Israel launches strikes against Iran, Defense Minister says
165vinnyglennon1926/13/2025, 12:22:16 AM cnn.com ↗
Comments (192)
Aloisius · 1d ago
I hope the US manages to stays out of this one.
Hopefully Iran does a little retaliation and then goes back to their covert proxy war rather than it escalating to open warfare. I honestly don't even know if either Iran or Israel could sustain open warfare given the distances involved without dragging in other forces to help. I would rather those forces not be ours.
guelo · 20h ago
At a minimum the US will veto any vote at the UNSC declaring Israel's action illegal. There are no laws or institutions that the US won't subvert to back Israel. Also, Trump already tweeted that he's sending Israel more bombs and UK admitted that it "helped" the attack. Israel got buy in from the west, no matter how much Rubio at State pretends it has nothing to do with us.
mupuff1234 · 19h ago
Please explain how allowing Iran to get nukes is in way or form helpful to the state of the world?
History will view this operation as a great success - and exactly what the west should be doing, a precision operation to take out advanced military capabilities of authoritarian regimes.
Imagine a world where Russia & North Korea had no nukes.
Yes, Israel has done lots of terrible things (but so have it's neighbors), but this one is pretty awesome.
OkayPhysicist · 17h ago
Nuclear weapons have done more for world peace than any other invention in history. Countries with a nuclear option are effectively uninvadable, and that pushes conflicts away from the grueling total wars of the Napoleonic and World Wars, and into constrained, limited proxy wars. Want Israel to stop committing atrocities? Nothing better for it than nuclear armed neighbors. Want to keep Israel from ceasing to exist? That's why they've got the bomb.
Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
mkfs · 14h ago
The more countries with nuclear weapons, and the more unstable or extremist they are, the greater the likelihood of an eventual detonation, even if accidental. 40 years ago, everyone understood this and agreed nuclear proliferation was bad, the US and USSR committed to reducing their stockpiles, and Reagan himself expressed a desire for complete nuclear disarmament, in part because of the near-catastrophe of the Abel Archer incident--a catastrophe only narrowly avoided despite the US and USSR both being stable superpowers led by rational actors. Anyone encouraging nuclear proliferation for every tin-pot dictatorship or gay-lynching theocracy to make the world safer is insane.
> effectively uninvadable
Yet Israel was invaded during the Yom Kippur War when it had nuclear weapons, the UK was invaded by Argentina during the Falklands War, Russia was invaded briefly by Ukraine (Kursk). And Israel arguably just demonstrated that developing a survivable nuclear deterrent probably isn't as easy as many thought. (Ukraine, to a lesser extent, also with Spiderweb.)
> Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
On the contrary, it sends a strong "fuck around and find out" message to any country pursuing nuclear weapons. And if Israel is capable of this kind of decapitating strike against a country's nuclear program, imagine what the US (or China) could pull off.
runarberg · 11h ago
> > Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
> On the contrary, it sends a strong "fuck around and find out" message to any country pursuing nuclear weapons.
We have yet to see how effective these attacks were in preventing Iran from getting the bomb. Early reports seem to suggest, not that effective.
I, however, am more concerned with the fact that Israel—a nuclear armed state—gets to be the arbiter of nuclear non-proliferation. The hypocrisy of these actions should not escape anyone, and it sends the message that some states are allowed to keep the bomb in defiance to international treaties. If Iran has to suffer for wrongly pursuing the bomb, why doesn’t Israel have to suffer equally, for much worse crimes than Iran?
Validating these attacks on the grounds of nuclear non-proliferation is setting up a false dichotomy. There is an available third option here, which Israel seems hellbent on disrupting. We could negotiate with Iran, and have them dismantle their nuclear weapons program (or at least, not pursuing it further). This has worked in the past, and—and I’m just an observer here—given the fact that Israel is well past the point of international sanctions for their Gaza genocide, the west has another ace up their sleeve and could even promise to sanction Israel for their nuclear weapons program in return.
HaZeust · 11h ago
>"Israel is well past the point of international sanctions for their Gaza genocide, the west has another ace up their sleeve and could even promise to sanction Israel for their nuclear weapons program in return."
Given how gray this comment already is, I'm not afraid to go against what seems to be the HN-hivemind today: Good luck with that proposal, last week Rubio himself stated there's a no-tolerance policy for anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and such behavior can be the single determining factor against one's ability to legally migrate here. This administration is blindly pro-Israel, much to its detriment - and likely its battle between dovish and hawkish foreign policy; because they're damned either way.
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msgodel · 17h ago
In these situations I like to point out that Pakistan also has nukes, Muslim terrorists, and skirmishes with another ally of ours (India) and there's no political campaign to crush them over it.
A lot of this is just a consequence of repeated exposure to foreign propaganda. It's not reasonable policy.
ethbr1 · 16h ago
The fact of nukes is that they are both a get out of international jail free card and security against existential threat.
Previous decade arms control understood this, and understood something very valuable needed to be offered to keep countries from pursuing them.
Current nuclear arms control is failing (Iran, North Korea) because the international community is pretending they aren't worth pursuing at almost any cost.
If a country wants to pursue a foreign policy antagonistic or counter to the US, they'd be insane not to develop nuclear weapons.
bawis · 1h ago
"In these situations I like to point out that Pakistan also has nukes, Muslim terrorists ..."
Tell me, did the "Muslim terrorists" nuked Hiroshima and Nakasaki? did the "Muslim terrorists" massacre the Vitenamese and Cambodians ? What about the current genocide occuring in Gaza ?
