I already heard that when the USA illegally attacked and invaded Iraq. Both of these situations, from the point of view of international law, are no different from Russia's illegal bombing of Ukraine.

The US allowed Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea to get nuclear weapons, but Iran is a step too far? Pull the other one.

By "others", you presumably mean credible threats from enemy states (since we allow Israel to secretly harbor nuclear weaponry with no problem). But no, I don't think that. I think it's nuanced, and I think that it's wrong to frame it with language like "let", instead of saying it like it is: starting a war to intervene. War in the Middle East is historically a bad idea, and there better be a good reason to justify the senseless death. I think the seriousness of that decision should not be minimized by statements like "well we couldn't just let them do anything". There is a serious chance of this escalating into something far worse.

Probably not your intent, but this is a very clear summation of why it is is likely understood as critical to Iranian security to develop and publicly test a nuclear weapon.

So just to be clear, it's only morally acceptable to wage wars against countries that are unquestionably incapable of defending themselves?

Not like when Netanyahu pledged to turn Gaza into a "deserted island"¹, but if that's the kind of rhetoric that justifies US bombing campaigns, then why haven't we bombed Israel's not-so-secret nuclear weapon production facilities, too?

[1] https://archive.is/IcLBh

If you are a leader of any nation, you are an idiot to not have a nuclear program. It's carteblanche for any nuclear power to come in and fuck your shit up.

Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine has nukes. The US would not have dismantled Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran if they had nukes.

You look at a country like North Korea and they get the red carpet despite have an incredibly oppressive regime and spending millions on cyber attacks and corporate espionaige. You know why? Because they have nukes.

It's not a question of "trusting" Iran. Iran with nukes is more geopolitically stable situation than Iran without nukes. As it stands today, Iran without nukes, means that Lockheed Martin gets to fleece another 10 trillion dollars from the American public for the next decade.

It's perfectly consistent to be against both Iran nuclear development and the US attack yesterday. One does not imply the other.

Not wise in what way? You say that likely as an American without caring at all about the people in Iran. The US is the only nation is have used a nuclear weapon and frankly is far more capable of destruction than Iran is even with nukes.

Even if Iran were arming regional proxies, that's an Israel problem, not an america problem. Though AIPAC et el makes sure no american is ever aware of that distinction.

The US was angry Iran had a civilian rocket program?

So you agree they were not exploring nuclear weapons with that agreement in place?

That doesn't seem like a good reason to cancel the only thing stopping them from developing nukes. Of course they fund proxy armies, but that's a reginal problem that can be addressed through conventional means.

Cancelling the Joint Agreement is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. In particular, it was clearly an expression of Trump's animus to Obama.

The main reason it was canceled is because Donald Trump is a petulant child and he wanted to erase all of Obama’s accomplishments.

Nuclear program != nuclear weapons program, though.

Did I say the Supreme Leader is a benign figure? Iran has problems. Big ones.

You are disingenuous and malicious when you portray my position in this way. The Supreme Leader has a longstanding public opposition to nuclear weapons. He is the respected religious leader of the Iranian government. The actions of the Iranian government, including their adherence to the JCPOA that Trump capriciously discarded, are consistent with this fatwa.

You must provide some other justification for your stance than merely accepting the US propaganda.

The point was to build trust that Iran would not continue to pursue nuclear weapons. The trust would be built through the multi-year partnership.

The position you're taking only really works if you start from "Iran will always work towards having a nuclear bomb, no matter what." And yeah, if that's your starting place, you've figured out where that path ends up. You're never going to be satisfied with anything Iran says because your fundamental premise is that they can't be trusted to not pursue a nuclear bomb.

By walking away from the deal, we gave Iran a clear message: "you might as well pursue a bomb because we are always going to act like you are, no matter what you actually do."

Enrichment to levels suitable for domestic nuclear power (the goal, and follow on decoupling from Russia as the supplier and extractor of fuel for existing Iran nuclear power station) is a magnitude and more less time and effort than enrichment to levels suitable for weapons.

Isotope separation by centrifuge as a physical process follows the laws of diminishing returns, getting rid of all the uranium variations save the rare target weight takes more and more time as percent purity increases.

"Just a step away" was more a hard bridge to cross back when third party inspectors were at the enrichment centres and leaving locked and logged "long soak" spectrometer instruments behind. It's hard to enrich to greater levels without leaving a ratio fingerprint behind in the gamma spectrum.

Art of the un-deal

60% is not weapons grade.

Pretty sure the claim this time wasn't that they had them, but that they could make them too quickly if they wanted to.

Well let's not forget stuxnet... Iran hasn't been left uncontested. They have faced considerable setbacks along the way. They've been trying to develop [all of the things you need for nuclear weapons] for some time, and more recently had been accelerating those efforts.

Netanyahu may exaggerate the imminence of an Iranian nuke, but the reason Iran hasn't built a nuke is because Israel has been repeatedly setting Iran back in its progress over the years.

https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-timeline-tensions-con...

Let's be clear Iran is the bad guy. But so was Saddam Hussein and he didn't have the weapons they said he did.

On Fox News they'll tell you nuclear war is imminent but they say that because they want to bomb, not because it's true or not. They're only justifying their actions, not reacting to a threat.

The alternatives were that they were enriching well beyond peaceful thresholds primarily for leverage in negotiations, or that they wanted "breakout" capability, so they could build multiple bombs quickly, if they ever chose to. But these alternatives can still be unacceptable from the standpoint of arms control and nuclear nonproliferation.

How'd any of that be a problem, even if it was true?

I can understand the Iranian reluctance to negotiate with the US. Trump has demonstrated that he is particularly honorable.

Israel has been talking about the threat for some time and Iran over time has broadened its nuclear program and has enriched more and more Uranium to higher and higher levels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#Secret...

Why does Iran need all this enriched Uranium? Why is it investing so much in this? Why does it invest so much in its ballistic missile program?

Would Israel be a threat to Iran if Iran didn't continuously declare it wants to wipe Israel off the map and take all these actions to follow up on that?

Israel is tiny. It can't afford the risk of a regime that openly declares it wants to wipe it off the map and has acted towards that goal to get nuclear missiles.

Well, it takes about 20 years. Throw in a virus, assassinations, inspections, ... sounds about right.