your health fails, seen as acceptable.

Point being, no moral high ground because we're all brainwashed.

It's unsurprising but very, very depressing.

The first bunker-buster :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_bomb

"According to an anecdote, the idea arose after a group of Royal Navy officers saw a similar, but fictional, bomb depicted in the 1943 Walt Disney animated propaganda film Victory Through Air Power,[Note 10] and the name Disney was consequently given to the weapon."

If they built the facility out of 30,000psi concrete, they'd be lucky to pen 4 meters with a direct hit, nevermind the 80m of limestone above it.

> Iran isn't actually a nation of pure evil, they are looking out for their own interests

Exactly. I do my best to consider them an "adversary", not an "enemy" for just that reason.

> The risk is when they are backed into a corner where using a nuclear weapon increasingly makes sense.

I'd argue there are two risks: one is that this puts Iran in a position where, if the regime survives, they will feel (and rightfully so) that the only way to secure their position is to possess them.

It also makes the same statement to other countries in similar positions.

I don't think we have a better option, sadly, but it is a consequence of this action.

Also, I don't think this makes a rational case for use. For possession, yes. For threatening to use them under certain conditions, yes - but the only rational use case for deploying nuclear weapons is if your opponent has already done the same. This became the case when the thermonuclear bomb was invented.

I don’t wish for more nuclear weapons, but to date, the states with them, usually (a nice apply word) don’t use them.

The facility is beneath 80m of limestone which in the Qom formation is roughly equivalent to about 5000psi concrete.

Beneath the limestone, sits the facility itself which is encased in high performance concrete. So these bombs need to pen 80m of 5000psi material and then a unknown depth of high performance concrete.

The land, roads, ingress points, elevators, security, everything around here is now FUBAR. Okay so you didn't "destroy the bunker", but how many years until it's functional again?

In 2025, the average American conservative is displaying a level of racism and lack of empathy which needs to be studied by smarter societies. Is there still lead in the pipes of Southern and Midwest states? What the hell is going on? This level of brainrot cannot be normal.

A typical MAGA conservative sports an education which is likely outclassed by a random possum crossing the street at night. This is amplified by anger control that rivals rabid honey badgers.

The entire Trump administration is a deep embarrassment for anyone who really cares about freedom, democracy, constitution and EMPATHY. Everyone in MAGA is an isolationist egomaniac, it is completely and utterly insane.

"The thing that prevented them from achieving a nuclear weapon didn't also prevent them from funding x y z other far less problematic things that can be far more easily handled through conventional diplomacy and military action"

Seriously?

But Iran also contains reformers, and the deal was a bet that if you do good diplomacy you can reduce the power and influence of the shit-stirrers.

It does seem like we're nearing the limit of what can be done with aircraft though. The challenge of hitting the ground much harder seems to be greater than just digging your facility a little deeper (that said, I've nevler dug a hole that deep either so perhaps I'm wrong about that also).

If the US had lost a B2 during the operation, then sure, that would be a major loss. But as far as I can tell we did not.

[1] https://iranwire.com/en/politics/136431-how-the-snapback-mec...

What propaganda ? I’ve seen the footage of Iran firing flak cannons somewhere in the direction of f35s. Not a single Israeli plane has been lost…where is the lie ?

Iran has a population of 92mil and an economy vastly stronger than iraq 2003* why assume they want the current leadership to remain in charge? Why assume they wanted nukes ?

You mention China grinding down its enemy ? What about the fact the air force is actually performing real missions being and gaining real experience ? Is a few bunker busters going to grind down the USAF ?

The Iranian Jews had to immigrate via another countries, I guess via Europe. Also boys had first to serve in the army to earn right to travel outside Iranian borders

It has now become even more obvious to them that the most powerful country on earth is willing to attack them in order to control them and their region. Their calculus just went from “probably screwed if we don’t have nukes” to “definitely screwed if we don’t have nukes”. They’ll find a way now, they can always dig deeper.

The gender ratio is similar in other Middle Eastern countries. Once women in the Islamic world get the legal right to educate themselves, they tend to make use of it much more than men do. It is a pathway towards personal independence.

How would they enforce that? It is underground, they can't exactly monitor what is down there with satellite photos. There'd need to be something like a blanket ban on underground mining across the whole of Iran and probably a country-wide occupation to enforce the ban. Otherwise it seems quite difficult to identify where the hypothetical centrifuges are.