Dear god I can't even articulate how cunning is/was the western media when it comes to brainwash their people.
tomatotomato37 · 10h ago
Arguably if India had the intel and military means/technology to quash Pakistan's nuclear program without a full-on invasion at the time they would have. I'm sure several other countries would have too, but the ability just wasn't there during the 70s
crypto_is_king · 11h ago
Does Pakistan make speeches declaring that they will wipe Israel off the map?
esalman · 10h ago
> Countries with a nuclear option are effectively uninvadable
That's second amendment for nuclear weapons. Inside US people are generally nice to each other because you don't know who's carrying.
amendegree · 16h ago
Right because if Russia and China didn’t have nuclear weapons they’d be in a war or gearing up for one…hmmm
runarberg · 18h ago
Perhaps we shouldn’t leave it to states that own their own nuclear bombs, in defiance with international treaties (like the non-proliferation treaty) to dictate who can and cannot have nuclear bombs, and how to deal with countries that shouldn’t.
Imagine a world where the USA and Israel had no nukes.
There are much better methods to prevent Iran from getting nukes. Methods which have been shown to be effective. And in my opinion, the world really needs to denuclearize Israel (as well as any other nuclear armed nations).
mkfs · 17h ago
> Imagine a world where the USA and Israel had no nukes.
The US and Russia were committed to working towards that world, at least back in the 80s.
dlubarov · 7h ago
What do you mean about defiance of the NPT? Israel isn't a party to it; Iran is a party but hasn't complied with it.
runarberg · 6h ago
Neither is North Korea, but people still claim (justifiably) that North Korea is in defiance to the treaty.
The NPT is de-facto a universal treaty, any UN member who is not a member is in defiance even though de-jure they are not. Simply put, what I am saying is, Israel—along with North Korea, India, and Pakistan—are going against the expectation of the rest of the world when it comes to nuclear non-proliferation. They are in defiance with the nuclear norms of the international community.
Note that people also said the USA was in defiance to climate change treaties when they failed to ratify Kyoto, and when they withdrew from Paris.
dlubarov · 3h ago
I wouldn't say such a universal expectation exists; NPT itself has a mechanism for states to withdraw based on "the supreme interests of its country". Countries with generally unthreatening neighbors might be expected to sign; Israel certainly doesn't fall into that category.
amendegree · 16h ago
What are you talking about? What methods were effective at denuclearizing Iran? They continued to pursue nuclear arms even during the Obama treaty.
Iran has been at war with Israel for the last 10 years, the fact that Israel held back until now, is 100% bec of the methods that proved totally ineffective.
mupuff1234 · 17h ago
> There are much better methods to prevent Iran from getting nukes.
And what if those methods don't work?
Obviously I would prefer all this to be resolved in a diplomatic way a decade ago, but in some cases military action will be the only way beyond a certain point.
runarberg · 16h ago
There was a deal which exchanged UN monitored nuclear inspection with lifting of sanctions. It worked kind of well until Trump pulled out in this first term.
Similar deals can be reached today. For example Europe can promise to sanction Israel for their nuclear program in return for international monitors.
mupuff1234 · 15h ago
And then you just end up with an Iran with more powerful conventional weapons, so not exactly a major win either.
runarberg · 14h ago
This is a testable hypotheses. We can look at arms buildup in history. I predict that you are wrong. Conventional arms buildup tends to correlate with war. The more war there is, the more countries built up their arsenals.
Further, I predict that there is a negative correlation with international treaties, and bilateral agreements and arms buildup. That is, the more nations cooperate, the more they negotiate and agree on stuff, the fewer arms they pursue and keep.
I don‘t feel like doing the research to gather evidence for my hypothesis, but mine at least doesn’t fail the sniff test. Feel free to prove me wrong with data.
mupuff1234 · 14h ago
History is full of nations and leaders that decided to go on conquest because of ego and hunger for power - that's your data.
You know what correlates the most with peace and lack of arms races? Having a single superpower who everyone is afraid of.
Deterrence is the reason why bad actors have kept relatively quiet, not diplomacy.
runarberg · 13h ago
That is not my hypothesis. My hypothesis is about weapons buildup in relation to a) war, and b) treaties and agreements. And it is about trends and likelihoods, not absolutes. To restate my hypothesis. More of (a) = more weapons. More of (b) = fewer weapons.
Sure we can look at Israel, a nation which has a part of tons of international treaties and agreements (albeit fewer then most other nations) and yet is one of the most antagonistic militarized nations in history. So we know there are exception. North Korea might be an example of a country that passes the sniff test of my second hypothesis. Outside of the most international treaties and agreements and also extremely militarized.
But on the other hand, according to my first hypothesis, Israel does pass as an example that contributes to the passing of the sniff test. Israel is probably the country that has seen the most wars and conflicts since World War 2 (maybe USA and Russia/Soviet Union have seen more; I don‘t know), and in accordance to my hypothesis, it is also one of the most militarized nation in the world currently (including one of very few nuclear armed nations).
EDIT: I was just reading an interview with Jim Walsh—a US based nuclear weapons expert, and he seems to agree with me and disagree with you:
> “I think there’s strong scholarly evidence – and certainly, if you look at the politics of the moment – to believe that in this attack, Israel will get the exact opposite of what it wanted, which is Iran is going to decide to go for the bomb.”
We know that experts are fairly bad at predictions.
Plus we have the latest report from the UN that Iran has been breaching their nuclear agreements.
Iran most likely won't be able to redevelop a nuclear program if the current one is destroyed (and Israel could easily destroy it again when/if they restart)
runarberg · 12h ago
Iran’s behavior is exactly in line with my hypothesis. They a) were involved in regional conflicts against Israel (including having bombs dropped on them from Israel), and b) had their treaties broken by the USA.
Dropping the treaties and invading Iran does seem to correlate with weapons buildup.
mupuff1234 · 12h ago
But the weapons have already been built, so at this point its either you act first or just hope.
And hope isn't much of a strategy.
Obviously there is a huge risk here that if Israel fails then Iran will without a doubt push for a bomb.
runarberg · 12h ago
You seem pretty sure about your beliefs about this, and I doubt there is anything I can say which will convince you otherwise. But when you put forth a testable hypotheses, and experts in the field seem to disagree with your conviction about the matter, perhaps it is time time maybe consider that maybe you are wrong and the experts are right.
