Iranians describe scenes of catastrophe after Tehran's oil depots bombed

The majority of Christians are not in an end times death cult, and the size of a religious voting block in the USA doesn't change that fact. Again, we use language to separate moderate Muslims from minority extremist views normally referred to as Islamist here, but Christians are an end times death cult who don't protest war (pretty sure the Pope is on record as being anti-war).

I talked about how we refer to different religions with a bigoted double standard here, not Muslim/Christian voting influence. You followed with the very bigoted:

"Like get real, you will never see a Christian at an anti-war protest."

HN has a bigotry/stereotyping/double standard problem towards Christians. Bigotry against a religion as a political weapon/lashout is wrong.

Their support is not the result of a rational calculation of self-interest, and never was. If it was, a base of rural and poor people would never be supporting a coastal city New York elite born with a silver spoon in his mouth as "one of them". But they do, because he is one of them in the way that matters to them. They are fighting for something larger than themselves, and are completely committed to a cultural war for social hierarchy.

> if gas prices and general inflation spike hard, as is nearly a given if Trump doesn't back out from the war?

As an aside, I don't think there is any backing out of this war. If somebody launched a missile at your country and killed hundreds of schoolgirls, and destroyed ships on diplomatic missions while leaving the survivors to drown, while also assassinating your country's leader (but not out of any intention of liberation), would you just let things go because they stopped bombing? Of course you wouldn't. Your country would continue to retaliate. And it is trivial to punish America. Even if America unilaterally decided to "declare peace" and withdraw from attacking Iran, Iran has every reason to continue locking down the gulf and making Americans pay the price. Unlike with tariffs, there is no backing down from these price increases even if Trump gets cold feet. But, even so, there is no reason to believe it will move the needle on his base. There is already talk of "short term pain for long term gain" among those who realise this.

Your math is not mathing. 30-40k in 2 days unarmed civilians vs I dunno 6k almost all military in a week? If you look at the stats of executions etc you'll see civilian casualties in Iran go DOWN while being bombed.

> regime didn't bomb 200 girls to pieces in their school, did it.

Yes, actually they did. It was their own missile. Just like the Ukrainian plane they shot down a few years back.

My post was simply to clarify to the reader that PressTV is owned by the regime in Iran.

Man, why that joke gotta be so evergreen :/

Unrelated to that some increase in spending was due, I agree with that. All I'm saying is that I don't trust the US admin.

The USSR getting nukes in the first place lead to several incidents which were a judgment call away from armageddon. With the benefit of hindsight the correct call would have been to exhaust all options to prevent the soviets from acquiring nukes.

We just got lucky. Whether it was the Cuban Missile Crisis, the soviet early warning system malfunction in Sept 83, or Able Archer 83 in November, there was a lot of dumb luck.

Proliferation will bring the end of humanity. There will be too many actors, too many variables. You can get lucky with 2 actors. You can’t keep getting lucky. The only option is to ensure you don’t have to be lucky.

Ukraine wants nukes to defend itself from Russia (a nuclear power). Taiwan wants nukes to defend itself from China (a nuclear power). Iran wants nukes to defend itself from the US and Israel (both nuclear powers). India and Pakistan both want nukes to defend themselves from each other (both nuclear powers).

Now I don't want to get into a debate that it is really the benevolent Pakistanis fighting off aggressive Indians or vice-versa or that really Taiwan is the aggressor and that China is a benevolent neighbor, or that poor little Israel is just trying to defend itself from Iran, etc. Those regional squabbles mean nothing to me as I don't even care who is the "real" aggressor, all that matters is that you have two nations in conflict, and when there are two nations in conflict, it is not a stable situation to pretend that just one of them will have nukes but the other will not.

The moment one side gets nukes, the surrounding nations they are in conflict with will also want to get nukes. So as soon as the US got nukes, it's rival, the USSR, also got nukes. And as soon as Israel got nukes, it made it inevitable that at least a few regional rivals in the middle east will get nukes.

Trying to prevent this is guaranteed to fail. It does not matter what the government in Iran happens to be, as long as they care about their own survival, they know they need nukes as long as Israel has them. More importantly, attacking the nation before it gets nukes speeds the process of nuclearization along. Dramatically so. For instance, when Israel bombed the Iraqi nuclear power plant, Iraq, which at that time did not have a nuclear weapons program, went full speed ahead trying to develop one. Because it highlighted that they were at risk of being destroyed as nation from a violent neighbor, and so the urgency of developing their own nukes increased. As soon as India got nukes, it became a top priority for Pakistan to get them. If you don't believe that, then you don't understand the world. It does not matter who you think is the bad guy in a conflict, what matters is the asymmetry.

Whatever will be the outcome of this war with Iran, the Iranians now know that getting nukes is priority one. It will happen within a decade, most likely within a few years. The only way to stop this would be boots on the ground and a long term occupation of Iran, which of course no one, not even the US, is capable of doing.

And then Saudi Arabia will want nukes to defend itself from Iran. That's just how this works. KSA will be the next nation to get nuclear weapons after Iran.

Trying to pretend that you can maintain a long running conflict in which only one side has nuclear weapons is incredibly foolish. Obviously this is not going to happen.

But I do feel obligated to interrogate the idea that the US is responsible for this escalation. Iran is seeking to expand its power and influence in the region, and employs violent means upon people - even its own people - to achieve these goals. The regime is, fundamentally, amoral.

The US gets to decide if it wants to put a stop to that. But left alone, the world gets more dangerous the stronger the Iranian regime becomes. The same cannot be said about the United States. The period of history belonging to the unipolar US liberal order was probably the most prosperous and peaceful time in history.

The Pentagon agrees that Iran is not officially pursuing nuclear weapons. However, there are CIA reports that indicated there may have been covert operations taking place that were exploring cruder nuclear weapons. I imagine that was the basis for the US bombing of Iran in 2025.