I both agree and disagree. A long-term strategy does not have to be absolutely uninterrupted - there can be many practical reasons for why it must be interrupted at times - reasons for example pertaining to other nations in the region.

Controlling Iran and its oil resources, and its access point between the Middle-East and Central Asia was always the goal. Letting Iran develop peacefully was never an option. Not for the US, and not for Israel.

Sometimes it was believed this could be achieved with the carrot, sometimes with the stick.

Look at Europe for example - another region of the world that the US has sought to control. It has entirely neutered Europe with use of the carrot.

So what we're seeing are changes in method, and not in overall strategy.

The bottomline is, a strong independent Iran is and was viewed as a massive threat to US power in the Middle-East, and to Israel.

This has been the case since the '50s, when Iran was a large, wealthy, well-educated and rapidly modernizing country, which is why alarm bells started to go off in Washington - these are the building blocks that form a regional power.

Iraq was almost an exact copy in this regard, and at times the US had to balance Iran and Iraq against each other to achieve its goals.

So I'd argue you're missing the forest for the trees.

I can't blame everything on Likud. One event that sticks in my mind was the Olympic massacre of 1972. That wasn't under Likud. The violence has been there regardless of whether Israel has been liberal or conservative. — BitconnectCarlos

The Oslo peace process was far later than the 1970's. If you want another one to blame is of course Jasser Arafat, who didn't take the agreement when there was the chance. But still, even if he would have taken it, I'm not at all sure if even then peace would followed and the two state solution would have held.

And the structural problem for Israel that it actually needs a strong counterpart that could also keep the peace and control it's territory. With Egypt and Jordan this works. Failed states or nearly failed states Lebanon and Syria this isn't possible, hence the Israeli solution seems to be perpetual low intensity conflict.

What is normally the difficult to prove part is the intention. As mass chaos and violence and death can be presented as carried out for some other goal. — boethius

And here the courts got an ample amount of this rhetoric after the Hamas attacks. Yet I think the real threat is ethnic cleansing on a vast scale. Our international institutions are simply collapsing as the regional players and the US don't give them any role. Trump is simply making it more natural to speak about ethnic cleansing.

Every illegal attack, like the two we've recently witnessed, is an argument for them to pursue a nuclear bomb as that is the only weapon that truly acts like a deterrent. That's rather obvious. — Benkei

Having a nuclear credible nuclear deterrent keeps the US from attacking an "axis-of-evil" country that has been declared to be a rogue state. Worst possible situation is when a country doesn't have nuclear weapons, but the US firmly thinks it's trying to make them and is considered a rogue state.

Yet Iran also should really think about it's past aggressive foreign policies in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen and just how much they have worked. Iran should understand that trying to export their Islamic Revolution will ultimately fail and just worsen the situation with fellow Muslim states. Trying to create a "Shiite Crescent" will only push other states closer to the US and even Israel. What is notable has been the stance of the Arab League and Turkey in this conflict: the idea that Saudi-Arabia would eagerly join the beating up of Iran didn't prevail. What is also notable is that UK hasn't participated (in my knowledge, I could be wrong) to the defense of Israel.

Well, he's the president. And we're attacking another country! How do you avoid it??? The NYTimes is solid, though. — RogueAI

I can't right now. Every semi-capitalized comment he makes is news. It's all stream of consciousness like we're in a James Joyce novel.

The Iranian regime is profoundly cruel and deserving of death and destruction. That is certain. The question is whether the West should actively bring about such a result. I can only hope that one day Iran is liberated and the bodies of the mullahs litter the streets. Persia will rise again.

Once again: prove they are suicidal or irrational and you have a case. — Benkei

You're talking about a regime that rapes female prisoners before execution so that when they die they don't go to heaven.

Also, not surprising that one of TPF's most obsessive Israel haters views the Iranian regime as seemingly reasonable and moderate.

There's a case to be made that a nuclear Iran really could end Israel's existence. — RogueAI

There’s an argument that Israel’s nuclear weapons (which they actually HAVE) could end Iran’s existence. A much better argument, in fact.

