It's only pointless as long as you ignore their legitimate attempts of building nukes. If you don't want them to have nukes, then military action is the only way to stop them unfortunately. Because if/once they do get a nuke, it'll be impossible to stop them after that, and they'll hold the entire middle east hostage, so might as well do everything you can to prevent that before it happens, now that Russia is too busy to lend them a hand.
>Iran has generally been an active and persistant threat for many US firms long before this war began
I doubt this. Iran's leadership, like any dictatorship, just wants to be left alone to subjugate its people and enjoy the masses of wealth and power they have. When you're in such a privileged but fragile position, you don't go around poking the hornet's nest looking to start a fight with the biggest military in the world, because it would mean your end.
But Iran will probably retaliate now that they got attacked. OR, it will be a false flag to justify boots on the ground. IDK.
They held most of gaza hostage, blocking their access to international waters off gaza's own coast, based on the actions of a much smaller subset of those people. That seems about the most classical example of holding hostage as it gets.
But it was closed after a civil war within Gaza where Hamas took over circa 2007, not in response to a war with "other" countries. The blockade has been in places for nearly 20 years.
I think if Israel believes that weapons can be smuggled via sea, which is reasonable given the smuggling via Sinai and Rafah crossing, then they took the rational step of mitigation this risk.
Gazans could smuggle in arms, ergo refugees can't escape out into international waters towards whoever might receive them?
That doesn't make sense, it seems as if they're held hostage by Israel forced to stay in the very land where their own terrorist government might impress them into servitude towards use against Israel.
"I doubt this. Iran's leadership, like any dictatorship, just wants to be left alone to subjugate its people and enjoy the masses of wealth and power they have."
So ... that is why they only cared about themself and did not involve with Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, ..
> It's only pointless as long as you ignore their legitimate attempts of building nukes. If you don't want them to have nukes, then military action is the only way to stop them unfortunately. Because if/once they do get a nuke, it'll be impossible to stop them after that, and they'll hold the entire middle east hostage so might as well do everything you can to prevent that before it happens.
Obama had a perfectly good deal in place with Iran before Trump fucked it all up. Military action was not the only way to stop them.
>Obama had a perfectly good deal in place with Iran before Trump fucked it all up.
What makes you think the Iranian regime is trustworthy to actually respect that deal and not just continue building nukes on the side while using diplomacy to string everyone along that they aren't?
You know who else had a deal? Ukraine. Did that deal stop them from being attacked by Russia? Can you stop a military invasion by waving the piece of paper with the deal in the enemy's face? Because that's why nukes are the best insurance policy over deals and why Iran desperately wants them.
How can people be so gullible to blindly trust Iran's word thinking a deal means anything?
The two deals you mention are not at all comparable.
Ukraine's deal was vague promises with vague consequences, which of course materialized into zero ability to stop a land invasion.
The Iranian deal before its destruction was very much concerned with safeguarding against any attempt to "potentially circumvent" and gave auditors alot of freedom to investigate without obstruction.
Your partisan posting in regards to the notion of the war being pointless indicate that you're coming more from a place of emotion than logic. I can empathize, but strongly caution that its important we discuss the facts of arguments rather than gesturing that all but you fail to see the light.
> What makes you think the Iranian regime is trustworthy
I don't think anyone believes the Iranian regime has ever been trustworthy. Probably why part of Obama's deal included inspections, surveillance, and monitoring.
Obama’s deal specifically excluded surprise inspections (often referred to as "Anywhere, Anytime"). So, if you are trying to hide something, and you know that the inspection is coming, you will succeed.
You're right, but neglect to mention that infrastructure necessary to enrich uranium is not something so easily squirrled away and hidden while also dealing with radioactive isotopes.
It was a treaty, many concessions existed to ensure both parties were comfortable with the arrangement. But that does not at all suggest that the agreement didnt account for foul play on either side.
It was an incredibly solid diplomatic option employed for several years, during which the perpetual "months away from nuclear weapons" rhetoric never proved well-founded.