EDIT: I kind of wish you had broken your "commenters below" piece into separate replies, but I assume this one was directed at me:

> - I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran. The no-fly is necessary, and Israel just doesn't have enough resources. The further scenario that i see is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44343063

I didn't even consider a no-fly zone, and perhaps. I mean at this point, the current Iranian regime is in the most precarious situation it has ever been in whether they go for the kill against Ali Khamenei or just keep picking out the people below him and the IRGC's ability to fight. But if we do this, then we, and I guess I mean we now that we've actually bombed them, then we're committing to more than just taking out their nuclear capabilities, but we're committing to seeing a full regime change come to fruition.

To be blunt, given our most recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan, I'm still very much of the opinion that the least amount of American involvement, the better. If our bombs help curtail Iran's nuclear weapon R&D and we didn't lose a single B-2 in the process, then great, we've done some good for the world[1], but our track record on seeing regime changes through to the end has been less than fabulous.

[1] Still waiting to see how successful the mission was towards this goal by the way.

Well given that we've been trying to stop that for many years, I doubt its within the US's gift to change that.

Also what has iran got to loose now? like its already being bombed to shit. It's lost a generation to the iran/iraq war, why not another one where they take the USA, israel and saudis with them?

> I do think that US may get involved in enforcement of no-fly zone over Iran.

that sounds like a forever war. Moreover trump doesn't have the attention span to deploy a nofly zone for any length of time.

also, have you see the size of iran?

> Israel has had very good intelligence from Iran, so i'm pretty sure that general parameters like the depth were well known to them

yup, but the performance of munitions is unknown. Moreover they are not actually going to tell anyone the real results of the strike. Can you imagine generals telling Hegseth that his plan idea has failed because the clearly articulated unknowns came to pass. let alone trump?

This is tremendously difficult. There is nothing unclassified to suggest we can do this. (There is also no evidence it didn’t occur. Just clarifying the borders of the fog of war here.)

You seem to believe they really have accurate information about these installations. I doubt it.

A dirty bomb is basically Hollywood nonsense, and wouldn't use uranium to begin with because it isn't very radioactive.

The premise is that you put radioactive materials into a conventional explosive to spread it around. But spreading a kilogram of something over a small area is boring because you can fully vaporize a small area using conventional explosives, spreading a kilogram of something over a large area is useless because you'd be diluting it so much it wouldn't matter, and spreading several tons of something over a large area is back to "you could do more damage by just using several tons of far cheaper conventional explosives".

Far more concerning is the possibility that they give it away to someone else. Enrichment is nonlinear, going from 60% to the 90% needed for weapons is a fairly trivial amount of work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb for others who haven't heard the term

Even if it just damages the centrifuges, as far as I see it, it would just delay their enrichment process, severely less than total destruction of their underground base.

Centrifuges. They got them via the A. Q. Khan network. We learned about if circa 2005 from Qaddaffi who gave up his to secure peace and his safety (and it didn't turn out well for him because Obama did not respect the gentleman's deal Qaddaffi had with Bush).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-57A/B_MOP

Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camouflet

> A camouflet, in military science, is an artificial cavern created by an explosion; if the resulting structure is open to the surface it is called a crater.[1]

This isn't a just cause and it's not even a war. It's state sanctioned terror. I don't know it has ism in it.

Australian legal opinion says it's unlikely a credible defence in international law exists for this attack. It may redefine the norms for (un)lawful acts by the state, other states, weak and powerful will undoubtedly reflect on this.

It's also being claimed a success. Words like "obliterated" used. Time tends to tell a story there. I think it's a little too soon to say how successful these strikes were, tactically or strategically.

My expectation is that it was 3 rounds of 2 MOPs, hedging bets and potentially cresting a larger hole than drilling a hole one bomb at a time.

Well, it's a good thing Trump completely neutralized retaliatory action against US troops. /s

You imply here that those countries woes are primarily due to Israel. They are not.

Syria was embroiled and toppled by Islamic Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham backed by Turkey. Libya was due to civil war. Several of these conflicts were funded by Iran as well.

You can go down the list. Please study at least some basics on the region.

> So thinking Iran will simply nuke Israel because it has that capability is silly - it would mean mutual destruction.

One would hope, but if Allah is protecting them why would they need to fear retaliation? Theocracies can be unpredictable. Also they could provide dirty bombs to their proxies in the region.

https://www.bu.edu/history/files/2015/04/Khalaji-Apocalyptic...

