Subject: Re: Is NATO figuring it out?
And maybe the plan is to run guns into Iran and give the people a fighting chance. Get the Kurds (who are occupying part of Iran) a safe zone.

I think that's a hope, not a plan. The Israeli intelligence forces assessed the situation, and determined that the regime is fully in charge of the country and that any civilian uprising would result in the civilians getting massacred.

Even if libs don't believe that Iran would ever actually use a weapon, it's not disputable that they would want one.

No one disputes that they "want" one. But it's also true that they could have had one before now, and didn't obtain one. So you have to take a moment and think about why that is.

There is a difference between Iran "wanting" a nuclear weapons and "being willing to take the steps necessary, and suffer the consequences of those steps, to obtain one." A random bad person passing by a car on the street might want to steal it but decide not to because the downside to doing it is too great. I "want" to retire pretty soon, but with two kids going to college I'm not going to. I'm sure George W. Bush "wanted" to invade Iran at some point, but decided that the consequences were worse than the benefits. Etc.

Iran would love to have a nuclear weapon, if it would just end there. But it wouldn't. Obtaining a nuclear weapon brings its own set of problems, not least that you would see the other countries in the Gulf all rush to obtain nukes of their own. Iran wants a nuclear weapon to improve their security position and their ability to threaten other countries; but they also want the other countries in the region to not have a nuke (because that degrades their security position and their ability to threaten other countries). Two different wants. Both are real wants - but they conflict, because fulfilling one "want" brings unavoidable consequences.

The Iranian regime has had factions with different positions on which is the better strategy. There have been those who advocated racing to an actual bomb, even though that would cause the rest of the region to proliferate. And there have been those who argued that Iran was actually better off being just below breakout, which gives them more room to maneuver than if they were one nuclear power among six or seven - and that they could still be free from the risk of anyone actually going to war against them.

That latter viewpoint has been largely discredited. So Iran continues to want a nuclear weapon, but now the conflicting want (wanting the benefits of living in a non-nuclear neighborhood while remaining free from countries going to war against them) is no longer on the option.

Do you want a North Korea equivalent sitting on the Straits of Hormuz - untouchable, and can hold the world hostage on a whim?

Nope. But I also know that bombing them like this won't prevent that from happening. It might even make it more likely to happen. It's certainly made it more likely that Iran will consider holding the strait hostage more likely, because....well, it's now happened, when they've never done that before during peacetime (however strained the peace), and it looks like they're far more likely to do it during peacetime once Epic Fury is over. But it's also made it more likely that once the bombs stop dropping, they'll just bite hard and swallow and race to an actual weapon, rather than staying at the 60% they've been at for the last many years.