And what did the attack accomplish? It did degrade the Iranian military somewhat. It killed the Iranian leadership, but odds are the replacements are simply even more radical and opposed to the US.
The nuclear material is probably still buried in the facilities attacked in the earlier strikes (not the war this year). That is a delay on any potential nuclear weapons development, but not more than that.
It showed Iran and the world just how much damage they can cause with their control over the strait. And it removed any factor that previously led Iran towards not blocking the strait even when attacked. In the end the odds are that this whole mess will cause death and suffering, damage the world economy and we'll likely end up with an even more dangerous Iran in the future.
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.
The intelligence report isn't related here. They obviously weren't talking about facilities that were known to the public to be enriching beyond energy grade.
What we do know is that there was no evidence a few months prior and that Trump explicitly said that he was ignoring the clear lack of evidence in making his decision to attack.
Maybe if Iran had a nuke Israel would cut back on sexual torture of detainees and indiscriminate bombing of vast swaths of densely populated land. And maybe the US would think twice about spending $10 trillion fighting pointless wars in the region. I’m in favor of that scenario.
> Maybe if Iran had a nuke Israel would cut back on sexual torture of detainees and indiscriminate bombing of vast swaths of densely populated land.
Aside from the fact that Iran and its proxies do this, you have to remember that Israel very likely has nukes and so if Iran gets a nuke what exactly are they going to do with it in the scenario you described? Nuke Tel Aviv? Israel would just nuke them back.
> And maybe the US would think twice about spending $10 trillion fighting pointless wars in the region.
Idk if your figure is right, seems too high, but you are incorrect here because if Iran had a nuke the US could still invade Iraq or Afghanistan.
And honestly maybe it wasn't worth the money but Iraq is doing much better, has a functioning parliament, &c. Maybe that's the problem - it's like Iran's regime is jealous that people can live in peace and don't have to be whipped up into a fury to go murder other people and Iraq is just showing them how it's done. It reminds me of the former Soviet countries where Russia sees they are doing much better without Russia and gets jealous.
I was not implying that Iran would or should use nuclear weapons. Only acquire them. For the same reason I think it’s a good thing the USSR acquired nuclear weapons. Mutually assured destruction has proven to be incredibly effective at preventing the use of nuclear weapons, and preventing hot war (not proxy wars though).
I think if Iran acquired nuclear weapons the region would stabilize. Israel would be forced to stop the genocide and land grabs, because they would no longer hold a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region.
You say that casually. As of $3 trillion wouldn’t have dramatically improved the lives of tens of millions of Americans. As opposed to killing several thousand military members and a million+ Iraqi civilians.