Persia will rise again — BitconnectCarlos

Many of you here are having a very hard time putting yourselves in Israel's shoes and seeing the culpability of Iran here. If you constantly threaten the annihilation of the strongest kid on the block, and fund terrorist proxies to go after him, and you're now scheming to get your hands on a new big weapon...might the problem be you? — RogueAI

Ironic that you say it’s other people having a “hard time” seeing things from another’s shoes,

Israel has nuclear weapons, and has been genocidal and psychopathic. Might the problem be them?

Many of you here are having a very hard time putting yourselves in Israel's shoes and seeing the culpability of Iran here. If you constantly threaten the annihilation of the strongest kid on the block, and fund terrorist proxies to go after him, and you're now scheming to get your hands on a new big weapon...might the problem be you? — RogueAI

Yes, I get it. What I can't handle is someone (@BitconnectCarlos) suggesting that Israel has been nothing but a victim in all this. That's not true.

Yes, I get it. What I can't handle is someone (@BitconnectCarlos) suggesting that Israel has been nothing but a victim in all this. That's not true. — frank

Yeah, that's certainly not true. The rise of nations is a zero-sum bloody game. Israel can't come into existence without taking the land from someone else. There's nothing more commonplace in history than borders being redrawn after great wars. How many times has Alsace-Lorraine changed hands in the last 1,000 years? Ah, but when the Jews do it...well, we can't have that.

Ah, but when the Jews do it...well, we can't have that. — RogueAI

This is the matter. No one cares about Muslim on Muslim violence. It's only if the Jews dare raise their hand against one of the regional players that all hell breaks loose. 500k killed in Syria by Assad and no one could care less. Iran arrests and beats women to death in their prisons, and you'll see no protests.

Yes, at the heart of it all is plain old fashioned antisemitism.

Ah, but when the Jews do it...well, we can't have that. — RogueAI

I don't feel that way. Israel created a lot of innocent victims and it's spitting on their graves to act like Israel had no choice. Let's just say it: Zionists are assholes. That's not antisemitism. It's the truth.

This is the matter. No one cares about Muslim on Muslim violence. It's only if the Jews dare raise their hand against one of the regional players that all hell breaks loose. 500k killed in Syria by Assad and no one could care less. Iran arrests and beats women to death in their prisons, and you'll see no protests. — BitconnectCarlos

Victim complex.

Persia will rise again. — BitconnectCarlos

You're talking about a regime that rapes female prisoners before execution so that when they die they don't go to heaven.

Also, not surprising that one of TPF's most obsessive Israel haters views the Iranian regime as seemingly reasonable and moderate. — BitconnectCarlos

Unsurprisingly, you bring no knowledge to the table. We are once again back at the "they bad, us good" myopic view of the world that brings us nothing but idiocy.

You actually went out of your way to defend attacking Iran because "you hate the regime" not the Persians living there. Well, maybe we should introduce that kind of foreign policy more broadly. Trump, for instance, is hated throughout the world. He has access to nukes and has shown himself to be irrational. Let's attack US nuclear facilities! Because, well we don't hate Americans (or Mexicans or Canadians) but hey "fuck them" that's "double effect" when invariably at some point there's going to be a nuclear fallout because it's totally legit and fine to attack countries just because you don't like them. Idiot.

You realise you are not being fair right? You’re setting up a position that can’t really be challenged, because every shift in policy, whether engagement or hostility, is framed as just another method of containment. That makes your theory immune to contradiction, which is a problem if we want to understand history analytically rather than narratively.

You say “letting Iran develop peacefully was never an option” but I say the JCPOA was exactly that: an attempt to reintegrate Iran through diplomacy, with strong backing from US allies. That effort failed for contingent political reasons, not because of an unbroken strategic line.

The idea that changes in method do not reflect changes in strategy assumes far more coherence and control than US policy typically demonstrates. We’ve seen containment, yes, but we’ve also seen drift, contradiction and decisions driven by domestic optics or lobbying pressure.

That’s not missing the forest for the trees. It’s recognizing that what looks like a forest from a distance often turns out, up close, to be a tangle of competing interests with no clear path.

Yeah, that's certainly not true. The rise of nations is a zero-sum bloody game. — RogueAI

In truth, it isn't. If we mean by nations rising that they become prosperous.

