Israel’s defense minister warned Saturday that “Tehran will burn” if Iran continues firing missiles, as the two countries traded blows a day after Israel launched a blistering surprise attack on Iranian nuclear and military sites, killing several top generals.
Israel’s military said the strikes also killed nine senior scientists and experts involved in Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s U.N. ambassador said 78 people were killed and more than 320 wounded.
Iran retaliated by launching waves of drones and ballistic missiles at Israel, where explosions lit the night skies over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and shook buildings. The Israeli military urged civilians, already rattled by 20 months of war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, to head to shelter for hours. Health officials said three people were killed and dozens wounded.
I’m not really on either side of this conflict, both are assholes IMO.
But it seems to me Israel just demonstrated why it is that Iran wants to have nuclear weapons to defend itself.
Also it was kind of USA that started all this bullshit, undermining and overturning a democratic government in Iran, to instate the Shah as a totalitarian dictator.
So I guess it’s understandable that Iran doesn’t trust USA, and Israel by proxy because it is heavily supported by USA.
AFAIK the sanctions against Iran is mostly because Iran want’s to be able to defend itself against superior forces.
You need to be. One side is a signatory to a nuclear nonproliferation agreement who is trying to create a nuclear energy program for civilian energy, under watchdog guidance for 40+ years.
The other side is Israel. A nation committing a genocide, with the full backing and support of another nation, the US, who itself is the only nation, in the history of the world, to use nuclear weapons. Ever.
One side has really good propaganda and makes you think “both sides are bad.”
the mullah regime is pretty fucking awful.
And that means they cannot have nuclear energy?
It means take anything they say they’re doing with a block of salt.
same in all directions, really.
And yet you seem to be taking one side at face value while dismissing the other out of hand…
Seems less about reasonable skepticism and more about implicit and unreasonable bias.
I’m saying that one nation has no “right” to stop the internal actions of another, especially a nation who is committing genocide at this very moment.
But that wasn’t your original point, your original point was that one side was bad and the other wasn’t. That was the entire crux of this argument. Are you abandoning that now to just say “Israel bad, all else is irrelevant”?
No doubt Iran is bad too, the death warrant on Salman Rushdie is very clear evidence of that.
The USs actions in world war two are an odd thing to bring up in this context. It was a radically different set of circumstances, 80 years ago, and none of the people involved are alive anymore.
It’s entirely irrelevant.
May as well point out that the US was the driver for the creation of those watchdog groups and is a leading force in nuclear disarmament. It’s just as relevant to if Iran has a nuclear weapons program or Israels justification for attacking.
Iranian opposition to US strategic interests in the region giving the US a strong motivation to let anything that makes them weaker happen is a perfectly good thing to mention.
irrelevant? I’d say unnecessary and yet game changing.
What does that even mean? How is what a nation did generations ago relevant to two different nations in a totally different scenario?
do you not realize there are people still alive today who were when the US nuked two cities?
No, what I don’t understand is what relevance that has to this situation. The US using nukes on Japan 80 years ago doesn’t make Iran making nukes justified. It doesn’t validate Iran not having nukes. It neither strengthens nor weakens Israeli claims of an Iranian weapons program, and it doesn’t make a preemptive strike to purportedly disable them just or unjust.
It seems like you’re arguing that the US nuked Japan and therefore Iran, a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, is allowed to have nukes. Israel is falsely characterizing their civilian energy program, and we know this because of their backing by the US.
It’s just a non-sequitor, particularly when there’s relevant reasons why US involvement complicated matters. .
It is not that it makes them justified, you seem to think I support what the US did. No. I say that the US has no right to pretend to worry about and therefore control other nations when the US has a documented history of using them.
If anything, the world could be “within its rights” to “preemptively strike” the US!
“Look, I know I used meth and got thoroughly addicted and it completely ruined my life and it has taken years to get to a place where I’m able to have a semblance of a life, but I can’t tell anyone else not to use meth! That would be hypocritical of me, since I did! No, no one has any right to ever share what they’ve learned through experience.”
This is the hypothetical situation you’re arguing for.
Yes, I understand what you’re saying, it’s not a complicated position.
Your position is that national reputation matters more than anything else. And most pointedly, the national reputation of your allies matters more than any other argument.
What I’m saying is, is that the actions the US, or any other nation, took before the people currently running things were even born have no bearing on current events. Nations aren’t people, and they don’t possess a national character that you can use to try to predict their behavior or judge them.