Iran's existance is perpetually an existential threat when the only alternative to diplomacy is its total destruction at the expense of American and Iranian lives.
> You're right, but neglect to mention that infrastructure necessary to enrich uranium is not something so easily squirrled away and hidden while also dealing with radioactive isotopes.
But Iran did violate the agreement. The agreement was not just between the US and Iran, it had other parties as well. Yet, when US withdrew, Iran immediately violated it. Why? If they had no goal to pursue military-grade enrichment, why violate the agreement?
Biden's admin did not resume the agreement as well due to those violations by Iran.
I see this agreement as failure for the reason that it did not prevent in a structural way Iran from acquiring enriched material, with or without violations.
> Iran's existance is perpetually an existential threat when the only alternative to diplomacy is its total destruction at the expense of American and Iranian lives.
I do not believe that Iran is interested in diplomacy at all. They were never interested in diplomacy. Why did they fund all these groups around the Middle East if IR is so peaceful?
No, Iran kept following the accord during almost a year. I think they broke it after a french company got sanctioned in the US (or menaced with sanctions) for dealing with Iran, and french government, as usual, did nothing. Basically acknowledging US laws power over Europe.
The "legitimate attempts of building nukes" as claimed by the same folks who, ~9 months ago said "Iran's nuclear facilities have been obliterated, and suggestions otherwise are fake news" (https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/irans-nuclear-fa...).
>They've been claiming Iran is about to destroy Israel every 6 months for the past 40 years too
Remember STUXNET? Have you thought for a second that maybe if their centrifuges and nuclear facilities weren't constantly attacked and sabotaged by US and Israel every step of the way for the past few decades, plus having their top nuclear scientists assassinated every now and then, they could have had nukes a long time ago when those warnings were issued without those constant roadblocks setting them back?
So what? Pakistan got nukes and still has them. Despite decades of antipathy and ongoing conflicts over Kashmir they have managed to restrain themselves from firing one at India, or even saber-rattling.
The thing about nukes is that they massively disincentivize military attacks on your sovereignty. That strikes me as a perfectly legitimate reason to acquire them.
So the administration lied and Iran‘s nuclear capabilities weren’t “completely obliterated” back in June, and saying otherwise isn’t “fake news”?
It can’t be both ways. Either way the administration is lying, so I just don’t trust any of the reasons given for the current conflict.
The sad part is this is exactly what Trump and his administration, as well as the larger Republican Party, have wanted for years. My inherent distrust of every government action until I see overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The moment IR gets nukes, Saudis and all the other countries around them will get nukes as well.
I don’t understand why everyone is so hell bent on not preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. We have enough of this crap already, and the last thing we need is more nukes.
I think you're missing the crux of the point: why is anything the Trump administration says taken at face value? They have no commitment to the truth, whatsoever.
If Iran was on the path to developing nukes, the correct path here was to:
1. Show the evidence to congress, and declare war legally based on the facts.
2. Get international buy-in, and work with our allies (all of whom would very much like to prevent Iran from procuring a nuclear weapon).
This was a hastily started war with flimsy goals and seemingly no real urgency. And one of the first things we did as part of our attack was to bomb an elementary school, killing hundreds of children.
Critics of this war aren't "hell bent on not preventing the spread of nuclear weapons". We're mostly looking at the situation, and thinking "this is not great".
> I think you're missing the crux of the point: why is anything the Trump administration says taken at face value? They have no commitment to the truth, whatsoever.
No, I am not. It has nothing to do with Trump his abilities to speak only truth or always lie.
>The legacy PC makers are lucky that Ubuntu doesn’t work on this
If Linux would be able to be installed and fully working on this out of the box, then the laptop wouldn't cost 600 dollars. Apple profits from monetizing people tied to its iOS+MacOS ecosystem. If you're not gonna be a MacOS/iOS user, you're worthless to them and selling you a laptop for only 600 dollars is not good for business anymore.
Well, then the theory that they are stupid is false, since at the least they are very smart at blackmail, lying, cunning, manipulation, backstabbing, machiavellianism, etc.