Because it seems fairly obvious to me that if the current nuclear program is taken out the chances that they'll be able to redevelop it in the near to medium term future are extremely low.
How exactly will they be able to do so? They won't be able to protect the sites from further attacks, not to mention losing a significant chunk of the expertise in form of personal along with the materials required.
It's not some Lego set, rebuilding such a project is insanely complex and time consuming, chances of success are very low (assuming Russia, North Korea, etc, don't decide to just hand some over)
Plus, even if they did develop a new program by the time it's done anti missile tech will most likely reach a new phase.
ivape · 1d ago
Stay out of what? The Trump admin’s foreign policy is to allow Netanyahu to operate autonomously. The same they offer ICE.
In terms of American foreign policy interest it’s basically making us more vulnerable.
In so many words, Netanyahu might get us all killed. Trump will not decry anything Netanyahu does, so it’s 4 years of war and you better believe it. Putin also has no incentive to give Trump a peace deal. Provide enough war zone cover and Taiwan will just happen, all of a sudden. Negotiate all three peace deals, please, I’d love to see it.
Trump is out of his element here, he’ll be leaving a world at war. When you a let a pot of boiling water keep boiling on the lowest heat, you may not see all the boiling bubbles, but I assure you it’s boiling. It’s a boiling world, and without certain advents like AI, we’d literally have no positive news (think that through for a second). Without the miracle of AI, all we’d have is the most depressing world situation you could imagine.
franktankbank · 23h ago
I don't know. I find AI to be generally pretty depressing too.
tuyguntn · 23h ago
> The Trump admin’s foreign policy is to allow Netanyahu to operate autonomously. The same they offer ICE.
to be honest, by now, it feels like the opposite, Netanyahu is allowing Trump admin to operate autonomously when it comes to internal affairs, for foreign policy Netanyahu is dictating the US foreign policy.
Go check Twitter, for some reason 90% of congress members immediately started praying for Israel after Israel's attack, as if they were handed over the message
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belter · 22h ago
> The Trump admin’s foreign policy is to allow Netanyahu to operate autonomously.
Just say it the way it is because it's clear. US policy is run from Tel Aviv. Trump chickens out with Putin, China, and now Netanyahu....
franktankbank · 18h ago
No US war, No US war, No US war. Seems pretty consistent so far.
TiredOfLife · 1d ago
Hopefully Iran stops their stupid proxy wars. Stops supplying Russia with drones and rockets. Stops executing thousands of people every year.
thomassmith65 · 16h ago
Not to nitpick, but Iran doesn't execute "thousands" of people every year. They execute between 500 and 1000 a year.
On the other, based on the comments I have been reading here for the past couple years, you are supposed to embellish or flat out lie to support your point.
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_DeadFred_ · 18h ago
It says a lot about the discussion here that the above negative comments about the proxy nature of Israel/The USA and war are upvoted while this comment about...proxies and war is downvoted. Shows a lack a seriousness/depth of thought but instead it's all just talking points and point scoring.
russia localized production long time ago and made some upgrades to drones. ukraine did bomb this week factory that makes jam resistant antenna arrays and another one that makes assembly of drones
bigyabai · 1d ago
The diplomatic attempts on the US' behalf have been absolutely bewildering towards Iran. At first they refuse to negotiate, so the US lets them draw their own lines besides nuclear weapons. So Iran draws non-WMD "red line" clauses, and America ignores those immediately. Weeks of negotiating later, no signs of good-faith discussion from the US lead to the hammer coming down because there was "no other way" to solve it.
If it wasn't so goddamn confusing, it would almost appear deliberate. Between this and the US suing Yemen for peace, it's looking like a good decade to strongarm America's soft power.
someotherperson · 1d ago
It gets worse -- the person leading the negotiations with the US was one of the targets:
> Ali Shamkhani has been severely injured in a strike targeting his house and hospitalized. Mr. Shamkhani is currently spearheading nuclear talks committee appointed by supreme leader and is former secretary of National Security Council
>So Iran draws non-WMD "red line" clauses, and America ignores those immediately.
How so? What non-WMD red line clauses do you mean?
ivape · 1d ago
It’s because American foreign policy is not dictating the future of this, it’s Israel’s project and they are directing things. America has never had any success negotiating anything in the Middle East. We take what’s given to us.
bigyabai · 20h ago
America's foreign policy forged the first Iran deal. Clearly there was intent to try the same approach a second time, clearly it didn't work.
> America has never had any success negotiating anything in the Middle East.
Trump hasn't, let's be clear. But given his posturing towards the Gaza conflict it really shouldn't surprise you that his credit with Arabs is rock bottom.
almogo · 1d ago
We just got strange alerts on our phones here in Israel (3:00am local time), reading:
"""
Emergency alert: Extreme
Home Front Command instructions must be followed.
Due to the preparation for a significant threat, the Home Front Command's instructions, which are currently being distributed throughout the media, must be immediately followed.
> One ethical expert (Michael Walzer) has put forward some conditions that he thinks must be satisfied to justify a pre-emptive strike:
>an obvious intention to do injury
>active preparations that turn that intention into a positive danger
>a situation in which the risk of defeat will be greatly increased if the fight is delayed
Is there evidence of these three important points to justify this attack as “preemptive”?
nradov · 1d ago
Ethics are utterly irrelevant in geopolitical affairs. When nation states face existential threats they'll do whatever it takes to survive. They might invent some ethical justification after the fact for public consumption.