War and conflict doesn't create prosperity, it might only transfer wealth as loot as war is extremely costly. In truth nations have gotten prosperous through voluntary trade and cooperation and investment to education and technology and in general a positive attitude toward business and private enterprise. The most successful imperialist enterprise was the Mongol Horde, and that basically created zero prosperity itself and basically immediately fell into couple of different khanates. The Mongol cavarly traditions gave these Khanates the ability to survive a few Centuries until modern rifles made it a turkey shoot to defeat cavalry fighting on horseback.

Israel hasn't become prosperous because of the wars it has fought with it's neighbors, but with the trade and tech investments. Nearly one third of it's GDP is made up of exports of goods and services.

How many times has Alsace-Lorraine changed hands in the last 1,000 years? — RogueAI

Yet notice the crucial difference to the Middle East. Germans don't give a fuck that Alsace-Lorraine belongs to France now. And both French and Germans of today would be surprised just how some place like Alsace-Lorraine stirred up fervent jingoism in both countries in the past.

Yet notice the crucial difference to the Middle East. Germans don't give a fuck that Alsace-Lorraine belongs to France now. And both French and Germans of today would be surprised just how some place like Alsace-Lorraine stirred up fervent jingoism in both countries in the past. — ssu

Yes, that is the crucial difference. So why does that difference exist? Is it religious fundamentalism and the rise of European secularism?

In truth, it isn't. If we mean by nations rising that they become prosperous. — ssu

I was talking more along the lines of the physical land that makes up the new nation. That had to come from someone else.

Unsurprisingly, you bring no knowledge to the table. We are once again back at the "they bad, us good" myopic view of the world that brings us nothing but idiocy.

You actually went out of your way to defend attacking Iran because "you hate the regime" not the Persians living there. Well, maybe we should introduce that kind of foreign policy more broadly. Trump, for instance, is hated throughout the world. He has access to nukes and has shown himself to be irrational. Let's attack US nuclear facilities! Because, well we don't hate Americans (or Mexicans or Canadians) but hey "fuck them" that's "double effect" when invariably at some point there's going to be a nuclear fallout because it's totally legit and fine to attack countries just because you don't like them. Idiot. — Benkei

The Iranian regime is wicked. This should be acknowledged, whether one chooses to strike or not. If one can't accept this fact, then it is not worth conversing with this person. Our worldviews would just not be remotely conciliable.

As for Trump, if the US were taken over by an Islamic theocracy that engages in mass repression and murder and threatens other groups with annihilation, then targeting our nuclear capabilities would be more reasonable. It's not simply hating them that justifies the strike.

As for why I'm not really interested in sharing knowledge/facts with you... what is needed is a paradigm shift, not more facts. If you don't believe in good and bad or righteousness/wickedness then we're just talking past each other.

Yes, that is the crucial difference. So why does that difference exist? Is it religious fundamentalism and the rise of European secularism? — RogueAI

No.

It's because millions of Europeans died in the two World Wars and many countries have had the experience that defending their country only gave them misery and a humiliating defeat. The Pre-WW1 jingoism and imperialism died especially after the Second World War. Then Europeans had their continent divided with the prospect of a nuclear WW3 being fought in their cities and countryside.

(German soldiers going onwards to war in 1914 with flowers given by onlooking women spectators)


That's what Trump the idiot doesn't understand: European integration wasn't done to fuck Americans, but to finally put securely away the wars of the past. And even still that hasn't happened: In Yugoslavia there was a bitter civil war and thanks to Putin, several decades after the Soviet Union collapsed, the "Civil War" because of that breakup is fought in Ukraine.

Actually many neocons don't understand this either: the saying that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus and hence Europeans don't have an eager enthusiasm to fight "Rogue states" comes also from this background. Basically the only European country that has still made it's own "Great Power" politics is France. Even this old colonial master has suffered major setbacks in it's former colonies in Africa in this decade. The UK opts sometimes to be the loyal sidekick of the US, but after Suez has been very passive, even if it can still kick ass as we saw in the Falklands/Malvinas war. Everybody else are happy with having NATO around.

But in the end, this anti-militarism comes from the experience of WW1 and WW2.



