7 ms·

Why can Israel have a nuclear weapon? It is also an insanely violent ethno-theocratic regime.

• ericmay 22d ago
  Besides the point and whataboutism, but I'm not advocating that Israel should have nuclear weapons. They do, and I'm not sure there's much we can do about it at this point. Same with North Korea. I'm opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons and just because one country has one doesn't mean other countries should go and get them too.
  • nemomarx 22d ago
    Maybe we should have brokered some kinda deal with Iran to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon then, huh. At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it. Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state.
    • ericmay 22d ago
      > Maybe we should have brokered some kinda deal with Iran to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon then, huh. Maybe we should have brokered some kind of deal with Russia to prevent them from invading Ukraine. Do you trust American intelligence 100% to verify Iran is not building a nuclear bomb? And if they weren't, why also were they funding these militant groups? What's the point? It's Neo-colonialism in the Middle East. > At this point they'd be fools to not pursue getting one, and we killed everyone in a position of authority who was rational about it. The leadership wasn't really rational in your western sense. I'm not sure where you are coming up with that. If they were rational they wouldn't be murdering their own civilians, chanting death to Israel and death to America as a national past time (no sane nation does this, or if you want to argue they do then don't get mad when Americans are burning the Koran or whatever) and funding militants. You're trying to argue from a place that assumes your values about economics and prosperity and global human rights with an entity that does not care about those values. If they were rational as you'd like them to be they'd just not do any of the things they've been doing. Why does Iran have to get special treatment to not build a nuclear weapon? Have you thought about that? Why do we have to pay them off? Why are they special snowflakes who get to hold the world hostage less they build nuclear bombs to threaten others? > Cats out of the bag, one more nuclear rogue state. That's the fault of the rest of the world then for failing to come together to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
      • nemomarx 22d ago
        Burning the Koran is protected free speech, just as burning a flag is, or the Bible, or whatever else you'd like. The point is we had a deal, and Iran kept their enrichment below weapons development levels for all of that time. Even a few years after the deal was broken by Trump, apparently. We could have kept that status quo going and not dealt with tolls in the strait and expensive military operations, and it would have been better for everyone involved. But now I don't see a path back to that, and no one is interested enough to stop the proliferation or put enough resources into it to "win". Blame whoever you like I guess, but I'm blaming Trump for tearing things up and kicking off this recent war.
        • ericmay 22d ago
          Anchoring on this deal is a waste of time. We shouldn't have had to have a deal in the first place. They could just join other responsible countries like, idk, Vietnam, Brazil, and hmmm who else, Switzerland! in not pursuing nuclear weapons. > We could have kept that status quo going Like the last time the Houthis disrupted shipping? Or when Iran launched and supported attacks on Israel, plus continued disruption in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq? (Yemen too but mentioned via Houthis). Idk if that's a tolerable situation.
          • nemomarx 22d ago
            I don't recall the houthis disrupting shipping before 2018. The status quo under before that point was fine for the global economy and for the US. If it wasn't fine for Israel, that's a problem for their own military to deal with, ideally without US backing that drags other countries into the issue. Good luck with non proliferation but I think the very obvious "we can attack and invade countries without nukes but can't do that to countries with nukes" lesson is being demonstrated to everyone, so countries that don't want to be invaded will be trying to get them now. Anyone near Russia for sure, possibly even Switzerland eventually.
            • ericmay 22d ago
              > Good luck with non proliferation Hey I mean this is your problem too, wherever you are from. You seem a little nonchalant about nuclear proliferation which most consider to be a rather serious matter because of the potential for real nuclear war or nuclear attacks.
  • pphysch 22d ago
    Iran clearly has the capability to flatten every major hospital and university and desalination plant in Israel, like Israel has done in Gaza, but they don't. It's also clear that Iran having nukes would be a strategic deterrent to Israel's ultraviolent territorial expansionism.
    • ericmay 22d ago
      > Iran clearly has the capability to flatten every major hospital and university and desalination plant in Israel, like Israel has done in Gaza, but they don't. I'm not supportive of Israel having nuclear weapons, but Iran won't do something like this because the Israelis might nuke them. That doesn't excuse Iran also building nuclear weapons. Neither should have them, in my view. Iran also supports the militants that continue to create conflict in Palestine. It's not one-sided and any vague assertion that there's only one bad actor here is illegitimate.
      • simiones 22d ago
        The conflict in Palestine is created entirely by Israel. The militants are just the people who refuse to lay down and take it. This has become more and more obvious - if not through the genocide in Gaza, then through the rapid illegal colonization happening at an accelerated place in the West Bank.
