5 ms·

Like i said, that is what the administration (Witkoff) communicated. You can believe it or not, dispute it all you want, but the only opinion of any importance

by kcplate 5mo ago

Like i said, that is what the administration (Witkoff) communicated. You can believe it or not, dispute it all you want, but the only opinion of any importance here is if they (either Iran, the administration, and frankly also Israel) believed it. In that case, it would be a dangerous thing for the US and Israel to ignore. Some would suggest impossible to ignore. In my opinion if it’s not true and Iran communicated it…that would be a huge miscalculation by Iran. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACqWRsde4Ys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACqWRsde4Ys https://thehill.com/policy/international/5751330-witkoff-iran-nuclear-threat/ https://thehill.com/policy/international/5751330-witkoff-ira...

vel0city 5mo ago
The administration stated many times their nuclear stockpiles were already obliterated.
- kcplate 5mo ago
  Ok…but that is irrelevant to my point.
  - vel0city 5mo ago
    How could they be 11 days away when we for sure obliterated it many months ago? It seems pretty central to the overall point.
    - kcplate 5mo ago
      Are you suggesting there can be no difference between public rhetoric, the truth, and what might be said behind the closed doors of a diplomatic negotiation between adversaries? Especially with Trump?
      - vel0city 5mo ago
        I'm pointing out you can't trust anything these people say. They were either lying before, they're lying now, or both.
        kcplate 5mo ago
        Which, again, has zero to do with my initial post. Again, the point was that we cant assume a blockade without the initial military operation would have been successful. And it’s a moot point anyway because only one of those three parties needed to believe that Iran was that close to having a nuclear device for a military operation to have taken place. Your opinion (or anyone else’s) of the trustworthiness of the Trump administration has zero bearing on whether or not they could or would launch a military operation. They obviously did.
        vel0city 5mo ago
        But you're basing your information off of the things people who are known to lie to you are saying. You're building your house of logic on quicksand. I'm arguing you can't trust what they say about what was said at these meetings, because they've shown they can't be trusted to tell the truth at any time. Bessent says they said that, but you can't trust him. He's a liar. This is the problem when you have an administration that lies all the time even about little things. You can't even begin to actually trust the big things.
        kcplate 5mo ago
        I get it, you don't trust them. I am skeptical of the motives of all governments regardless of who sits in power. Frankly, none are truly benevolent or honest as far as I am concerned. But that is a whole separate topic from speaking to the hypothetical “we should have tried a blockade first”. Whether you believe the justification or not there is a honesty to the timing, immediacy, and level of violence of the action here. When you couple that with some indisputable facts here—we know that for nearly five decades Iran has advocated genocide on Israel and the US as a matter of their state policy. We know that they have repeatedly acted when they could to this end. We know they were seeking nuclear weapons. We know that active diplomacy was going on and then it turned on a dime suddenly to military action. It seems to me that the level of military violence inflicted on Iran with such a short switch from diplomatic talks was consistent with the belief by someone that they were danger close to having a nuclear weapon. You can be dishonest and corrupt, but still see and act on immediate threats.
watwut 5mo ago
So, I will go out of my way to guess none of the mentioned parties believed it. Not Israel, not Iran and not even administration. Also, per reports, it was looking like they will have a deal and Iran was making concessions. In both cases, they got bombed as they were making them Witkoff is an untrustworthy idiot, negotiator unable to make deals.
- kcplate 5mo ago
  But what evidence do you have that none believed it? Sounds more like a subjective opinion rather than an objective one. While I am not big on trust either, I am perplexed why “successful” negotiations would all of a sudden turn on a dime into a regional military event without a major catalyst— especially this close to midterms. This action was not politically helpful to Trump, was risky with his base, yet he did it anyway.
  - vel0city 5mo ago
    > I am perplexed why “successful” negotiations would all of a sudden turn on a dime into a regional military event without a major catalyst It can make a lot of sense when you understand the people involved are deeply incompetent, aggressively overconfident, and are surrounded by religious extremists saying this needs to be done for Jesus to come back. I mean, after all, we bombed them months ago and nothing happened. We just nabbed another head of state with zero issues. Nothing bad is going to happen, we've got this! We'll just breeze in and crush them in a few days. Which we did, mission success, that's why we're all finished already, right?
    - kcplate 5mo ago
      > It can make a lot of sense when you understand the people involved are deeply incompetent, aggressively overconfident, and are surrounded by religious extremists saying this needs to be done for Jesus to come back. It was literally only until the last 5 words that I realized you were not talking about Iran. Funny how you ignore their part in all this. However, I do want to take issue with the idea of “deeply incompetent”. That doesn't fit. They are either extremely competent at implementing their political agenda, or extremely lucky. Additionally this whole situation is contrary to the Trump administration’s normal playbook. If anything is consistent about Trump is that he panders to his base. This was the exact opposite. Why the change? Thats the problem with assuming that this is Trump business as usual, its not…which is why I feel that there is a catalyst to go off their normal playbook.