A similar war has never happened in Israel and not even in the Palestinian territories. The casualties especially on the Isreali side are minimal compared to the losses that European countries suffered in WW1 and WW2, although naturally Israeli jews do truly remember and keep in mind what their parents and great grandparents suffered during WW2 under the Third Reich. Yet that isn't something that happened in Israel or is part of this conflict. Perhaps now the Palestinians in the Gaza strip are truly suffering a total war. Now the Jewish people in Israel are about seven million, so 1% would be 70 000 people.



Hence some hundred Iranians and below fifty Israelis being killed, that won't make these countries to howl for peace. The jingoists and the militant hawks will be in power in both countries for a long time still, even if the cease-fire will last for a while.

And here the courts got an ample amount of this rhetoric after the Hamas attacks. Yet I think the real threat is ethnic cleansing on a vast scale. — ssu

The current Harvard estimate is 400 000 Palestinians "missing", in addition to starvation and all manner of trauma, in particular to children, from physical wounds, concussions to every possible developmental disorder.

We, the West, have essentially been torturing about a million children for about 20 months, and by simple proportions 200 000 children are among those "missing" but could be a higher proportion if children are less likely to survive the weapons used.

Ethnic cleansing of simply moving the Palestinians I don't see how that could be a worse crime, since if they are still alive the situation could be reversed by the world or then at least compensated.

For example, had the Nazis moved the Jews and other undesirables to the camps but didn't starve and kill them, they would have suffered a lot less and then returned home. So I don't see how ethnic cleansing, that is not also genocide, is a worse crime than the suffering we are seeing live streamed.

That they know their suffering is live streamed and the world does nothing is an additional trauma.

Ah, but when the Jews do it...well, we can't have that. — RogueAI

Who’s “we”?

Actually, “we” are indeed allowing it— and not only allowing it, but supporting it. If by we you mean the US.

There’s violence and territorial disputes all over. Look at Sudan. Look at India and Pakistan. Look at China and Taiwan. Look at history. Look at the Roman Empire. Yes — true. Yet we find it odd that some American citizens have particular gripes about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Vietnam, Korea, Ukraine, and Gaza? Any idea why that might be? Any idea why there were widespread Vietnam protests in the US, but little protesting about the rule of Kim Il Sung?

If this is still hard for you to understand, after literal years of explanation, that’s really a matter of psychological blockage. A kind of denial, I would say. Maybe willfully, maybe subconscious.

To protest the crimes of one’s state, one will naturally be called anti-whatever. In this case, anti-American, or antisemitic. The first line of pathetic counterargument from defenders of state war crimes (provided its their own state). :yawn:

There's nothing unfair about it. It's simply a strong theory.

I point towards a long-term trend and give the deeper geopolitical dynamics that have shaped it, and make it unlikely to change in the short-to-middle term.

From a US perspective, Iran has way too much potential to let it develop peacefully. Doing so would violate balance of power politics 101, and the basic US strategy of keeping the Middle-East as divided as possible.

Especially with Iran's natural balancer Iraq out of the picture, it requires constant US-Israeli belligerence to stop Iran from naturally expanding.

It's amazing how much stupidity you manages to pack in a few paragraphs. I've decided to engage it one last time; after this I'm done. Probably forever.

Step 1: “The Iranian regime is wicked. This should be acknowledged.”
This is the opening move in every bad foreign policy argument: moral branding as strategic substitute. “Wicked.” That’s it. No context, no history, no understanding. Just a label slapped on like it’s a Marvel villain. What does wicked mean in this case? That Iran is authoritarian? Brutal? Repressive? So are most US allies in the region. Saudi Arabia executes people for witchcraft. Egypt jails journalists. Israel is currently flattening Gaza block by block. Are they all wicked too, or does “wicked” only apply to governments you’ve been trained to hate?

But more to the point: what are you proposing we do with this wickedness? Because that’s what this entire line of reasoning hinges on. If calling a regime wicked is just a rhetorical flourish, fine. But if it’s supposed to justify military action, then you’ve just advocated moral total war—foreign policy by exorcism.

Step 2: “If you can’t accept that, there’s no point talking.”
Of course there isn’t. Because your position is a closed loop. You demand agreement with your metaphysical assumptions before we can even begin to discuss facts or outcomes. You’re not interested in a debate. You’re interested in moral submission.

