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  • If USA beginns a War with Iran, also Rusia and China do against the US. The EU in the middle between them

  • Is reading comprehension really that bad? The argument is that Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons. The justification for attacking them is that they need to be stopped before they cross the line.

    I'm not saying I agree with this line of reasoning, but the clear idea is that Iran doesn't currently have nuclear weapons.

    • Is reading comprehension really that bad? The argument is that Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons.

      For more than three decades, a familiar refrain has echoed from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.

      Since 1992, when Netanyahu addressed Israel’s Knesset as an MP, he has consistently claimed that Tehran is only years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. “Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb,” he declared at the time. The prediction was later repeated in his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism.

      The sense of imminent threat has repeatedly shaped Netanyahu’s engagement with United States officials. In 2002, he appeared before a US congressional committee, advocating for the invasion of Iraq and suggesting that both Iraq and Iran were racing to obtain nuclear weapons. The US-led invasion of Iraq followed soon after, but no weapons of mass destruction were found.

      In 2009, a US State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed him telling members of Congress that Iran was just one or two years away from nuclear capability.

      Three years later, at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu famously brandished a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate his claims that Iran was closer than ever to the nuclear threshold. “By next spring, at most by next summer … they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said in 2012.

      Now, more than 30 years after his first warning, Israel has conducted attacks against Iran while Netanyahu maintains that the threat remains urgent. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” he argued recently, suggesting the timeline could be months, even weeks.

  • Consider that Iran has already taken down - allegedly - as many as four F-35Is, I can think of a few reasons why the US has been reluctant to tangle with either country.

    Trump's rush to invade Iran only happened after Israel preemptively launched their military decapitation attack and missile bombardment "preemptive" strikes. The US has been dragging its heels on an Iran invasion since the 2002 Millennium Challenge suggested an all out war with Iran would be a disaster for US international fighting capacity. The definition of a pyrrhic victory.

    Already, the US deployment away from the Pacific Rim has resulted in Chinese ships occupying territorial waters that the US had historically patrolled.

    So this is already shaping up to be a historic internationally reorienting military blunder, even without nukes involved. Imagine the US trying to do an Iraq-style land war in Russia, plus an invasion of Iran, plus the low-key war with Yemen and Somalia, plus our military operations in North Africa, plus policing the Pacific, plus doing our military exercises on the US/Mexico border, plus whatever dumb horseshit military parades Trump wants to see.

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