        • ericmay 22d ago
          It's not entirely created by Israel, and most of the militants are just lunatics who are thankfully killed. But that doesn't excuse Iranian funding of other militant groups in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, or Iraq. Nor does it excuse Iran's material support of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, nor does that justify Iran trying to build a nuclear weapon.
      • mrguyorama 22d ago
        Why did Iran willingly disassemble their other WMD programs, like bioweapons and chemical weapons, if they are irrationally bound to destroying Israel? Chemical weapons are perfectly effective for that desire and dramatically easier to build and deploy than nuclear weapons. So if you expect Iran to just explode Israel ASAP, why are they holding back right now with their weapons not targeting civilian infrastructure? Why did they stop pursuing cheap WMDs that don't need complicated enrichment? Note that Iran is objectively not pursuing a nuke as fast as possible. They've had sufficient enriched uranium for a long time to be able to actually start building and testing physics packages and even get their first detonation test, but they instead have just been building a stockpile. >I'm not supportive of Israel having nuclear weapons Okay, then by your arguments about Iran, we should be invading Israel right? Like right now! They cannot be allowed to have nukes! What about North Korea? It sure is funny how all the hand wringing about them getting nuclear weapons got quiet after they built a nuke and didn't use it
• WarmWash 22d ago
  [flagged]
  • p_j_w 22d ago
    Their god has literally ordered them to genocide people because they had a war 400 years previous.
  • pphysch 22d ago
    "Sure, Israel might be mass-murdering children while calling them 'Amalek', but at least they aren't scary Muslims!" At what point does reality become more important than your favorite childhood stories?
  • mmooss 22d ago
    Attempts to claim that your side is somehow superior and not subject to the same human evils as the other side are never true, and just encourage your own people to commit evil - they are justified and the other side is evil, of course. Somehow everyone thinks that, which should tell you something about the truth of it. But of course for your side, it's actually true! One classic method is to try to tie it to scripture, but people behave like people regardless of their scriptures, and members of every religion has done plenty of horrible things in the name of their god. The Christian Gospels are about as pacifist as scripture gets and yet many horrible things have been done in Christianities name - often justified because the victims were non-Christian. There is plenty of religious-sanctioned violence in the Old Testament, including in the Torah, and plenty of violence against non-Jews today - so much that it's a bit bizarre to overlook it.
    • WarmWash 22d ago
      I don't have a side, especially as an atheist. I mean, we have modern day Islamic societies that are still dragging out homosexuals and stoning them, and still putting women in bags as property. If that was what I needed to defend with a straight face, I also would be pretty desperate to shift the focus back a thousand or so years.
      • 22d ago
• soperj 22d ago
  You can ask the same question of the US. They're the only ones to have actually used them (and they try to justify it still). For all those who are about to reply saying it was justified because it saved American lives, why didn't you use it Afghanistan or Iraq?
  • swish-mish 22d ago
    [dead]
  • bluGill 22d ago
    Almost nobody today was alive when the US used nuclear weapons. We can ignore them at this point. Judge the current US policy by the current US.
    • soperj 22d ago
      Are you for real? That was 81 years ago, which is actually less than some US states average lifespan. There are roughly 12 million Americans over the age of 80.
      • bluGill 22d ago
        They were still children at the time. Maybe a handful were adults, but even then just barely.
        • soperj 19d ago
          > Almost nobody today was alive I guess children aren't alive.
    • Arodex 22d ago
      >Judge the current US policy by the current US. Then it is obvious we need to preemptively nuke the USA right now.
  • Gibbon1 22d ago
    US lost 2500 soldiers in Afghanistan between 2001 and when Trump betrayed his country to appease Putin. Okinawa alone cost 12,000 US soldiers. With 100,000 to 150,000 civilian deaths.