This is the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “LA LA LA THEY’RE EVIL.” You’re not debating Iran. You’re protecting your fragile little worldview from the contamination of reality. If someone says “maybe we should consider what actually works,” and your response is “I don’t talk to people who don’t believe in evil,” you’ve left the realm of debate and entered the sandbox of magical thinking. You’ve effectively said: I refuse to engage with people who ask questions I can’t answer without chanting moral absolutes.

That’s not a worldview. That’s a coping mechanism for people who find cause and effect too hard.

You’re not interested in whether a policy produces peace, stability, deterrence or even long-term advantage for your own side. You’re interested in moral catharsis. In punishing the wicked, smiting the evildoers and feeling clean afterward. It’s the foreign policy equivalent of burning witches.

And what makes this dumb, not just wrong, but actively disqualifying you from adult conversation, is that it refuses to process consequence.

Let’s break that down further:

Sub 1. You can’t reason with someone who treats disagreement as heresy.
When you say “I won’t talk to people who don’t believe in evil,” you’re admitting you can’t distinguish between disagreement and depravity. You’re saying: If you don’t share my metaphysical priors, you’re not just wrong, you’re morally defective.

That’s how ideologues and fanatics operate. Strategists and philosophers, however, deal with people who don’t share their assumptions all the time. That’s literally the job.

Sub 2. You're not asking what works. You’re asking what feels good.
This is the key distinction between policy and theater.

Smart people ask: “If I act, will it achieve my stated goal?”
You ask: “If I act, will it affirm my moral disgust?”

This is why people like you always support the next war.

Sub 3. It reveals an inability to hold multiple truths at once.
Yes, the Iranian regime is brutal. Also: indiscriminate military strikes tend to kill civilians, provoke retaliation and strengthen hardliners. These things are simultaneously true.

But your mind can’t accommodate that tension. You flatten everything into one big moral binary where once you label something “evil,” no further thinking is required. It’s cognitive offloading and it’s dumb because it rejects complexity in a domain that requires it most.

Sub 4. It treats politics as a religious war—without even the consistency of religion.
“I don’t talk to people who don’t believe in evil” is not a policy stance. It’s a self-imposed lobotomy. It means: I’m not here to think, I’m here to worship my disgust. But unlike religion, it offers no redemption, no coherence, no code. It's just about presumed righteous fury.

The dumbest part of this is you think this moral absolutism makes you wise. You think refusing to engage with anyone outside your moral tribe makes you principled. What it actually makes you is useless: to peace, to diplomacy, to strategy and to the very concept of accountability.

To continue with the rest of your so-called argument...

Step 3: “If the US became a repressive theocracy, attacking it would be reasonable.”
Ah, the hypothetical pivot. You just compared the most powerful nuclear-armed country in the world to Iran, then used that thought experiment to claim moral consistency. Let’s unpack how absurd this is.

First: the US has been repressive. It has funded death squads. It has dropped nuclear weapons. By your logic, someone somewhere should have attacked US nuclear facilities decades ago. And if you say, “No, because we’re a democracy,” then congratulations, you’ve admitted your logic is not moral, it’s tribal. It's not about evil, it's about who you see as evil.

Second: attacking Iran is not a thought experiment. You’re talking about actual military strikes on actual nuclear facilities in a country of 85 million people. And your justification is “well, I don’t hate Persians, just the regime.” Wonderful. That’ll be very comforting to the civilians who would die in the fallout. Tell the corpses it was all very morally sound.

Third: if any ideology you don’t like justifies pre-emptive strikes, then every state is a target. China. Russia. India. Turkey. The list goes on. But of course, you’re not applying this logic universally. You’re applying it selectively, because this isn’t about wickedness. It’s about who you think deserves to die.

Step 4: “I don’t care about facts. We need a paradigm shift.”
And there it is: the moment when the mask fully drops. You admit facts don’t matter to you. You just want to feel right.

Let me translate that: you don’t want to debate. You want moral license to believe whatever supports your pre-selected enemy narrative. When someone challenges you with history, evidence or strategic analysis, you ignore it. That’s how cults work. This is how warmongers talk right before the bombs drop. It's how people act when they know they’re wrong but don’t want to give it up.