And I don't mean this as a particular criticism of Israel. Most other countries do the same sort of thing when necessary.
tastyface · 1d ago
Is Israel facing an existential threat or Netanyahu?
econ · 16h ago
They are the same thing.
guelo · 20h ago
That's only because we're throwing away the hard fought prize humanity earned at the cost of two world wars and millions of lives: the system of international laws and the UN.
nradov · 18h ago
Nah. The UN is a cute little debating society but it never had any meaningful capacity to enforce international treaties on it's own. Relations between sovereign states have always been fundamentally anarchic, and always will be.
The current system might be bad, but some sort of world government run by the UN would be far worse.
econ · 16h ago
On the contrary, the US has become England: A state of the art cutting edge industrial society and empire turned into a smug entitlement driven immoral turd that is far beyond useless for everyone outside and most inside of it. This will inevitably trigger a global effort to disconnect and help foster the downfall. It will be expensive for everyone involved.
Also wise to remember, there are now so many quiet parts you can't say out loud that pretty much everyone who knows anything no longer participates in online conversation.
We don't make things in the West anymore so our dialog has no constructive purpose. You don't care what I think, say or who I am but those with nefarious intend are the ones paying close attention to everyone.
The destructive people are outperforming the rest of us and it can only end in one way. It has always ended the same way.
msgodel · 16h ago
I'm not sure the UN provides a real alternative to that though.
kelnos · 14h ago
> the US has become England: A state of the art cutting edge industrial society and empire turned into a smug entitlement driven immoral turd that is far beyond useless for everyone outside and most inside of it.
Oh don't worry, Trump and his cronies are working hard to make the US not cutting edge at anything anymore.
"Iran general says Tehran aims to wipe Israel off the ‘global political map’", that's consistent with other leaders and the regime ideology since the very start
“We warn them [Zionists] that if a new war breaks out, it will result in their termination,”
and there are no shortage of such quotes, and even concrete plans (for example by using Hamas and Hezbollah), one attempt of which we have witnessed in 2023
> active preparations that turn that intention into a positive danger
>a situation in which the risk of defeat will be greatly increased if the fight is delayed
We know independently that Iran has been enriching massive amounts of uranium to degrees of purity only suitable for nuclear weapons.
See last announcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
According to Israel there have been other advancements in the nuclear program which might lead them to a nuclear bomb
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_DeadFred_ · 17h ago
1. Arming and organizing proxies to attack Israel for years is much more than just intention to do injury, it is actual. Those proxies continue attack on Israel (the latest missile launch at Israel was this week). How many missiles does a country have to eat before clause 1 if fulfilled? Any country besides Israel that number would be 1. In additional Iran does not recognise Israel's right to exist as a country and explicitly calls for Israel's destruction.
You can only pretend Houthis are making ballistic missiles in their caves and arent directly supplied and fed targeting data by Iran to sink ships crossing red sea for so long.
cherry_tree · 1d ago
Which of the three points are you suggesting “Iran supplies arms to the houthis in Yemen” satisfies in the above criteria to justify the preemptive attack in Tehran?
roshin · 1d ago
It seems like it doesn't justify a preemptive attack, but rather a counter attack. Israel is responding to missile attacks from Yemen by attacking the manufacturers in Iran
severino · 1d ago
Would you think the same if, for example, Russia started attacking manufacturers in the EU that supply weapons to Ukraine?
mmh0000 · 1d ago
If Russia had the capability to do so without facing an extreme counter attack you better believe they'd blow the shit out of weapon manufacturers.
The problem for Russia is that such an attack would bring in all of NATO which they likely can't defend against. And either way would result in massive damage to nearly everything in Russia.
OTOH, Israel can attack Iran and as shown in the past[1], Iran will roll over and only send a weak-ass slow drone attack as a response.
I wasn't asking about capabilities. I asked the user if he believed Russia has the right to attack EU countries providing weapons to Ukraine, possibly causing civilian deaths, just as he thinks Israel had the right to do so in regards to Iran.
mmh0000 · 22h ago
There is no “right” in geo politics. Might has made right throughout history.
chasd00 · 18h ago
I think this is lost on many people. There's no authority overseeing sovereign nations, no real law or consequence to law-breaking even if there was one. There's only allies, treaties, pacts between nations, military might, and the consequences of aggression that keep the peace. Russia would be bombing all the supply lines of weapons flowing into Ukraine if the consequences weren't so high. There's certainly no law that is preventing them from doing so, only the consequences of their actions.
DecoySalamander · 1d ago
This question is difficult to answer because it's unclear what you mean by "right" in this context. The moral high ground? Russia doesn't have that now, nor has it ever had it throughout its history of military expansionism.
severino · 22h ago
Well, by "right" I meant the same thing the user I was replying to said Israel had when attacking Iran.
HDThoreaun · 22h ago
Reality is that any sovereign country has the right to do whatever they want.
mrguyorama · 17h ago
Russia HAS attacked and sabotaged arms storage facilities in Europe.
And those missile attacks were in response to Israel's unrelenting and brutal genocide in Gaza, so the 'preemptive' term is still nonsense.
UltraSane · 1d ago
Why is Israel in Gaza? Oh yeh, because Hamas invaded Israel on Oct 7 2023 and killed 1,200 people. To put that death toll in perspective, it would be like a Mexican Cartel invading the US and killing 41,000 people. For China it would be 174,000 people.
NoLinkToMe · 1d ago
Then 100x those figures and you find the proportion that Israel killed in Gaza versus its population, significantly women and children, for perspective.
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thunky · 20h ago
> because Hamas invaded Israel
And why did they do that? It's like gang warfare, never ending. It started long before Hamas and we've all lost track of why so finger pointing only makes it worse.
snatekay · 14h ago
> And why did they do that?
Because in 2023 Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s most powerful enemies in the region, was expressing willingness to normalize relations with Israel. So Iran orchestrated attacks via its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in order to torpedo the normalization process. (People forget that Hamas wasn’t the only one attacking Israel in October 2023—beginning October 8th Hezbollah began firing rockets and artillery into northern Israel, forcing over 90,000 Israelis to flee for safety.)