Would the world be justified in concluding that it’s only a matter of time before Germany does some more genocide? Before Japan unleashes atrocities across Asia?
If you’re getting down to it, the US can’t control other nations, beyond stick and carrot means. And the US has the same right to try to keep Iran from getting nukes as Iran does in trying to get them. Because again, nations aren’t people. They don’t have rights, they have capabilities.
And all of that’s irrelevant! Because the question is, is Israel justified in attacking Iran? The perception of hypocrisy in US foreign policy isn’t relevant to that question.
To be fair, Iran is an authoritarian theocracy that has called for the total annihilation of Israel. That may agree with what many crazy people on Lemmy want too, but it cannot really be called defensive. It’s not as Iran just wants to “be left alone”. In the eyes of Israel Iran is an existential threat, therefore the attack did not come out of a vacuum.
Pakistan is the other lone stander that absolutely refuses to recognize Israel and also happens to have nukes that can reach Israel, yet they’ve done jack on that sentiment, despite the ISI having a history of outplaying Mossad.
Iran wants nukes for the same reason everyone else has nukes. It’s just a gg ez ace up your sleeve that can be utilized to prevent this exact conventional warfare escalation by threatening to use your nukes, which is exactly what Israel does to the other surrounding arab states. Moreover it would be dumb to nuke Israel when they keep daydreaming about reconquering the holy land, which would be impossible if its covered in radiation.
Pakistan and India’s LoC is a massive militarized flashpoint that imo suprasses the DMZ, yet overtime they have a fight, it over after a few days when they nuke threat comes out and everyone signs a ceasefire agreement no questions asked.
Iran wants the same deal so they can be left alone to run their authoritarian regime in peace lol.
Israel engages in similar rhetoric. I wonder if the sentiment would be “Iran just preemptively defended itself” amongst our politics and media if Iran was to strike nuclear facilities and assassinate military leaders and scientists in Israel.
Israel should be annihilated if the occupiers refuse to leave.
The world would be a better place.
if we look at history then israel is a existential threat for not just all its neighbour but the entire humanity.
you do realize that apart from bombing school full of kids and sniping pregnant women, israel also supplies spyware and weapon to far worse countries than iran and even some of the most violent drug cartels of the world ? and they do so with full support of cia because they have hijacked both parties using the “aid” we give them.
You need to put down the propaganda. There are shades of gray between black and white and it’s white weird to think Israel is THE WORST considering all that is going on in the world.
Trump going crazy because of his birthday protests and lunching the nukes seems more of a “the whole world” existential threat than the hate of yet another small country in the Middle East at war.
and you think israel is not the major factor as why trump won the presidency ? netanyahu wanted trump as president and there is no doubt there was more pro-trump hasbara propaganda than russian. aipac has been funding spineless hacks in dnc local primaries vs strong progressives for decades. schumer has openly said that above all his job is to keep dnc pro-israel. harris chose to risk loosing the election than even say anything remotely critical of israel when they were burning people alive in hospitals and shooting UN. aipac has been doing all to support any legislation that give more power to trump to suppress any pro-palestine activity. and do they care if trump use it to kill a thousand anti-ice protestors ? no they will do all to help trump turn us into dictatorship if it ensures they don’t have to care about public sentiment against them (which it is overwhelmingly in both red and blue states)
The fact they have a reward for the death of Salman Rushdie is enough for me to know they are criminally insane.
Like WTF! Death penalty for writing a book?
The Iranian government cannot be trusted. But it’s the same for Israel. They deserve each other.
Why does Iran want total annihilation of Israel?
it’s a muslim country, check other muslim countries and their statements during any war.
this doesn’t answer the question!
Note that Iran is theorized by the West without evidence to want nuclear weapons; it’s not in any way established fact that they’re trying to make them.
It is pretty well established that the levels that they have enriched their uranium is above that deemed for “civilian use”. They have a highly scrutinized nuclear program, and we have a lot of information available to us about it.
Yeah, but it’s “the west” with this evidence and clearly we can’t trust anything they say, no matter how defensible the evidence is. Because west bad, or aomething.
Since we are going a little off topic, do you know what is interesting about the West vs East rhetoric?
It can be traced back to Ancient Greeks and the Persian wars. The Greeks saw the Persian invaders as the “Barbarians from the East” and themselves as the “Democratic West”, and because Greek written language dominated at the time the rhetoric took quite the hold and is still a part of our rhetoric today.
Da shah is with yo ma