Mutual destruction makes sense when you're a death cult and the enemy is evil. Iran nuking Israel knowing full well they will get nuked back IS rational if your belief is that Allah will reward you for it in the afterlife and they do sincerly believe that.

You should read books published by reformed Islamists. Radical by Maajid Nawaz is a good one.

They profess to believe (and they are sincere) that they will be rewarded for dying killing Israelis. There's a reason that if I tell you a story about a suicide bomber blowing up a public square in political protest you do not have to wonder what religion they are. It's not because all Muslims are insane, they aren't, it's because some of them have beliefs that make that action rational.

(For example, see how Hamas will not surrender even when offered free passage out of Gaza. They'd rather Israel grind their way through the Palestinian population bomb by bomb because they think every Palestinian killed goes to heaven. If they were rational as we understand the world, they'd realize their plight is hopeless and the only thing they ensure by staying is civillian deaths.)

100%. The Iranian regime is not stupid. The "existential threat" bs being peddled by a certain government is simply to give cover to illegal attacks on a sovereign nation. This is "WMDs in Iraq" all over again.

In Iran's case this is further compounded by their consistent anti Israeli PR and anti-Israeli militias funding.

Who has "legal" WMDs - the P5? Israel is a non-signatory to NPT, meaning their WMDs are as legal as anyone else's.

By what means are the israeli nukes (I assume thats whats meant by WMDs?) illegal? They didn't sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and I don't think spying and stealing is illegal between countries under international law.

is it crazy, sure. is it crazy story to say,no. it seems real.

some religious lunatics would deem that worthy

why would not iran gov sacrifice few million of its people to kill whole israel?

Germany in that case will then briefly technically have nukes, but no ability to knowledge of how to launch or control them. Had Ukraine tried to hold onto those nukes and/or figure out how to launch them they would likely have been invaded by just about every country in the world, including the US, so they gave them up for a few bucks and some kind words.

And I strongly disagree about Iran. Pakistan is also an Islamic country (with its proper name being the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) and a nuclear power, and they haven't just decided to go nuke India who they have abysmal relations with. Religion does provide a different level of comfort with death (and Iran has a longgggggg history of enduring pain to expel invaders on top), but it does not just turn people into death cult members.

There's some irony in that if Iran had nuclear weapons their relations with Israel would likely have been much better. Because Israel wouldn't have been constantly attacking, assassinating, and otherwise doing everything they could to undermine the country. It's similar to how if North Korea didn't have nukes then South Korea, largely as a proxy of the US, would likely have been actively attacking them.

Why not? Smart people can make decisions that look weird from the outside.

The foreign policy of the US been looking weird for decades to most outside parties, yet I'm sure there are smart people involved in it on a daily basis. But even with smart people involved, the US been invading countries based on false premises more than once, not sure why it would need to be different for Iran or any other country.

And yet Iranian proxies have repeatedly challenged these powers across the Middle East, in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Sinai, etc. And a lot of Iran's actions have broad support in many other Middle Eastern countries, including strong US allies, those where there are no natural ethnic, religious or linguistic ties to Iran, and where there is prosperity based on peace and the American world order.

Whatever else the Iranian govt are, they are not foreign policy under-hitters or flawed tacticians blinded by dogmatism.

We will just forget that von Neumann advocated for nuclear first strike based on game theory.

Iran is a huge country and USA and Israel has been pointing their finger on this exakt spot for weeks.

Either they dug further down or they just transported things away.

Leaving it all there just seems like a really weird thing to do.

I don't know if you noticed, but what you are arguing for is in fact for mindlessly accepting unverified claims and extrapolate them to an optimal outcome. This is the opposite of critical thinking, and goes well beyond wishful thinking.

Meanwhile, if you pay attention to OP's point, you'll understand that Iran's nuclear sites have been continuously designed and developed for decades, while subjected to an almost evolutionary pressure, to continue operations even after withstanding direct attacks in scenarios matching exactly Trump's attacks.

In the very least, you must assess the effect of those strikes before making any sort of claim.

Another factor which it seems you somehow missed was the fact that Russia, another nuclear-capable totalitarian regime, is nowadays heavily dependent on Iran to conduct it's imperialist agenda. If Russia was negotiating handing over nuclear capabilities to North Korea in exchange for supporting it's war effort, do you believe Russia now has no interest to speed up Iran's nuclear weapons programmes?