UltraSane · 17h ago
[flagged]
thunky · 16h ago
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gxnxcxcx · 1d ago
And why, pray tell, was Hamas the only organization wielding some semblance of power in Gaza in 2023?
tguvot · 1d ago
because usa forced elections to palestine assembly in 2006 despite objections of israel and pa government (which was afraid that hamas that will win).
when hamas won, usa was horrified by outcome and "sponsored" PA security forces to get rid of hamas in gaza, but hamas prevailed and killed everybody who were against (throwing from buildings, dragging behind bikes) it or tortured them into submission
UltraSane · 1d ago
Because Hamas gleefully kills anyone who opposes them.
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redczar · 1d ago
It is quite clear that ever since Yassar Arafat walked away from a deal with Israel during Clinton’s Presidency Israel has deliberately made Gaza and most of the West Bank a giant prison. Over the last 50 years far more Palestinians have been killed by Israel than Israelis killed by Palestinians. Palestinians have no navy, air force, tanks, or helicopters. The power differential between the two sides is vastly in Israel’s favor.
youngtaff · 1d ago
Arafat walked away because the ‘peace’ plan didn’t produce a viable state – West Bank was divided up in smaller enclaves
An Israeli they killed then own Prime Minister because he was willing to make peace
mongol · 1d ago
In my assessment, the assasination of Rabin is one the most successful assassinations in history, in terms of achieving the objectives of the assasin.
mrguyorama · 16h ago
Why?
Israel has had plenty of votes since then to elect another Prime Minister who would push for peace.
Why is this considered a success of one assassin instead of a failure of a broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution?
In fact, the protests against Netenyahu and young people refusing to serve the IDF shows that Israel was trying to push for peace internally.
Then Hamas decided to attack a music festival of teenagers and young adults who want a free palestine. They spent over a year planning this operation all to kill a bunch of Israeli's who didn't exactly disagree with their cause.
If Hamas hadn't attacked, Bibi might already be in prison. You know, I'm not convinced Hamas wants peace any more than Bibi does.
tguvot · 15h ago
multiple rounds of negotiations happened after rabin death. camp david in 2000 for example which resulted in second intifada. taba. etc. negotiations continued till 2013 or so.
even Netanyahu, which was elected after Rabin death signed follow up agreements to Oslo as result of which Israel handed over Hebron and additional areas in west bank to PA.
It wasn't failure of "broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution" but violence of second intifada and non-compliance of PA with oslo accords from very beginning: http://israelvisit.co.il/BehindTheNews/WhitePaper.htm
youngtaff · 23h ago
Yup, but consider how much death and injury that action has caused
redczar · 21h ago
I’m not claiming it was a good deal. I’m claiming that since he walked away from the deal Israel has decided that it will slowly consume all of the West Bank and make living there and in Gaza a hell for Palestinians. It’s a slow genocide. Though now in Gaza it’s been sped up.
UltraSane · 8h ago
It was in fact a fantastic deal the Palestinians were fools to reject it.
Israel is in Gaza because they have funded and supported Hamas, in the hope they would use those funds to invade them, giving them pretext for a genocide.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu [1]
It's an unverified quote which Netanyahu denied saying. In any case, Israel never funded Hamas as many claim; they allowed aid from Qatar which is pretty different.
tguvot · 15h ago
I'll add that Israel allowed aid from Qatar after pressure from west and headlines in mass media that hundreds of thousands are going to starve in gaza if israel won't allow money from qatar.
the underlaying issues was that after PA tried to depose Hamas in Gaza and failed, it stopped paying salaries to everybody so Gaza was broke
(Not to say that a few months means this conflict has ended, genuinely curious what the media I’ve seen has under/mis/not-reported)
tguvot · 1d ago
Houthis attack Israel with ballistic missiles which are supplied to them by Iran for this purpose.
In past couple of months it happens almost every (other) day. Sometime a couple times a day.
The only time it was on news when Israel failed to intercept missile and it fell in vicinity of Ben Gurion airport.
locallost · 1d ago
Netanyahu's only way to preserve power is to start a mass conflict.
ivape · 1d ago
What happened to all those protests we were seeing against him? He’s an actual war criminal now but the protests stopped. What can we infer here?
edanm · 20h ago
The protests haven't stopped, they've been intensifying since the start of the war, especially so in the last few months. (They were larger before the war, but that's because the war itself made it much harder to protest for various reasons.)
In any case, while this government isn't popular and wouldn't be reelected according to most polls, this move against Iran is probably popular.
tguvot · 1d ago
he is not war criminal. he is been accused of some crimes but it's unknown on what basis as indictment is confidential.
and protests are happening on daily basis
bigyabai · 19h ago
> he is been accused of some crimes
Normally, innocent people don't avoid trial and sanction the courts that accuse them.
tguvot · 17h ago
Actually innocent people do avoid trials. As sometime trials lead even to death sentences of innocent people.
Prosecutor manipulated icc rules and at time of filing was already known that evidence that he shows is wrong and icc still issued warrants. Why would anyone submit to such organization volunteerly ?
And as known now, he rushed warrants and cancelled scheduled arrival to Israel to see facts on the ground in order to protect himself from sexual harassment allegations
ivape · 1h ago
Hey twat, go look at some aerial footage of Gaza.
mrguyorama · 16h ago
Well, um, you see, Hamas video'd themselves brutally murdering about 1200 people, including about 380 young adults at a rave, including pretty significant amounts of sexual violence and parading corpses or near dead people around Palestine.
