Comment by jm4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jm4 | Hacker News Reader

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It wasn’t a good deal. It was also probably the best deal that could have been achieved at any point in the past 20 years. More importantly, it would have kept things on an even keel and kept us talking to each other for as long as we both honored the deal. It was an opportunity to see if we could build a little bit of trust and make another deal later. Yes, it kicked the can down the road. It also represented a willingness on the part of both countries to try to avoid a conflict even though we both had reasons to want one.

It’s possible it would have been a complete failure. We will never know. What we do know for sure is that we have had fewer options for dealing with the situation since we pulled out of the deal and now we are at war.

Our country’s handling of Iran has been nothing short of a spectacular blunder. Two administrations have tried to negotiate out of the hole Trump got us into when he tore up the deal. The buffoon actually thought he would cancel the deal and make a better one. Now, after 20+ years of criticizing the Iraq war and campaigning three times on not starting new wars, he is the trigger man getting us into a new one when we are least prepared for it.

I guess we'll see what the fallout from this attack is, but if there isn't anything major (and that's where my money is) then it would seem that just dropping bunker busters on their nuclear facilities and then going home was actually the best solution all along.

That is pure fantasy. You don’t launch an unprovoked attack and simply go home without any consequences. What we and Israel have done to Iran in recent weeks is akin to 9/11 or Pearl Harbor. Furthermore, if we were legitimately without any other options it is because of our own failure to honor the deal we made in 2018.

You can be assured that there will be a response. What it will be and for how long I don’t know. What I do know is that diplomacy is completely off the table. It’s possible we are dealing with the consequences of this for decades.

Well that aged poorly

The problem in Iran is the government or shall we say the dictatorship. I'm not sure how the US could have/should have handled Iran since the revolution. You're naive if you think the current Iranian regime has any interest in aligning itself to western views via deals. It wants to cement its control, broaden its sphere of influence:

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

Deals are tactical. They're not about shifting world views.

I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now". This is very different than Iraq. But I do agree intervention has risks. The problem is that no intervention also has risks. Take for example Obama's lack of appetite to intervene in Syria. Contrast to Turkey and Israel that effectively intervened recently in Syria and force a regime change that at least so far is more or less holding out.

> I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now"

It’s amazing what decades of propaganda has done to Western discourse. Now somehow bombing another country isn’t war.

I think there's a difference between one attack and a full blown war.

The US has had many bombings of other countries without a full out war:

https://www.maurer.ca/USBombing.html

Most recent big example is Yemen. Would you say the US is at war right now with Yemen?

Was this already the start of this war? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis

I guess you could say that during the bombing campaign in Yemen until the ceasefire (and maybe now) they were at "war".

Were Israel and Iran "at war" when they exchanged blows a year ago?

Yes - all of those instances count as war to me.

What to you counts as “war”? When the countries fire back?

Something like is going on between Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Iran (borderline). The Iraq war. The Afghanistan war. A prolonged period of hostilities.

Something you would look back at and call "The US Iran War". I don't think the previous acts of violence, or the current one, between these two meets the mark yet. And it's not clear if this one will. Iran can't really do much right now and it's not clear whether the US will go a lot further here.

E.g. we probably aren't going to look back at the hostilities with Yemen and call them the "US-Yemen war" or the "US Houthis war" like we look at Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq.

Or as Putin would put it, it's a special military operation (yeah yeah, that one is a war).

https://youtu.be/nZUXjEgsduU

> I'm not sure the US and Iran are really "at war right now"

Curious about this. Are we not technically at war because they haven't retaliated yet?

Americans definitely believed we were at war with Japan immediately after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

My common interpretation of a war is that it involves the continuous exchange of violence on both sides over some time. An isolated bombing operation isn't what I think of as a war. Israel and Iran are at war for sure. The US and Iran, we'll see. It's possible Iran will calculate that it is not in their benefit to wage an open war on the US.

There's is already a history of violence between Iran and the USA. Was that a war? When Iranian funded militias attacked American bases is that war?

Anyways, that's how I think about it.

>You're naive if you think the current Iranian regime has any interest in aligning itself to western views via deals.

