Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway894345 | Hacker News Reader

Whatever you think of it, it's not "terrorism" (the objective is presumably to deter a state nuclear weapons program and not specifically to frighten the masses). While any loss of life is unfortunate, and while the US and Israel are not without blemish, this assassination was very targeted (no collateral) and it plausibly deters Iran from advancing (and thus using) its nuclear weapons program. This seems like a pretty good deal on balance, at least for those who can accept that the world is not perfect and very often the loss of a single life is the best one can hope for to prevent the losses of tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.

Anyway, I want to steer clear of the "which country is more evil?" question because it's so very unlikely to yield productive discourse (we can use enumeration fallacy to support whichever position we like even if we agree on core values).

View on HN

> it plausibly deters Iran from advancing (and thus using) its nuclear weapons program

Having looked quite deeply into this, Iran does not currently have, nor peruses such a program. Meanwhile Israel not only does have a nuclear program, but refuses to sign any treaties regulating it.

What do you make of the Israeli's sharing of intel to the public regarding a purported illegal nuclear weapons research program currently ongoing inside Iran. Is that evidence fabricated, and if so how do we know that?

Because there wasn't any new credible intelligence in there even per the U.S., which is no friend of Iran [1] and because Israel has been rehashing the same shit forever now.

> Is that evidence fabricated, and if so how do we know that?

It is generally up to the party offering evidence to prove its authenticity, not the other way around.

1 - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/netanyahu-s-info-iran-n...

They don't have a public nuclear weapons program because they don't want to suffer the sanctions that would be imposed on them, but they have a long history of interest in and pursuit of such a program. As for Israel, I fail to see how that's anything but whataboutism.

> As for Israel, I fail to see how that's anything but whataboutism.

Has it ever occurred to you the Iranians might be interested in such a weapon because Israel already has one?

This is not without precedent. We know for example that Pakistan developed its nukes to deter India when they demonstrated they have nuclear weapons.

Let me be clearer: I don’t see how Iran’s intent (or speculation there about) is relevant to the quoted portion of my post:

> it plausibly deters Iran from advancing (and thus using) its nuclear weapons program

As for Iranian intentions; they’ve been quite clear and consistent that they want to wipe out Israel, and I take them at their word about their motives. It seems unrealistic to me that they want nukes for purely defensive purposes (unrelated to their broader desire to wipe Israel off the map), i.e., they think (absent a nuclear Iran) Israel would without provocation initiate a nuclear attack on Iran. It seems obvious to me that Iran wants nuclear weapons as part of its broader desire to eradicate Israel, albeit probably not to launch nukes at Israel directly but rather to derisk a nuclear counterattack. In either case, a nuclear Iran brings us considerably closer to a violent humanitarian crisis.

> This seems like a pretty good deal on balance, at least for those who can accept that the world is not perfect and very often the loss of a single life is the best one can hope for to prevent the losses of tens or hundreds of thousands of lives.

There are plenty of assumptions here tho. Because I am not sure such an act "can save lifes", or in fact, it keeps reinforcing the hegemony of US, IL and SA in killing systematically and waging wars in the region... My point is: is murdering a top scientist/politician useful to save "tens or hundreds of thousands of lives" or is this facilitating the killing "tens or hundreds of thousands of lives" in Palestine, Yemen, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq and destabilizing the region?

To be clear about my assumptions, I don't trust the Iranian regime. They have been interested in nuclear weapons consistently for the last 70 years, and they've been rather explicit about their position with respect to Israel (it's a "cancerous tumor that must be uprooted and destroyed" or something to that effect). I think they pretty credibly want to wipe out Israel and emerge as the regional power.

I'm also assuming that the US, IL, and SA are pretty interested in regional stability if only because stability favors their own interests.

You have a few implicit assumptions of your own:

1. Keeping Iran in check "destabalizes the region" (and the corollary, that Iran's objective is stability in the region)

How can you believe this in light of Iran's pretty explicit intent to wipe out Israel? Are Iranian officials merely posturing benignly?

2. The US, IL, SA objective is "systematically killing tens or hundreds of thousands of lives and waging wars in the region" (and not to stabilize the region)

Of course, these countries aren't "systematically killing" anyone. You can criticize them for their actions, but they haven't been "systematically killing" anybody, nor expressed interest in the same.

3. There is a dichotomy between Iran killing tens or hundreds of thousands and the US/IL/SA killing tens or hundreds of thousands (i.e., if we prevent Iran from killing tens or hundreds of thousands then we implicitly allow its adversaries to kill tens or hundreds of thousands)

Of course, there is no such dichotomy. Thwarting Iran's nuclear program and stabilizing the region are two sides of the same coin.

> I'm also assuming that the US, IL, and SA are pretty interested in regional stability if only because stability favors their own interests.