Yep. They're stupid at what the general public considers intelligence, generally academic excellence. But they're smart at doing whatever it takes to get to the top.
>That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills
Reminds me how I double and triple check the emails I sent out to the higher ups in the company to make sure spelling and language tone was good, while in his emails Epstein was like "wazzup retards, kiddie fiddling party at my place" and getting replies from 3 world leaders and 5 CEOs. Then him and Israel's' former PM were both struggling to spell PALANTIR over the phone. It's a big club and you're not in it.
>Meta is where smart people go to trade in their ambition and morals for stock grants and golden handcuffs.
Only Meta? Why not most of SV that's driven by ad revenue and data collection? Which big-tech company that pays crazy money is actually making the world a better place?
Meta didn't get a school targeted and bombed this past week. So I don't think GDPR fines issued by an unelected government body supporting Israel's genocide and hypocritically supporting dictators war crimes who are not Putin in exchange for cheap fossil fuels that aren't Russian, is an objective measurement of morality. Because it's not.
EU government is not Pius, it's just as corrupt as any other institution run by career politicians funded by lobbyists. Find a better yardstick of morality than GDPR fines.
Edit: why flagged? I don't care about points, just want to know what goes through people's heads.
Non-technical people haven't even heard of OpenClaw or Github, let alone know how to use and deploy them. Non-technical people don't even know what OS their Samsung or iPhone is called.
If you can find something on Github and deploy it on your system, you're part of the technical crowd.
>My hairdresser knew all about it and had ordered a Mac mini.
Your hairdresser can't be a technical person because they're a hairdresser ?? I know a surgeon who writes FOSS software as a hobby. What does profession have to do with being technical or not? Most technical people are self taught anyway.
I know them very well, and they are not a coder, or a 'technical person' by a broad HN definition.
What I'm saying is that we are at the point where technology is so pervasive in our society, and the lure of AI so seductive, that many more people are excited to try things out than I might have expected.
I suppose it has similarities to the early to mid 1980s and the home computing revolution. Where many people thought they should have a computer at home, even if they were not sure what they'd do with it.
>The problem is that 30-50% of voters would just look at that and say: Why are you spending €250B on corporate subsidies instead of giving us €250B?!
Why is it a "problem" for voters (aka the taxpayers) to ask such questions to their leaders to justify on how their tax money is being spent? To me this feels like basic transparency that keeps democracy in check.
To me it's the problem if politicians don't have or don't want to answer those questions because then, either they're grifting or they're incompetent.
It's not like we don't have a laundry list of mismanagement, couch corruption cough, of governments spending money on bullshit with nothing to show for, while stuff healthcare keeps being underfunded.
So yeah, if you spend my money, you better have an answer.
Personally I don't believe anyone is missing out on anything here.
But rvz earlier claimed that Europe is missing out, because US investors are investing in a European company. That's kind of surprising to me, so asking if they also believe that the US is "missing out" whenever European investors invest in US companies, or if that sentiment only goes one way.
Exactly. State retirement in Europes is not free nor great. We pay extra in taxes for it and it's only great for the present day retirees, not for those paying into the system right now who will retire into the future. It's the same as US social security, it's not some extra perk that Europeans have over Americans.
Top tier scientists aren't gonna be swayed by European state retirement systems.
It's only pointless as long as you ignore their legitimate attempts of building nukes. If you don't want them to have nukes, then military action is the only way to stop them unfortunately. Because if/once they do get a nuke, it'll be impossible to stop them after that, and they'll hold the entire middle east hostage, so might as well do everything you can to prevent that before it happens, now that Russia is too busy to lend them a hand.
>Iran has generally been an active and persistant threat for many US firms long before this war began
I doubt this. Iran's leadership, like any dictatorship, just wants to be left alone to subjugate its people and enjoy the masses of wealth and power they have. When you're in such a privileged but fragile position, you don't go around poking the hornet's nest looking to start a fight with the biggest military in the world, because it would mean your end.
But Iran will probably retaliate now that they got attacked. OR, it will be a false flag to justify boots on the ground. IDK.
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