They took around 250 people hostage.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli people were refusing to serve in the IDF because of Palestinian oppression on October 6th. After the attacks, IDF had more volunteers than they could equip.
bawis · 52m ago
Please provide sources for the claims? I mean the first and last one.
thrance · 23h ago
Fascism requires a state of permanent warfare; thereby dooming itself.
aaron695 · 1d ago
The targets the US predicted are
TOP SECRET//SCI//NOFORN//SOCCENT-32 POTENTIAL TARGET SITES (TS//TKI/RSEN//REL TO USA, FVEY)
Facility Name Type Latitude Longitude
Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF) Nuclear Facility 32,580744 51,827081
Natanz Nuclear Complex Facility Nuclear Facility 33,724229 51,726114
Parchin Ammunition Plant Nuclear Facility 35,527676 51,765176
Khorramshahr Military Base Military Base 30,4580556 48,1889111
IR-40 Nuclear Facility Nuclear Facility 34,37331 49,240749
Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) Nuclear Facility 35,738431 51,388253
TOP SECRET//SCI//NOFORN//SOCCENT-J2
[edit 2] More relevant to HN. the Dolphin-class submarines are launching missiles as predicted, the US also thought they would be part of the 'cyber-war', which they define as "electronic jamming to distort and disable radar signals, rendering air-defense systems ineffective." Intel people are such tools, jamming and spoofing is 'cyber-war' and a 'cyber strike'.... I guess they are more right, it's not like you are hacking during a war, that was months ago which is intel. But it's language used for funding purposes.
[edit 3] I will say the "agents will carry out sabotage operations inside Iran" Who'd be nuts enough to do that? The US would have to have that wrong
skissane · 1d ago
Where are you getting this stuff from:
> TOP SECRET//SCI//NOFORN//SOCCENT-32 POTENTIAL TARGET SITES (TS//TKI/RSEN//REL TO USA, FVEY)
A leak? Which one?
Unless one knows the provenance, there is the risk it is fabricated
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ty6853 · 20h ago
It's fascinating that you continue to post on this account, frequently, despite the fact your posts are automatically dead and have been for some time.
Do you provide this as a journal for yourself?
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kazinator · 1d ago
It's as if the purpose of these preemptive strikes is to create a pretext for the real goal: the declaration of a state of emergency.
Hopefully Iran does a little retaliation and then goes back to their covert proxy war rather than it escalating to open warfare. I honestly don't even know if either Iran or Israel could sustain open warfare given the distances involved without dragging in other forces to help. I would rather those forces not be ours.
History will view this operation as a great success - and exactly what the west should be doing, a precision operation to take out advanced military capabilities of authoritarian regimes.
Imagine a world where Russia & North Korea had no nukes.
Yes, Israel has done lots of terrible things (but so have it's neighbors), but this one is pretty awesome.
Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
> effectively uninvadable
Yet Israel was invaded during the Yom Kippur War when it had nuclear weapons, the UK was invaded by Argentina during the Falklands War, Russia was invaded briefly by Ukraine (Kursk). And Israel arguably just demonstrated that developing a survivable nuclear deterrent probably isn't as easy as many thought. (Ukraine, to a lesser extent, also with Spiderweb.)
> Supporting Israel in preventing Iran from getting nuclear capabilities is destablizing, not the opposite.
On the contrary, it sends a strong "fuck around and find out" message to any country pursuing nuclear weapons. And if Israel is capable of this kind of decapitating strike against a country's nuclear program, imagine what the US (or China) could pull off.
> On the contrary, it sends a strong "fuck around and find out" message to any country pursuing nuclear weapons.
We have yet to see how effective these attacks were in preventing Iran from getting the bomb. Early reports seem to suggest, not that effective.
I, however, am more concerned with the fact that Israel—a nuclear armed state—gets to be the arbiter of nuclear non-proliferation. The hypocrisy of these actions should not escape anyone, and it sends the message that some states are allowed to keep the bomb in defiance to international treaties. If Iran has to suffer for wrongly pursuing the bomb, why doesn’t Israel have to suffer equally, for much worse crimes than Iran?
Validating these attacks on the grounds of nuclear non-proliferation is setting up a false dichotomy. There is an available third option here, which Israel seems hellbent on disrupting. We could negotiate with Iran, and have them dismantle their nuclear weapons program (or at least, not pursuing it further). This has worked in the past, and—and I’m just an observer here—given the fact that Israel is well past the point of international sanctions for their Gaza genocide, the west has another ace up their sleeve and could even promise to sanction Israel for their nuclear weapons program in return.
Given how gray this comment already is, I'm not afraid to go against what seems to be the HN-hivemind today: Good luck with that proposal, last week Rubio himself stated there's a no-tolerance policy for anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and such behavior can be the single determining factor against one's ability to legally migrate here. This administration is blindly pro-Israel, much to its detriment - and likely its battle between dovish and hawkish foreign policy; because they're damned either way.
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A lot of this is just a consequence of repeated exposure to foreign propaganda. It's not reasonable policy.
Previous decade arms control understood this, and understood something very valuable needed to be offered to keep countries from pursuing them.
Current nuclear arms control is failing (Iran, North Korea) because the international community is pretending they aren't worth pursuing at almost any cost.
If a country wants to pursue a foreign policy antagonistic or counter to the US, they'd be insane not to develop nuclear weapons.
Tell me, did the "Muslim terrorists" nuked Hiroshima and Nakasaki? did the "Muslim terrorists" massacre the Vitenamese and Cambodians ? What about the current genocide occuring in Gaza ?
Dear god I can't even articulate how cunning is/was the western media when it comes to brainwash their people.
That's second amendment for nuclear weapons. Inside US people are generally nice to each other because you don't know who's carrying.
Imagine a world where the USA and Israel had no nukes.
There are much better methods to prevent Iran from getting nukes. Methods which have been shown to be effective. And in my opinion, the world really needs to denuclearize Israel (as well as any other nuclear armed nations).
The US and Russia were committed to working towards that world, at least back in the 80s.
