Subject: Re: Vance Failed. No Deal.
Did I suggest that? No I didn't.

Then why are you disagreeing with me? They didn't move full tilt towards a weapon. Else they'd have had a weapon

1. They don't need 90%.
2. Are you sure they can enrich to 80%? Do they still have centrifuges for that?
3. They more or less intimated to Witikoff that they could build 11 bombs if they wanted.

They could have enriched to 80% at any time prior to June. Years and years. But they didn't yet do it.

They might have intimated to Witkoff that they could build 11 bombs if they wanted. But they didn't yet do it.

Because the JCPOA was an idiot deal that gave us nothing except a false sense of security for a couple of years (and only then if you didn't really pay attention to the issue).

But how would anything we get out of Iran today be any different? That's what I don't understand. If the JCPOA didn't work, then how would anything we get from Iran at the end of this war give us anything but a false sense of security?

What Trump is insisting on is a promise from Iran that they will abandon their nuclear weapons program. But what good is that unless we are fairly confident that they can't run a nuclear weapons program in secret? And if we're fairly confident that they can't run a nuclear weapons program in secret, then why walk away from the JCPOA?

They're the same thing. If the JCPOA was an idiot deal, then what Trump is trying to do now is an idiot deal.

And the Gulf States get no vote, they're helpless to stop Big Bad Iran from just blowing up all their pipelines whenever they want.

So we and they should do nothing and keep the status quo in place in the Gulf.

Yes, they're fairly helpless, just like Iran was helpless to stop the U.S. from just blowing up all their stuff. Sometimes you don't get a vote. Sometimes you don't have the defensive capabilities to stop what the other side wants to do.

We shouldn't do nothing in the current situation (doing nothing might have been better than launching this particular war, but that ship has sailed). But we shouldn't assume that a particular solution exists just because we dearly wish it was a solution. With 80% of Gulf oil going to Asia, not Europe, and the defensive liabilities of ~500 miles of pipeline running through mostly uninhabited areas that are nearly impossible to blanket defend against drones and missiles, a Saudi-Israel pipeline is a deeply unfeasible way of reducing the potency of Iran's ability to seize the strait.