by kcplate 5mo ago

vel0city 5mo ago

The administration stated many times their nuclear stockpiles were already obliterated.

kcplate 5mo ago
Ok…but that is irrelevant to my point.
- vel0city 5mo ago
  How could they be 11 days away when we for sure obliterated it many months ago? It seems pretty central to the overall point.
  - kcplate 5mo ago
    Are you suggesting there can be no difference between public rhetoric, the truth, and what might be said behind the closed doors of a diplomatic negotiation between adversaries? Especially with Trump?
    - vel0city 5mo ago
      I'm pointing out you can't trust anything these people say. They were either lying before, they're lying now, or both.
      - kcplate 5mo ago
        Which, again, has zero to do with my initial post. Again, the point was that we cant assume a blockade without the initial military operation would have been successful. And it’s a moot point anyway because only one of those three parties needed to believe that Iran was that close to having a nuclear device for a military operation to have taken place. Your opinion (or anyone else’s) of the trustworthiness of the Trump administration has zero bearing on whether or not they could or would launch a military operation. They obviously did.
        vel0city 5mo ago
        But you're basing your information off of the things people who are known to lie to you are saying. You're building your house of logic on quicksand. I'm arguing you can't trust what they say about what was said at these meetings, because they've shown they can't be trusted to tell the truth at any time. Bessent says they said that, but you can't trust him. He's a liar. This is the problem when you have an administration that lies all the time even about little things. You can't even begin to actually trust the big things.
        kcplate 5mo ago
        I get it, you don't trust them. I am skeptical of the motives of all governments regardless of who sits in power. Frankly, none are truly benevolent or honest as far as I am concerned. But that is a whole separate topic from speaking to the hypothetical “we should have tried a blockade first”. Whether you believe the justification or not there is a honesty to the timing, immediacy, and level of violence of the action here. When you couple that with some indisputable facts here—we know that for nearly five decades Iran has advocated genocide on Israel and the US as a matter of their state policy. We know that they have repeatedly acted when they could to this end. We know they were seeking nuclear weapons. We know that active diplomacy was going on and then it turned on a dime suddenly to military action. It seems to me that the level of military violence inflicted on Iran with such a short switch from diplomatic talks was consistent with the belief by someone that they were danger close to having a nuclear weapon. You can be dishonest and corrupt, but still see and act on immediate threats.

watwut 5mo ago

So, I will go out of my way to guess none of the mentioned parties believed it. Not Israel, not Iran and not even administration. Also, per reports, it was looking like they will have a deal and Iran was making concessions. In both cases, they got bombed as they were making them Witkoff is an untrustworthy idiot, negotiator unable to make deals.

kcplate 5mo ago
But what evidence do you have that none believed it? Sounds more like a subjective opinion rather than an objective one. While I am not big on trust either, I am perplexed why “successful” negotiations would all of a sudden turn on a dime into a regional military event without a major catalyst— especially this close to midterms. This action was not politically helpful to Trump, was risky with his base, yet he did it anyway.
- vel0city 5mo ago
  > I am perplexed why “successful” negotiations would all of a sudden turn on a dime into a regional military event without a major catalyst It can make a lot of sense when you understand the people involved are deeply incompetent, aggressively overconfident, and are surrounded by religious extremists saying this needs to be done for Jesus to come back. I mean, after all, we bombed them months ago and nothing happened. We just nabbed another head of state with zero issues. Nothing bad is going to happen, we've got this! We'll just breeze in and crush them in a few days. Which we did, mission success, that's why we're all finished already, right?
  - kcplate 5mo ago
    > It can make a lot of sense when you understand the people involved are deeply incompetent, aggressively overconfident, and are surrounded by religious extremists saying this needs to be done for Jesus to come back. It was literally only until the last 5 words that I realized you were not talking about Iran. Funny how you ignore their part in all this. However, I do want to take issue with the idea of “deeply incompetent”. That doesn't fit. They are either extremely competent at implementing their political agenda, or extremely lucky. Additionally this whole situation is contrary to the Trump administration’s normal playbook. If anything is consistent about Trump is that he panders to his base. This was the exact opposite. Why the change? Thats the problem with assuming that this is Trump business as usual, its not…which is why I feel that there is a catalyst to go off their normal playbook.