alt Hacker News> In this situation it is a fair request by the US to sign a nuclear deal that heavily restricts Iran's ability to enrich, and as Iran due to ideological reasons refused, and IMO miscalculated this will be a win-win, as losing will quell the protests, the only thing really left is the metaphorical stick
Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s
Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?
And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?
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> Didn't we have one of those a few years ago? I wonder what happened to it /s
Yes, although it had merit it was far worse than what can be signed now, especially the sunset clause was problematic
> Seriously, though: how can Iran both be so powerful we must avoid it becoming a blackmail state, and so weak and feckless it's not a threat to anyone?
that's the nature of nuclear weapons, your conventional force can be abysmal (pretty much NK situation vs US) and yet you can create epic destruction
> And didn't we already attack them to stop them from getting nuclear capabilities?
Yes, the thing here is the long term goal of signing a deal, whose main goal is removing the existing highly enriched uranium from Iran and restricting their ability to redevelop nuclear capabilities. Essentially this is the part where "Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means" (to highly paraphrase), because the alternative to a deal is maintenance attacks such as these every two years
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The contradiction is that they’re weak at this minute - militarily and economically and politically. But they won’t be this weak in the future.
- Military - their regional proxies destroyed, missile and drone stocks low, provably weak air defences.
- Economically - the currency is worthless, extreme inflation for seven years and hyper inflation for a few months, the economy is currently producing nothing due to unrest, they have a massive water shortage of their own making. They have no goods worth exporting. Their oil is sanctioned, meaning only China will buy from them and at a steep discount. And oil is extremely cheap at this minute.
- Politically - they have no friends willing to bail them out. Russia has no money to spare. China doesn’t care about anyone outside of China. North Korea is even poorer. All sections within Iranian society detest the mullahs running the government. They’re hanging on by killing tens of thousands of protestors.
Trump bets that Iran’s leaders are at their weakest since their war with Saddam ended in 1988. Meaning now is the best time to negotiate a deal where they hand over their fissile material and uranium enrichment equipment. In return they could get a heavy water reactor(s) that produces energy but no fissile material.
If he lets this opportunity slip Iran could fix all of their many problems in a year or three. Manufacture more missiles and drones. Build up their proxies once more. Maybe the price of oil recovers. Russia’s war ends and they aid Iran best they can. The economy recovers and the Iranian people stop trying to overthrow the government. Maybe a conflict starts elsewhere that draws America’s full attention.
Will Trump get that deal? Probably not. That fissile material is the only leverage the mullahs have. If they give it up they’ll be toppled like the other dictators who gave up their weapons programs - Gaddafi and Saddam.
But if you don’t ask you don’t get, right?