Originally Posted by
tartare
To me, absent intelligence and any publicly disclosed hard evidence, noting Netanyahu has been saying they're weeks/months away from breakout for years now - there's one glaring indicator of the regime's true intent, and that's the hundred or so metres of rock and concrete above the Fordow centrifuge halls.
If you're pursuing a non-military nuclear program, then why have you deeply buried it?
Build your facilities on the surface and let the IAEA in - problem solved. You get your peaceful nuclear power and medicine program, the world breathes easy.
Until then, the world has the right to be suspicious. When a regime with the track record of Iran builds such a deeply buried facility, that alone is a trigger to act in my personal opinion.
Oh, so you then say you have a right to a nuclear weapon because the little Satan has them already and you need to potentially be able to defend yourselves ? (yes I know they've been supposedly deemed un-Islamic, but bear with me here)
You don't fear the Jews - you hate them - and there's a big difference.
Yes they're aggressive. Yes they're now arguably genocidal in Gaza - shelling starving people running for food - utterly egregious.
Is their leader a war criminal? Possibly. But common sense tells me I know who I'd rather have the bomb. And I respect the hell out of their fighter pilots and spooks.
Is that a double standard - most likely.
Ten years ago I busted my ankle. As I lay in the bay being prepped for surgery, the anaesthetic technician and I got talking. He was Iranian, shifted to Australia as a student.
I asked him "...are they really pursing the bomb?"
He rolled his eyes, laughed at the naivety of my question and said emphatically "...oh yes, indeed!"
Iran as a sovereign state has a legitimate right to self defence one assumes. When their habitual adversaries have TNW's, it seems arbitrary to accept any one country having an arsenal of WMD and then objecting to those that live with some justifiable reservations in the altruism of those that have plonked one or two of these off downtown, and for their acquisition of the same weapon to be unacceptable.
Not in favour of Iran having WMD, not sure that our own teams have are righteous to the extent we also are not reasonably considered an existential threat to Iran etc.
Israel's response to the heinous murder of its citizens has played out as a greek tragedy as they have acted in a manner that is a mirror of that they objected to. There is no honour in what has occurred in Gaza.
Israel should be able to live in peace, however that would be a more likely proposition if they stopped their disenfranchisement of the Palestinians. Iran's support of what we call terrorist organisations is not helpful to peace, but then shooting your own children in the head for not wearing a cloth that was a man made invention 1400 years ago, used to subjugate the females of the population in part (there are some historical justifications that may have been reasonable in 760 AD, they look a little tired today).
The Arab nations who could readily assimilate the Palestinians into their empty lands, if not their society, don't.
Why should there be any intelligent life in the universe, given there is precious little intelligence on this damned rock.