53 minutes ago, brabus said:

@Pooter Yes many countries have nukes, but none of those countries are the #1 purveyor of terror. None of them have been complicit in the deaths of thousands of Americans, not to mention thousands more of other westerners. Civilian nuclear power, sure, but weapons are a hard no. Iran can easily solve this - build nuclear power facilities above ground and allow for a limited number of no-notice inspections (say, max of 2 per year).

Well under the JCPOA we had a regular inspection regimen, Iranian enrichment limited to ~3%, and up until Trump tossed it in 2018, the IAEA said Iran was operating within the bounds of the agreement. Part of my frustration with this war (and broader Iran strategy in general) is we keep blowing up the status quo, getting into a much worse situation, and then going “gee it sure would be nice to get back to the status quo we just had.”

But the whole reason I brought up the civilian program in Iran is because Israel says it’s a no go for them. This is a big problem for two reasons.

1) it’s pretty unsat that Israel has secret nukes, didn’t sign the NPT, and now is trying to dictate the terms of another country’s nuclear program. We wouldn’t tolerate that behavior from literally anyone else.

2) the bigger problem is the “no enrichment” Israel wants so badly is a total poison pill for Iran as far as making a deal. So yet again, we have our intransigent welfare baby country dictating the terms of the war we’re fighting on their behalf. Not great. And It’s becoming increasingly evident Trump (to his credit) wants to find a way out of this thing while Israel seems to want anything but. Bibi knows he absolutely has the ability to stir the pot whenever he wants to bait an Iranian response, and then by default we’re dragged back into hostilities.

4 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

That's pretty much everything we need to know about your position. This is exactly the Obama/Mandami/Sanders position.

Call it power-guilt or whatever, but it takes an absolutely tortured view of morality, statecraft, and human nature to find the Iranian regime (both the old Mullah-led regime and the current IRGC-led regime) somehow deserving of nukes because of the most unintelligent interpretation of US and Israeli histories.

It's been fascinating to watch conspiracy-susceptible (and attention whoring) conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens fall into this rabbit hole and become indistinguishable from the progressive politicians they became famous by attacking.

No one said they’re deserving of nukes. I just don’t think Israel has the right to lecture anyone about nukes, and by extension we don’t either because we’re BFFs with a state that has them in secret and won’t sign the non-proliferation treaty.

That’s not a tortured view of morality. That’s an objective standard. The standard is: nuclear proliferation is bad no matter if it’s Israel or Iran who does it.

Maybe it’s naive of me but I try to look for objective standards like this to define my political stances. Sometimes it requires zooming out and looking at our actions from an international frame of reference. And yes, sometimes that does lead to some pretty uncomfy conclusions. Like: not every conflict is as simple as good vs evil, and sometimes we might not even be the good guys.

And none of that is to say I hate my country or I’m rooting for failure or I think we’re always in the wrong. I just want us to do things that aren’t insanely dumb, and if we can sometimes throw in the added benefit of it not being morally backwards or hypocritical, that would be cool too.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Pooter

27 minutes ago, Pooter said:

2) the bigger problem is the “no enrichment” Israel wants so badly is a total poison pill for Iran as far as making a deal. So yet again, we have our intransigent welfare baby country dictating the terms of the war we’re fighting on their behalf. Not great. And It’s becoming increasingly evident Trump (to his credit) wants to find a way out of this thing while Israel seems to want anything but. Bibi knows he absolutely has the ability to stir the pot whenever he wants to bait an Iranian response, and then by default we’re dragged back into hostilities.

If the United States commits to supplying cheap uranium fuel for any civilian nuclear power program, Iran has no leg to stand on. Funnily enough, we've done exactly that and Iran refused.

I am baffled by people who twist themselves into pretzels pretending like Iran is interested in anything but nuclear weaponry. That's what they want, and that is why they refuse any compromise.

28 minutes ago, Pooter said:

No one said they’re deserving of nukes. I just don’t think Israel has the right to lecture anyone about nukes, and by extension we don’t either because we’re BFFs with a state that has them in secret and won’t sign the non-proliferation treaty.

That’s not a tortured view of morality. That’s an objective standard. The standard is: nuclear proliferation is bad no matter if it’s Israel or Iran who does it.