The NPT is de-facto a universal treaty, any UN member who is not a member is in defiance even though de-jure they are not. Simply put, what I am saying is, Israel—along with North Korea, India, and Pakistan—are going against the expectation of the rest of the world when it comes to nuclear non-proliferation. They are in defiance with the nuclear norms of the international community.
Note that people also said the USA was in defiance to climate change treaties when they failed to ratify Kyoto, and when they withdrew from Paris.
Iran has been at war with Israel for the last 10 years, the fact that Israel held back until now, is 100% bec of the methods that proved totally ineffective.
And what if those methods don't work?
Obviously I would prefer all this to be resolved in a diplomatic way a decade ago, but in some cases military action will be the only way beyond a certain point.
Similar deals can be reached today. For example Europe can promise to sanction Israel for their nuclear program in return for international monitors.
Further, I predict that there is a negative correlation with international treaties, and bilateral agreements and arms buildup. That is, the more nations cooperate, the more they negotiate and agree on stuff, the fewer arms they pursue and keep.
I don‘t feel like doing the research to gather evidence for my hypothesis, but mine at least doesn’t fail the sniff test. Feel free to prove me wrong with data.
You know what correlates the most with peace and lack of arms races? Having a single superpower who everyone is afraid of.
Deterrence is the reason why bad actors have kept relatively quiet, not diplomacy.
Sure we can look at Israel, a nation which has a part of tons of international treaties and agreements (albeit fewer then most other nations) and yet is one of the most antagonistic militarized nations in history. So we know there are exception. North Korea might be an example of a country that passes the sniff test of my second hypothesis. Outside of the most international treaties and agreements and also extremely militarized.
But on the other hand, according to my first hypothesis, Israel does pass as an example that contributes to the passing of the sniff test. Israel is probably the country that has seen the most wars and conflicts since World War 2 (maybe USA and Russia/Soviet Union have seen more; I don‘t know), and in accordance to my hypothesis, it is also one of the most militarized nation in the world currently (including one of very few nuclear armed nations).
EDIT: I was just reading an interview with Jim Walsh—a US based nuclear weapons expert, and he seems to agree with me and disagree with you:
> “I think there’s strong scholarly evidence – and certainly, if you look at the politics of the moment – to believe that in this attack, Israel will get the exact opposite of what it wanted, which is Iran is going to decide to go for the bomb.”
https://aje.io/auoxkc?update=3773054
also: https://www.wuft.org/2025-06-13/what-israels-escalation-in-i...
Plus we have the latest report from the UN that Iran has been breaching their nuclear agreements.
Iran most likely won't be able to redevelop a nuclear program if the current one is destroyed (and Israel could easily destroy it again when/if they restart)
Dropping the treaties and invading Iran does seem to correlate with weapons buildup.
And hope isn't much of a strategy.
Obviously there is a huge risk here that if Israel fails then Iran will without a doubt push for a bomb.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/13/iran-to-double-down...
How exactly will they be able to do so? They won't be able to protect the sites from further attacks, not to mention losing a significant chunk of the expertise in form of personal along with the materials required.
It's not some Lego set, rebuilding such a project is insanely complex and time consuming, chances of success are very low (assuming Russia, North Korea, etc, don't decide to just hand some over)
Plus, even if they did develop a new program by the time it's done anti missile tech will most likely reach a new phase.
In terms of American foreign policy interest it’s basically making us more vulnerable.
In so many words, Netanyahu might get us all killed. Trump will not decry anything Netanyahu does, so it’s 4 years of war and you better believe it. Putin also has no incentive to give Trump a peace deal. Provide enough war zone cover and Taiwan will just happen, all of a sudden. Negotiate all three peace deals, please, I’d love to see it.
Trump is out of his element here, he’ll be leaving a world at war. When you a let a pot of boiling water keep boiling on the lowest heat, you may not see all the boiling bubbles, but I assure you it’s boiling. It’s a boiling world, and without certain advents like AI, we’d literally have no positive news (think that through for a second). Without the miracle of AI, all we’d have is the most depressing world situation you could imagine.
to be honest, by now, it feels like the opposite, Netanyahu is allowing Trump admin to operate autonomously when it comes to internal affairs, for foreign policy Netanyahu is dictating the US foreign policy.
Go check Twitter, for some reason 90% of congress members immediately started praying for Israel after Israel's attack, as if they were handed over the message
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Just say it the way it is because it's clear. US policy is run from Tel Aviv. Trump chickens out with Putin, China, and now Netanyahu....
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_Iran
https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/05/27/iran-execution-spree-con...
On the other, based on the comments I have been reading here for the past couple years, you are supposed to embellish or flat out lie to support your point.
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If it wasn't so goddamn confusing, it would almost appear deliberate. Between this and the US suing Yemen for peace, it's looking like a good decade to strongarm America's soft power.
> Ali Shamkhani has been severely injured in a strike targeting his house and hospitalized. Mr. Shamkhani is currently spearheading nuclear talks committee appointed by supreme leader and is former secretary of National Security Council
https://x.com/farnazfassihi/status/1933360333118111907
How so? What non-WMD red line clauses do you mean?
> America has never had any success negotiating anything in the Middle East.
Trump hasn't, let's be clear. But given his posturing towards the Gaza conflict it really shouldn't surprise you that his credit with Arabs is rock bottom.
"""
Emergency alert: Extreme
Home Front Command instructions must be followed.
Due to the preparation for a significant threat, the Home Front Command's instructions, which are currently being distributed throughout the media, must be immediately followed.
"""
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> One ethical expert (Michael Walzer) has put forward some conditions that he thinks must be satisfied to justify a pre-emptive strike:
>an obvious intention to do injury
>active preparations that turn that intention into a positive danger
>a situation in which the risk of defeat will be greatly increased if the fight is delayed
Is there evidence of these three important points to justify this attack as “preemptive”?
And I don't mean this as a particular criticism of Israel. Most other countries do the same sort of thing when necessary.
