> So signing treaties, negotiating, having mass inspections, economic cooperation -- this is nothing? As of 2015 the official policy of the US was reintegration of iran into the economic system; trump undid that briefly, but then adopted exactly the same policy until a month ago.

I was referring to this current round of sabre rattling, but if you're referring to the JCPOA, I should inform you that Iran agreed to monitoring and verification, not only under strictly restricted grounds. The deal did not give inspectors the right to freely roam. Access to military sites remained contentious and largely off limits. Iran never gave access to Parchin, for example. This meant Iran was free to continue their nuclear weapons development program - though of course in secret.

Further, the JCPOA unlocked $100B in frozen assets which the brutal dictator Ayatollah Khamenei immediately stole and used to cement his position of power. The JCPOA also lifted oil sanctions which further enriched Khamenei to the tune of $10-30B per year.

The JCPOA was commonly regarded as impotent and symbolic at best, and quite harmful at worst.

> Look at what Regan said about the USSR and vice versa, rhetoric much more extreme.

They both meant it. This is a crucial fact from the cold war. The world really was minutes away from nuclear war. I highly recommend reading the account of Stanislav Petrov [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov], a Russian lieutenant colonel, who in 1983 narrowly avoided nuclear war by heroically refusing to report an apparent missile launch by the U.S. During this period the U.S. formally developed the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine which automated nuclear launches in the event that no one was left alive to retaliate.

You use an example of two deadly serious adversaries willing to destroy the world as an example of something we should not fear?

I wouldn't try to analyse any sabre-ratting rhetoric by foreign leaders either way. But if you really want to: start with your own.

Google all the times the US leaders have threatened annihilation against foreign nations, threats vastly more credible as a global superpower.

One should never take words very seriously in geopolitics. They are 2/3rds designed for domestic populations, to propagandize them (esp. in democracies, which must lie to their publics), and 1/3rds lies for the other side.

Serious analysers of geopoltical strategy are only concerned with actions, capabilities and growing capabilities. And they are esp. uninterested in domestic propaganda.

Everyone in the US elite is extremely well-aware of this; by pointing to iranian rhetoric now they are just propagandizing american audiences to support a war of aggression which is, largely, against the interests of the US population.

* "Israel must be wiped off the map." -Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

* "Israel must be wiped off the map." -President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

* "The Zionist regime will perish in the not-so-far future." -Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

* "Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map." -General Hossein Salami

They have been clear and consistent in their intent. Whether it be rhetoric or their continued funding and training of various terrorist groups in the region and globally.

Lastly, I find the argument derisive and infantilising that they don't really mean "death" when they say "death to America/Israel/the West". We all understand what the word "death" means.