This would also be a very convenient way to break the current impasse: Trump can claim victory and brag about US weapons, Iranians can continue their program virtually unscathed, perhaps after bombing some minor evacuated US base for show.

After the dust settles, Iran can withdraw fron NNPT and the next day have Pakistan ship them a bomb. Peace (via MAD) achieved! Maybe we should even give Donald his Nobel prize for that.

Such advanced people, the Chinese are.

CEP with GPS for our most accurate glide bombs is 5 meters. But GPS jamming is cheap and easy and the best precision we get in that case is 30 meters CEP.

GPU-57 gets its power from gravity. Reaching that 60 meter maximum penetration requires dropping the bomb from maximum elevation, but without GPS, that further increases the CEP.

With just 6 bombs, it seems unlikely that they could reliably penetrate. Actual penetration would likely require nuclear penetrators, but those also break the nuclear prohibition and open Pandora's box in places like Ukraine.

A great example of the problem is Yemen. We tried to get the Houthi to stop by dropping bunker busters on their tunnel systems and completely failed. We were forced to reach a ceasefire agreement (one that likely went up in smoke last night).

- whose Basic Law 2018 declared it a Jewish supremacist state

- where 50% of the population doesn't have the right to vote, land ownership, or travel on the same roads

- and faces 99% conviction rates in military, not civil, courts

- where parties can be banned directly by government decision if it arbitrarily deems them to be anti-Jewish

  The Land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish People, in which the State of Israel was established.
  (b) The State of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish People in which it realizes its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.
  (c) The realization of the right to national self- determination in the State of Israel is exclusive to the Jewish People.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaization_of_the_Galilee

Probably pretty badly now after squandering decades on building tunnels, hiding weapons and generally being a backwards fundamentalist cultish death camp. It's a mini Iran, and just as hateful. There's a reasom there's a massive security wall along the Egyptian border. They know what's up.

> And the US is full of Christo-fascists who believe they have a religious duty to "defend" Israel by any means necessary.

How do you even begin to equivocate this? One wants to destroy a country, one wants to protect it from destruction.

> How do you think Palestinians sleep at night? With the threat of Israel, funded by the largest military in the world, looming over them every night?

Israel has never actually wanted to end the lives of every Palestinian - and they've had ample capacity to do. The reverse can't be said to be true. If there's a button that the Iraqi or Palestinian leadership that can press that would wipe out the state of Israel and everyone in it, do you think that they won't press it as fast as they can?

What? Israel is 2000 Kms away from Iran, and would want nothing do to with them if not for Iran's "Death to Israel" slogan and policy...

> Do they?

The IAEA declared Iran in breach of its non-proliferation obligations, hardly a "bullshit made-up excuse"

Israel is set to benefit enormously from an economically functional Iran, with sanctions lifted, and a sane, non-fanatical, non-oppressive government. Iran used to be a pretty cool and developed country in 1960s, and could be now.

(Edit: typo)

Circumstantial evidence seems to be that Iran indeed was enriching Uranium beyond what was necessary for electricity. Why would they build enrichment facility deep underground? It is not that Iran is having energy crisis. The claim that Iran is thinking of green energy and climate change effects is a bit weak.

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/496386/Pahlavi-and-Israel-t...

so what exact goverment your arr referring?

Under the Ottoman Empire it was (relatively) scarcely populated and a mix of Jews, Christians and Muslims, plus some religious minorities.

Before the Ottomans and various Islamic conquests it was almost entirely Christian/Roman (as was the whole Middle East). Before that Jewish.

And keep in mind Zionism started during the Ottoman era, with Jews simply immigrating there.

Also let's not forget that the partition plan for Palestine was proposed by the UN which you reference.

Land is land. It should never, never be beholden to any one religion.

And yet, the previous government of Iran had friendly relations with Israel, as do some other Arab and Muslim countries.

The US also has friendly relations with countries with whom it disagrees vehemently, and that do (IMO) far worse things than Israel does.

I find the repeated suggestion that those are Muslim lands because Israel is a new territory to be strange -- it can't be a Quranic position. It doesn't appear consistent with history either.

So what do you want Israel to do, disappear? Or negotiate, but with whom? The only power there is hamas which is non-negotiable. I really interested in seeing any realistic solution to the problem, however far fetched it is.

First a colony is one controlled by a foreign nation. Next the population of Israel is, or was, about half Sephardim. Meaning Jews from the Middle East, many of whom were unwilling expelled from Muslim countries.