The current system might be bad, but some sort of world government run by the UN would be far worse.
Also wise to remember, there are now so many quiet parts you can't say out loud that pretty much everyone who knows anything no longer participates in online conversation.
We don't make things in the West anymore so our dialog has no constructive purpose. You don't care what I think, say or who I am but those with nefarious intend are the ones paying close attention to everyone.
The destructive people are outperforming the rest of us and it can only end in one way. It has always ended the same way.
Oh don't worry, Trump and his cronies are working hard to make the US not cutting edge at anything anymore.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-general-says-tehran-aims-...
"Iran general says Tehran aims to wipe Israel off the ‘global political map’", that's consistent with other leaders and the regime ideology since the very start
“We warn them [Zionists] that if a new war breaks out, it will result in their termination,”
and there are no shortage of such quotes, and even concrete plans (for example by using Hamas and Hezbollah), one attempt of which we have witnessed in 2023
https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/en/hamas-strategy-to-destr...
> active preparations that turn that intention into a positive danger
>a situation in which the risk of defeat will be greatly increased if the fight is delayed
We know independently that Iran has been enriching massive amounts of uranium to degrees of purity only suitable for nuclear weapons. See last announcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
According to Israel there have been other advancements in the nuclear program which might lead them to a nuclear bomb
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2. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857003
3. https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-857003
The problem for Russia is that such an attack would bring in all of NATO which they likely can't defend against. And either way would result in massive damage to nearly everything in Russia.
OTOH, Israel can attack Iran and as shown in the past[1], Iran will roll over and only send a weak-ass slow drone attack as a response.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2024_Iranian_strikes_o...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Vrb%C4%9Btice_ammunition_... is one such example.
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And why did they do that? It's like gang warfare, never ending. It started long before Hamas and we've all lost track of why so finger pointing only makes it worse.
Because in 2023 Saudi Arabia, one of Iran’s most powerful enemies in the region, was expressing willingness to normalize relations with Israel. So Iran orchestrated attacks via its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, in order to torpedo the normalization process. (People forget that Hamas wasn’t the only one attacking Israel in October 2023—beginning October 8th Hezbollah began firing rockets and artillery into northern Israel, forcing over 90,000 Israelis to flee for safety.)
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when hamas won, usa was horrified by outcome and "sponsored" PA security forces to get rid of hamas in gaza, but hamas prevailed and killed everybody who were against (throwing from buildings, dragging behind bikes) it or tortured them into submission
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An Israeli they killed then own Prime Minister because he was willing to make peace
Israel has had plenty of votes since then to elect another Prime Minister who would push for peace.
Why is this considered a success of one assassin instead of a failure of a broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution?
In fact, the protests against Netenyahu and young people refusing to serve the IDF shows that Israel was trying to push for peace internally.
Then Hamas decided to attack a music festival of teenagers and young adults who want a free palestine. They spent over a year planning this operation all to kill a bunch of Israeli's who didn't exactly disagree with their cause.
If Hamas hadn't attacked, Bibi might already be in prison. You know, I'm not convinced Hamas wants peace any more than Bibi does.
even Netanyahu, which was elected after Rabin death signed follow up agreements to Oslo as result of which Israel handed over Hebron and additional areas in west bank to PA.
It wasn't failure of "broad democratic electorate to push for peaceful resolution" but violence of second intifada and non-compliance of PA with oslo accords from very beginning: http://israelvisit.co.il/BehindTheNews/WhitePaper.htm
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas … This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” - Benjamin Netanyahu [1]
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/20/benjam...
the underlaying issues was that after PA tried to depose Hamas in Gaza and failed, it stopped paying salaries to everybody so Gaza was broke
https://visualizingpalestine.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/...
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(Not to say that a few months means this conflict has ended, genuinely curious what the media I’ve seen has under/mis/not-reported)
In past couple of months it happens almost every (other) day. Sometime a couple times a day.
The only time it was on news when Israel failed to intercept missile and it fell in vicinity of Ben Gurion airport.
In any case, while this government isn't popular and wouldn't be reelected according to most polls, this move against Iran is probably popular.
and protests are happening on daily basis
Normally, innocent people don't avoid trial and sanction the courts that accuse them.
Prosecutor manipulated icc rules and at time of filing was already known that evidence that he shows is wrong and icc still issued warrants. Why would anyone submit to such organization volunteerly ?
And as known now, he rushed warrants and cancelled scheduled arrival to Israel to see facts on the ground in order to protect himself from sexual harassment allegations
They took around 250 people hostage.
Hundreds of thousands of Israeli people were refusing to serve in the IDF because of Palestinian oppression on October 6th. After the attacks, IDF had more volunteers than they could equip.
[edit] Direct links -
UCF - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=32_34_50_N_... Natanz - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=33_43_27_N_... Parchin - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=35_31_39_N_... Khorramshahr - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=30_27_29_N_... IR-40 - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=34_22_23_N_... TRR - https://geohack.toolforge.org/geohack.php?params=35_44_18_N_...
[edit 2] More relevant to HN. the Dolphin-class submarines are launching missiles as predicted, the US also thought they would be part of the 'cyber-war', which they define as "electronic jamming to distort and disable radar signals, rendering air-defense systems ineffective." Intel people are such tools, jamming and spoofing is 'cyber-war' and a 'cyber strike'.... I guess they are more right, it's not like you are hacking during a war, that was months ago which is intel. But it's language used for funding purposes.
[edit 3] I will say the "agents will carry out sabotage operations inside Iran" Who'd be nuts enough to do that? The US would have to have that wrong
> TOP SECRET//SCI//NOFORN//SOCCENT-32 POTENTIAL TARGET SITES (TS//TKI/RSEN//REL TO USA, FVEY)
A leak? Which one?
Unless one knows the provenance, there is the risk it is fabricated
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Do you provide this as a journal for yourself?
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