I have not advocated for that standard at all. You will not find a sentence anywhere on the internet where I claim that no countries should have nukes. I have continued to advocate that some countries can absolutely not have nukes. Iran being top of list. I believe Israel is one of the most obvious countries to have nuclear weaponry. They are disproportionately small for their region, and they are disproportionately targeted for extermination. If Israel did not have nukes today I would advocate for giving them nukes tomorrow. The fact that they have had them for decades and have never used them is all the evidence you need that they are not a threat.

31 minutes ago, Pooter said:

Maybe it’s naive of me but I try to look for objective standards like this to define my political stances. Sometimes it requires zooming out and looking at our actions from an international frame of reference. And yes, sometimes that does lead to some pretty uncomfy conclusions. Like: not every conflict is as simple as good vs evil, and sometimes we might not even be the good guys.

Yes, I actually do think that's naive. At the end of the day you cannot act on this type of scale without a moral framework, and that is almost definitionally subjective. That is why some of the disagreements are so intractable, because they are fundamentally disagreements about moral ideologies on a global scale. I believe that the United States and Israel governments are, on the balance, moral actors. I believe that the Iranian government is evil. (I also do not believe in God or any sort of supernatural truth, before anybody goes down that rabbit hole.)

We are, in fact, always the good guys. You don't become the bad guys just because you do a bad thing if the overall character of your actions is good. That's important, because another non-objective reality of global conflict is that it's different when the good guys do something bad versus when the bad guys do something bad. Intent matters. And the response to the bad action is in fact dependent on the intent. That is fundamental in our justice system.

That puts us in exactly the position to tell other countries they can or can't have nukes.

34 minutes ago, Pooter said:

And none of that is to say I hate my country or I’m rooting for failure or I think we’re always in the wrong. I just want us to do things that aren’t insanely dumb, and if we can sometimes throw in the added benefit of it not being morally backwards or hypocritical, that would be cool too.

I do not think for one second that you hate your country.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by Lord Ratner

46 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

If the United States commits to supplying cheap uranium fuel for any civilian nuclear power program, Iran has no leg to stand on.

Disagree. The treaty we signed says they have a right to produce their own. Us offering to sell it to them cheap is still a form of leverage we hold where it could be cut off at any moment. It is completely understandable a country wouldn’t agree to that.

48 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Iran is interested in anything but nuclear weaponry. That's what they want, and that is why they refuse any compromise.

Except they have agreed to compromises before. Like the one we had and then tore up. Or the negotiations we were in with them right before we used those negotiations as a cover for a surprise attack (twice)

50 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

I have not advocated for that standard at all.

Maybe my writing wasn’t clear, I didn’t think you were. That’s a standard I believe should be a thing.

On the debate about Israeli nukes and good guys vs. bad guys we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I think it’s naive to view ourselves as the perennial good guys. WRT Iran we’ve even tampered with their government in the past motivated mainly to stop nationalization of oil. We’ve armed, then betrayed, then armed again opposing nations and militant groups all over the Middle East to *theoretically* advance our interests for decades, all with virtually zero regard for moral or even strategic consistency.

I’m not even impugning intentions.. mostly it’s the results I have an issue with. We start things because we think we can pull it off and then when it inevitably blows up in our face, we go “whoops, that sucks” and GTFO

You forgot about their terrorism for the past 50 years in your statement, but really went off the rails with this doozy. In no way imaginable was the agreement working. Iran continues to break every agreement we’ve ever had with them.

14 hours ago, Pooter said:

.………... Regardless, they’ve broken the rules and the one serious effort to rein them in (the JCPOA) which was working by the way.. is now in the shredder.

32 minutes ago, bfargin said:

In no way imaginable was the agreement working.

I know sourced arguments are a rarity and have very limited effect around here, but here goes nothing. It is a fact that they were in compliance for the duration of and slightly after Trump tore up the deal.

https://www.armscontrol.org/blog/2018-06-08/iaea-report-confirms-irans-compliance-jcpoa

Here’s a report from our own congress on the JCPOA:

https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R40094#_Toc205812494

“Until July 2019, all official reports and statements from the United Nations, European Union, the IAEA, and the non-U.S. participating governments indicated that Iran had fulfilled its JCPOA and related Resolution 2231 requirements.”

And another one

CIP

Assessing The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action Iran Dea...

The JCPOA must be properly understood as working before we can attempt to understand why the Trump administration left the deal.

“The record shows that Iran complied with the terms of the JCPOA.”