Secondly Arab Muslim Palestinians could also be considered colonizers if ones that’d been there many generations.

The Israel and Palestine conflict in many aspects is more similar to between Turkey and Greece after WWI. In 1923 they “swapped populations” due to the aftermaths of Greeces independence from the Turkish Ottaman Empire and the following wars. Populations which had lived together segregated after the wars and were expelled on both sides in roughly equal numbers.

It was similar after the 1948 war with about 850,000 Middle Eastern Jews and 750,000 Palestinians being displaced.

Except Palestinians were never integrated into Egypt or Jordan. Partly by their own choice and partly by that of the Arab countries. The stated goal was that they’d destroy the new state of Israel and return.

Jews were often well treated and flourished in the earlier Islamic caliphates.

But with the formation of a Jewish Israel the conflict. Generally in Islamic belief there must be an Islamic caliphate with Sharia Law. Jerusalem is considered one of the holy sites of Islam and therefore belongs to that caliphate.

That’s contrasted with Judaism and Israel being the land promised to the Jews. Though modern Israel was largely founded by secular Jews so it’s a bit more complicated on that front.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkUVIj3KWY

The trouble with a regime like Iran is that they are a death cult. The price the put on human life (their own people as much as anyone else) is low, and they're all for martyrdom. With Iran, you cannot assume it's a just a deterrent in a cold war. You have to assume an increased likelihood that they will actually use them.

Nukes are good as a deterrent, not good as a weapon.

There's no natural law setting the mullahs against the existence of Israel, as I said they think and vocally declaim publicly that it is divine law. Don't believe me, just look up what they say.

I do think the way this is being handled is a travesty though. There was a functioning agreement with international monitoring in place in 2016 and Trump tore it up. Since then Iran has increased their enrichment capacity, and their stockpile of enriched material by 22 time above what they committed to in that agreement. Canceling that deal was a foolish blunder that had lead us to this.

Ultimately the only path to long term peace has to be the fall of theocratic rule in Iran, but that's a mater for the Iranian people. It's quite possible the nuclear question could have been managed, but just as with NAFTA Trump saw personal political advantage is scrapping an old deal in order to rebrand it as his better deal, but dropped the ball because he doesn't understand the geopolitics, and here we are.

Secular discussion about conflict in the Middle East frequently discounts the possibility that self-professed religious fundamentalists are in fact religious fundamentalists. A lot of Israeli settlers really do believe that they are fulfilling a sacred duty. A lot of Palestinians really do believe that becoming a martyr for al-Aqsa guarantees them an eternity in paradise. A lot of American Evangelicals really do believe that conflict in the Middle East will bring about the day of judgement.

I might believe that we live in a godless and meaningless universe in which death is final, but that puts me in a very small minority. Most people -throughout history and across the world - frequently act in ways that are totally irrational from a secular perspective, but are perfectly logical within a framework of faith.

  > To suggest Iran would do it anyway is equivalent to saying that they're completely, crazy, fanatical, genocidal and stupid

There is nothing racist or dehumanising about acknowledging cultures different from your own. In fact, I would say that assuming everybody adheres to your cultural values is the racist position.

I'm guessing from the words and actions of Iranian leaders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

Even by your own logic, do you believe that having a country threaten your existence is not reason enough to want them destroyed?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_Israel_in_Irani...

For one, Balfour's illegal concession of Palestine to the Israelis had the clear strategic purpose of keeping pan-Arabism at bay. The ensuing establishment of Israel - by the UNSCOP, in contravention of international law - had the side effect of turbocharging settler colonialist violence (1948 and ongoing) and expansionism (e.g. 1967 annexations).

That was the background to the 1953 CIA coup, and the eventual Islamic revolution in 1979. Sure, it's not the liberal democratic outcome Iranians would've liked, but it reclaimed sovereignty lost, and they are aware of the historic role of Israel and their strategic and moral position in relation to it, regardless of their regime.

Bottom line, if we look closely at who really is threatening whom, the reactions of the Iranians are probably quite understandable

And then twenty years from now everyone will say they were always against it.

And if anything, the last 20 years taught us that revolutions imposed from the outside never work

But can you define what "this moment" is that they have been waiting for?

I don't think "this moment" helps them along the way. It is rather a reason for more internal repression.

regime change has never worked, not with actual boots on the ground, let alone targeted air strikes.