I'm not supporting them. I'm asking if you can blame them for not accepting terms that would make them critically reliable on the US in perpetuity especially after the same administration has reneged on several deals with when our closest allies and was the one that tore up the previous deal with Iran. Being able to see nuance and defending them murdering civilians are not the same thing.

 

The underlying sticking point is their stated commitment exterminate IL. It is well established that at least some folks in the regime actually mean it. For the US (and other countries to a lesser degrees) there are vast political, geopolitical, and moral problems with that.

I'm not optimistic, because IRGC is now so deeply integrated into most aspects of society. But if that could happen, yes game changer for sure.

For our purposes a Regime 2.0 that has learned some very painful lessons, and has significantly fewer resources to export trouble would probably be an acceptable end-state. They would have to be monitored carefully, DON'T trust but do verify.

Safe to say, we don't have any appetite for nation building, at least not the physical kind that requires BoG.

 

There is a price to be paid for allowing 47 years of “Death to America” to permeate a society, whatever it’s potential. Perhaps the current operations should have been decades ago but - like fixing social security or the national debt - procrastinating bought domestic political advantage. But eventually, reality really does assert itself.

I think this could have gone nuclear very easily. Atomic bombs are scarcely at the leading edge of technology any more. The Trinity Site blast was over 80 years ago. Fast breeder reactors from reprocessed nuclear power plant fuel is also old technology, and at that point you can easily make plutonium based weapons in quantity.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3483.html

It doesn’t require the brightest minds to invent the technology, it’s now been around for a couple of generations.

Lets not pretend we can ever allow religious lunatics unfettered access to this technology. Or ICBMs for that matter.

 

Putting this thread on timeout for a bit. If not forever.