You are going to have take a step back and convince me why I should care about US hegemonic interests in the region. Iran is it's own nation - I don't see why we should be "dealing" with them in the first place. If you really care about the profit margins of Aramco and ExxonMobil (the whole reason were in this mess in first place) you should lead with that so that others know why you care about what a sovereign country does.

I honestly don't care about the oil companies. I'll lead with that.

I'm not an American but my argument would be that a free and stable world is better for the US.

A regime like Iran's that has killed Americans, is openly calling the US "The Great Satan", is supporting militias in places like Iraq that attack Americans. That funds, supports and trains organizations the US considers terrorist organizations. Is abusing its own citizenry and actively seeks to export its values to other countries. Is supplying weapons to Russia for attacking Ukraine. This sort of regime can't just do whatever it wants under the label of "its own nation" since what its doing impacts others.

The US is the big superpower of the "west" and the "free world". For the most part it is its deterrence against Russia and China that is standing in the way of those doing whatever they want (e.g. China taking Taiwan by force). I don't think the world would be a better place if the US just stands back.

All that said, intervention, and use of force, needs to be sensible/reasonable/calculated. It's not easy to say where this is going. But it's also not easy to say where it would have gone otherwise. I can also understand Americans not having an appetite for any of this after Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan. But to contrast that I think failure to intervene in the Arab Spring led to pretty bad consequences, prolonged civil wars, a refugee crisis, etc. So perhaps some intervention and support would have helped. Also the US withdrawal and lack of support to democracy in Russia were probably factors in the reversal of that country back to where it is today.

Anyways, that's my very long opinion on this topic. But I can totally understand Americans not wanting any part of this. But don't think that you can just hide, things that happen in the world impact you.

>I'm not an American but my argument would be that a free and stable world is better for the US.

You aren't arguing for a free and stable world. You are arguing for a total hegemonic power for US interests - and thats my point. You are taking the position of "this is what is good for US companies and interests" and working backwards from there.

It's remarkable you use the "were stopping China from doing whatever they want", but you don't stop and think that there are other people who have legitimate concerns in stopping the US from doing what they want. Replace China with the US and Taiwan with Palestine. Aren't we doing to Palestine what you claim we should stop China from doing to Taiwan? At the very least it comes across hypocritical to claim you are in it for a "free and stable world" when that actually means "the US should get to invade whoever it wants".

Furthermore, the same things you say about Iran, you could argue about North Korea. North Korea has killed Americans, they have an entire month dedicated to hating America (it starts next month!) and openly funds corporate espionage attacks that drains billions from Americans. Despite that do you honestly believe, that the world would be safer if we started dropping GBU-43s on North Korean children? Honestly answer me that.

Despite what you can say about North Korean regime - don't you believe a North Korea, with Nukes mind you, is far more preferable than the alternative? Where America is dropping bombs on North Korean every 5 years? Which do you think is actually better?

Why does North Korea - who again, has done all the same, and more, than Iran get a pass from the military industrial complex? Isn't North Korea clearly the bigger threat when it comes to peace as defined by the parameters you laid out? Once you interrogate this line of thinking it makes 0 sense - and anyone who thinks candidly realizes the contradiction: ironically, once our so called "enemies" have nukes, children stop being vaporized by bombs.

> Iran is it's own nation - I don't see why we should be "dealing" with them in the first place

Iran spends rather large amounts of money funding various groups that are adverse to US interests and operate well outside Iran’s borders. Pretending that Iran is its own country and can thus be ignored is not an effective policy.

>spends rather large amounts of money funding various groups that are adverse to US interests and operate well outside Iran’s borders.

1. This describes many countries that we haven't invaded that I'm not sure you are being serious.

2. You will need to be specific. Which US interests? The interests of Californians or of Saudi Aramaco?

3. America is propoganda giant number one, and China has seemed to come up just fine despite America spending hundreds of billions trying to convince the world the communists in China are eating dirt.

I'm not convinced that this is a good use time or money for the American tax payer. I'm fully convinced American hegomonic decline is fully self-inflected and the trillions wasted in Afghanistan did more to hurt American than any backwards goat farmer in the middle east could ever accomplish.

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