Your “paradigm shift” is not visionary. It’s just you giving yourself permission to ignore everything inconvenient. Iraq? Libya? Doesn’t matter. Civilian death tolls? Doesn’t matter. Diplomacy? Doesn’t matter. You’ve made up your mind. The world must conform. Where have we seen that before? Oh right... Gaza.

Step 5: “If you don’t believe in good and evil, we’re talking past each other.”
No, we’re not talking past each other. You’ve just run out of arguments and retreated into cosmic language because your position has no leg to stand on.

Let’s be clear: the world is full of evil. But the presence of evil doesn’t mean we drop bombs until it feels better. That’s not morality. That’s cowardice dressed up as courage. It’s easy to scream about evil. It’s harder to explain how your cure won’t kill more than the disease.

And the irony is, you don’t actually believe in good and evil. You believe in your good and their evil. That’s why you’d never apply your logic to Saudi Arabia, to Israel, to the US under Trump, or to any “friendly” regime. Your whole worldview collapses the moment you apply it consistently.

This is why your political mumblings every time are like a child’s drawing. It pretends to be moral but it’s tribal and incoherent. It substitutes certainty for wisdom and posture for policy. And worst of all, it’s been tried but it’s called failure. Your ideas don’t need a “paradigm shift.” They need a burial.

As I said: You’re setting up a position that can’t really be challenged, because every shift in policy, whether engagement or hostility, is framed as just another method of containment. That makes your theory immune to contradiction, which is a problem if we want to understand history analytically rather than narratively.

That doesn't make it a strong theory at all as it cannot explain anything...

That doesn't make it a strong theory at all as it cannot explain anything... — Benkei

What doesn't it explain?

The JCPOA?

That's one of them yes.

The JCPOA does not align with your core theory that says letting Iran develop peacefully was never an option. If you want to claim the JCPOA was a “carrot” toward eventual suppression still contradicts the framing: that any development at all is intolerable. So which is it?

But seriously, what would disprove your theory?

From what you've written so far it doesn't seem to be possible which is what makes it "unfair" (but also not a theory; there's no theory of everything after all).

The current Harvard estimate is 400 000 Palestinians "missing" — boethius

That's something I've not stumbled into and something totally on a different scale than the Gaza health officials are themselves stating. It would basically mean that Hamas and Palestinian officials are hugely downplaying the death toll. (It is a possibility, perhaps)

Ethnic cleansing of simply moving the Palestinians I don't see how that could be a worse crime, since if they are still alive the situation could be reversed by the world or then at least compensated. — boethius

Ethnic cleansing on a huge scale just happened now in Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan didn't get at all negative publicity, especially when they flatly denied it and said that Armenians would be wellcome to stay.

And basically that ethnic cleansing would mean a repeat of the Nakba. Then 720 000 or so Palestinians out of 1,4 million were moved off from Israeli controlled areas. Hence just to finish this you would have to move about 5 million Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank to somewhere else.

Now if you think they would be compensated or the move could be reversed, I'm not sure that would happen. But I'm sure that the Bibi administration is surely salivating about these kinds of plans. For the exrremists, that is their solution.

The JCPOA does not align with your core theory that says letting Iran develop peacefully was never an option. If you want to claim the JCPOA was a “carrot” toward eventual suppression still contradicts the framing: that any development at all is intolerable. So which is it? — Benkei

Iran wasn't the only threat in the region during the time the JCPOA was established, so this could easily be explained as an attempt at placating Iran with promises of American business while solving other pressing issues.

American business that, of course, never came. So I view the JCPOA as an entirely phoney endeavor to begin with - something which the US was never truly committed to, and which Israel would have never been able to accept in the long-term either.

Ultimately you're talking about an episode of a few years amidst a historical trend of nearly a century. Again - trees and forests.

As the saying goes: "politics makes for strange bedfellows", and it appears to me you're underestimating the capriciousness of geopolitics, where parties will pretend to make amends one day, and be back at each other's throats the next.

But seriously, what would disprove your theory? — Benkei

Maybe it's just a good theory if you're seemingly so keen on disproving it but unable to?

What would disprove it of course is a long-lasting move towards peace between the US, Israel and Iran - a pipedream to be sure. The reason we don't see that, and we'll probably never see that, is because geopolitical realities put these countries at odds with each other pretty much by default.