• lenerdenator 22d ago
  Believe it or not, they're not exactly a 1-to-1. Up until fairly recently, Israel was a stand-out in the region for actually having things like decently fair elections and a political class derived from a relatively wide sample of its populace. Other countries in the region were either Arab nationalist republics, Islamic republics, or authoritarian monarchies. While it was ethno-theocratic, it was one that seemed to balance religion with secular demands, and as it is, most countries around the world have at least some basis in ethnicity. The US is a notable exception for this, for what it's worth. This has begun to fade as a more conservative sector of Israeli society has begun carrying more political power, but it's not to the same extent as you find in other countries in the region. Nuclear weapons are indeed bad and we used to try to negotiate ways between major powers to reduce their number. We don't do that anymore, for a variety of reasons. The more of them there are in different, independent hands, the more likely they are to be used. If they're used, there's a real chance that nuclear-armed powers make severe miscalculations about who is firing what at where. For example, a USAF radar operator watching an over-the-horizon system pointed eastward sees a large number of missiles being launched, and may assume that they're Russian missiles aimed at the US, when they are in fact Iranian missiles aimed at Israel. They might make a potentially species-ending mistake as a result. The largest issue with Iran having nuclear weapons is that it almost certainly intends to use them against an already nuclear-armed power, Israel, in a way that really doesn't have any rational endgame. Iran is a Shia Islamic theocracy. Beyond the Western-ish influence that Israel brings to the region, there are serious theological implications from the existence of Israel. Islam has a core tenant that there is no higher power other than Allah and that Muhammad is his prophet. Allah is the same god that exists in Christianity and Judaism, and Muhammad is held as carrying on the thread of prophecy that began with the biblical Adam. There's a lot in common in the three major Abrahamic faiths, and like all other faiths, people interpret it in different ways. The Iranian regime - who definitely does not represent all Muslims, let's make that clear right now - interprets it as the basis of their power. They are a group of clerics and scholars who govern a nation through interpretation and application of religious jurisprudence via one head cleric, the Ayatollah. If you are a person who either rules a society based on any religious jurisprudence, or are working under that person - as all of the Iranian government does - you can't have too much tolerance for things that might undermine that religion. The Iranian theocracy's interpretation of the line of prophecy that Muhammad is a part of is that he is the "seal of the prophets", meaning that there will be no further revelations or corrections to the line of prophecy until the end-times. Muhammad is held up as having revealed corrections to the line of prophecy, meaning that while Judaism, Christianity, and other Abrahamic faiths are of the same prophecy, they ultimately got some things wrong. Now let's get back to the existence of Israel. A short description of Israel in the context of what I've described is that you have a people who now control some of the Abrahamic faiths' most holy sites, and they're doing it based off of what is seen as the "wrong" prophecy. If people who believe in the "wrong" prophecy are firmly in charge of the sites you consider holy, what does that say about your prophecy and your claim to power based on it? Sort of reduces its power, doesn't it? You can't have that. Something has to be done. In the eyes of the Iranian theocracy, that "something" is funding, training, and commanding militia and military groups who are sympathetic to your understanding of prophecy and having them strike out at the theologically inconvenient people. Developing more powerful weapons to use while doing so is a natural part of this. What's more powerful than a nuclear weapon? Nothing. So you make that your ultimate goal. What they might do with it, who knows, but again, simply having more nuclear weapons in the hands of more independent actors raises the likelihood of their use with potentially catastrophic results. The plight of the Palestinians just happens to be a convenient excuse for all of this. They're Arab and majority Sunni as opposed to the Persian and Shiite Iran. If there were a two-state solution as we spent most of the last 30 years working towards, it likely wouldn't satisfy the Iranians, which is why they don't recognize Israel at all instead of saying "we'd recognize you if you retreat to your pre-1967 borders and let the Palestinian Authority govern the West Bank and Gaza Strip."
• AnthonyMouse 22d ago
  Under what scenario would they use it against New York or Washington?
  • pphysch 22d ago
    That's very hypothetical, but one might also ponder what under scenario Israel might attempt to sink a US battleship and murder dozens of US servicemen. It's hard to predict what a theocracy might do.
    • AnthonyMouse 22d ago
      If a nuclear bomb vaporized New York and you were forced to guess who did it between Israel and Canada, the better guess would be Canada and they don't even have nuclear weapons.
      • pphysch 20d ago
        That's a bizarre take. Which of Israel or Canada has assaulted a US battleship unprovoked?
        • AnthonyMouse 20d ago
          Your one example was plausibly the result of fog of war, and if you're going to go back to events that happened before the moon landing like that then Canada and the US were on opposite sides in the War of 1812. Moreover, the point is that Israel is the country least likely to use nuclear weapons against the US, not that Canada is especially likely to.
• asah 22d ago
  The argument goes: Iran has repeatedly called for "death to America," "death to Israel" and so on. Israel's leaders do not generally call for the destruction of other countries.
  • Timon3 21d ago
    Yes they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the_Gaza_genocide#Statements_by_Israeli_officials https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intent_and_incitement_in_the_G...