A completely stable and peaceful region is very much NOT in the interest of Israeli right-wing politicians (currently in power) hell-bent on expanding illegal settlements. Israel is the only modern nation in the world without a fixed border. This can only be maintained by denying Palestine statehood, and the only moral way to do that is by selling this image of "our savage, uncivilized neighbors will destroy us if we grant them statehood. We're in an extraordinary circumstance, so that's why we're taking the extraordinary measure of denying millions of people their human rights for 70 years."

Btw, 2014 Gaza war killed 5 Israeli civilians vs around 1500 Palestinian civilians (UN). It amazes me how Israel still manages to play the victim card in the western world.

> Btw, 2014 Gaza war killed 5 Israeli civilians vs around 1500 Palestinian civilians (UN). It amazes me how Israel still manages to play the victim card in the western world.

Of course there were fewer Israeli casualties. Israel took the fight to Hamas for the express purpose of protecting Israeli lives. Safeguarding their own citizenry is the primary objective of any nation’s military, and Israel did that by fighting Hamas on their home turf (as opposed to inviting Hamas to fight inside Israel).

I was talking about only civilians, non-combatants, not Hamas terrorists.

I guess it was an honest mistake on your part, though there are too many people out there with "all Palestinian are terrorist" belief.

The point is that by taking the fight to Hamas, they were fighting among Palestinian civilians and not among Israeli civilians, so naturally there would be more Palestinian civilian casualties. For the same reason that there are relatively fewer US casualties in any US foreign war (how many US civilian casualties were there in Afghanistan relative to Afghan civilian casualties?). Adding to that is the fact that Hamas hide among the Palestinian citizenry, making collateral damage all the more likely.

Oxford Dictionary's definition of terrorism:

the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

From Iran's perspective this is terrorism. From the US/Israel's that is probably not simply because I believe that there's probably a lawful mechanism for these governments to carry out this sort of action on foreign soil. For them it's "raison d'Etat".

Is a scientist working on a nuclear bomb a civilian? In the strict sense, yes, but it is very close to not being one.

From tfa:

> But some American officials argued that the death of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, the latest in a string of such mysterious killings of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, would send a chilling message to the country’s other top scientists working on that program: If we can get him, we can get you, too.

Is a computer scientist working on AWS a civilian? The DoD uses AWS.

A scientist leading the project of constructing a massive weapon does not compare to a scientist working as part of a cog in the wheel on a service that is used both by the government and other companies that is not related to weapon construction any more than a screw driver is related to weapon construction.

A couple issues with your interpretation:

* Israel isn't subject to Iranian jurisdiction, so it can't be "illegal", at least not meaningfully. In other words, if we don't account for jurisdiction then any international conflict could be considered "terrorism", which doesn't pass a common sense test.

* The Oxford definition stipulates "and intimidation", not "or intimidation". There's no indication that the aggressor's intent was to intimidate (rather, if they wanted to intimidate, they would have attacked the target's family or otherwise not been so surgical).

- "Israel isn't subject to Iranian jurisdiction, so it can't be "illegal"

What kind of logic is that? By then logic is it legal for Russian mercenaries to break into your house?

It's illegal in the same way 9/11 was illegal - purposefully targetting civillians is a breach of international law, and, of laws and customs of war. It is not onyl about laws of the host country where attack happens.

The argument that he was warking on a military project could apply if there was an official declaration of war, but that isn't the case.

I didn't imply that Israel/US was subject to Iranian jurisdiction (not least because countries are sovereign). I wrote that it was probably legal (at least within specific boundaries) for the Israeli/US governments to approve such actions on foreign soil, which are after all one of the raison d'etre of the CIA and Mossad. But of course the operatives in Iran did commit murder under Iranian law and they were subject to that jurisdiction.

It's always a question of perspective.

Regarding your second point, there is obviously a part of intimidation in doing something like that. It's even mentioned explicitly off the record in the article:

"But some American officials argued that the death of Mr. Fakhrizadeh, the latest in a string of such mysterious killings of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, would send a chilling message to the country’s other top scientists working on that program: If we can get him, we can get you, too."

'Terrorism' is a term always used against others, the bad guys. We are the good guys we never do that. Some people have bought this line so much that it's difficult to accept that everyone does terrorism to a varying degree, at least certainly from the perspective of those on the receiving end.

> Israel isn't subject to Iranian jurisdiction

The nature of sovereignty is that sovereign jurisdiction has only those territorial limits that the sovereign chooses; extraterritorial jurisdiction in law is common as is it's practical exercise.

More to the point, Israeli agents acting on Iranian territory are subject to Iranian jurisdiction without extraterritorial jurisdiction entering the picture.

> any international conflict could be considered "terrorism"

The proper crime is “aggression”, and, yes, almost every international conflict involves that on at least one side. (You can construct artificial scenarios where there is a plausible argument that both sides are exercising legitimate response to an apparent imminent threat, but they don't tend to arise in reality.)

You don't think this is intended to intimidate others who would work on nuclear weapons?

It's highly unlikely he's irreplaceable

Reply on news.ycombinator.com