Zoraptor

Pretty sure accusing someone of using illegal drugs would get you a warning as well as accusing someone of lying. FTR, don't care, didn't complain, won't complain as your opinion is worthless. If my opinion was worthless to you, well, you wouldn't care either and certainly wouldn't write pages and pages. Was I wrong about you lying? Well, was Donald Rumsfeld lying when he said he knew where Iraq's WMDs were? You (presumably) still insist he wasn't. Please, please don't take that as an excuse to restart another multi year old argument, it's just an illustration of why you get no benefit of doubt on the matter. In any case, what the IAEA says now as opposed to, lol, 14 years ago via a think tank is that you cannot use their report(s) as a justification for attacking Iran, straight from their Director. If you prefer, there's a written report from a week ago. So, you can burble on irrelevantly about your 14 year old 2nd hand report in support of Bibi's 27 year old accusations as much as you like, it's still a 14 year old second hand report supporting 27 year old accusations. Though surely even you are getting sick of it now.

Interesting article from the BBC on why they only cover Israeli hospitals being bombed extensively and it isn't a double standard. All it actually does is give a very good indication of how bad the media coverage is and why BBC Persian is seen as a bit of a joke. Ah, it's all Iran's fault. There is literally no comment about all the Palestinian medical facilities that have been bombed and Israel has restricted access to because it's a bad look for them. That is particularly ironic because this is the final paragraph: Well yes, but not in the way you think. I'd also note that the BBC did not visit and give extensive coverage to all the medical facilities bombed, by Israel, in Lebanon either. Via WHO, and after one month of Israel's attack. There's a pattern there about who's hospitals have value and who's don't, and it isn't anything to do with Israel not practicing censorship.

They can, if by no other means than by claiming it was something else*. There is at least one location that is completely off limits and you cannot get on demand satellite coverage of, ie Dimona. Which would also make a very obvious retaliatory target. Doesn't mean that they have, it may have been shot down or never fired or various other options, but information on new missiles working is exactly the sort of thing you won't get confirmation of, unless Israel thinks it's in their best interests. *or just a generic missile. In the explosive sense there isn't really much difference between that missile and others- a bog standard SCUD would have a 1t warhead, the shahab-3 up to 1.2t, the sejjil has up to 1.5t. You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between any of them with any certainty from the crater or damage they leave.

And I can't believe I have to explain to you why that is a monumentally stupid argument, again. I can't believe I had to explain it first time. You picked something that is famous for requiring no technical know how, you can accuse literally anyone of it who's physically capable of doing it. Indeed, it's worse than nothing when the whole point is Netanyahu making the same accusation for 27 years. To summarise: you resuscitated an argument that was weak ten years ago since it relied on something 12 years old then, and it is even weaker now, 22 years later. You illustrate it with ludicrous comparisons. You accuse people of drug use and then complain about using reddit style arguments. You outright lied about what the IAEA said in the hope I wouldn't read it and then removed the offending quote next time you reposted it.

Again, nothing had changed for 22 years prior to the current Israeli attacks according to your own sources. According to the US there was no weapons program, and hadn't been since 2003. Up to three years is irrelevant, unless you can provide evidence that it's significantly less than that. We all know if it were, say, two weeks- which is less than 3 years- then that is what they'd say. Instead, they said three years. Which is not imminent. As for factualities: you were so badly informed you compared the technical requirements for an ANFO bomb to a nuke. You said Iran had a current nuclear weapons program according to the IAEA, while citing a report that said the exact opposite. FTR, there's literally no point trying to insult me. There are two crucial rules to live by when it comes to debates (1) that which is asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence and (2) insults only work when you value the person's opinion.

I don't think you need look any further for 'why now' than Israel thinking it's doable. Same general reason as for the US and Britain invading Iraq. Their calculus is pretty simple. The west is what matters to them internationally and what can stop their aggressiom, and they simply won't do anything to stop them. Haven't stopped the warcrimes in Palestine, haven't imposed even the most basic of consequences, label Israel repeatedly attacking other countries as self defence and all the old Orwellian tropes. Indeed, once the attack is made the west has to end it. It effectively cannot end in a negotiated settlement, since the west abrogated the last one. Israel has just made the situation an existential one for Iran, and that means nukes. Whether or not they really wanted them last week, they certainly want them now. And as soon as they have them, per North Korea, the leverage of conventional military aggression is gone (or the west has to go nuclear. Would be interesting watching the attempts to try and spin that as defensive and responsible. I'm not even sure you'd get condemnation from Starmer/ Macron/ Mers and the other jellies for Israel or the US nuking Tehran, let alone consequences). (And that last sentence is the crucial one really for why this has been such a disaster for the west. Their defence of Israel's conduct has been straight out of 1984* and they've provided yet another example of how the one thing that will protect you from them and their proxies is the very thing they don't want you to have. Not because you're irresponsible or whatever or because of international law/ The Rules Based Order- reduced to a joke even among many westerners- but because that is what will protect you from being attacked, by the west. They've proved that the Iranian and Libyans were idiots, and the North Koreans not. *"The West told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears" is pretty literal policy from western governments)

There may well not be reports of it hitting anything even if it did- especially if it hit something important- since all the press in Israel are operating under the Military Censor. If it landed on a puppy orphanage though... Ben Gvir has already said reporting on strikes is helping the enemy in time of war- and, apart from being Baruch Goldstein's #1 fan he's the Minister for National Security.

Yep, ie three years until it's actually usable. So Netanyahu's imminent threat is 1100+ days away. It was also (a minimum of) 1100 days away in, well, 2003. Net change over 22 years, zero days. Reminder, Netanyahu's justification was of imminent threat from an active development program with will to use. There is no active development program, the minimum time for a deliverable weapon is 3 years, and the weapons program hadn't been restarted according to everyone for 22 years up until this week. Every part of Netanyahu's argument was rubbish. Funny, for someone who doesn't even think it's the real reason you spend an awful lot of time defending Bibi's claims.

To quote you: "Based on what evidence?" Please do a better job than Gromnir providing it. The analysis of everyone except Israel is that Iran has no active nuclear program to end. The last inspection deal got abrogated by Donald Trump, the guy now wanting to make a new deal that there's no guarantee he won't decide to abrogate arbitrarily in two years time. Trump who also surrendered to the Houthis, a bunch of stereotypical drug addicted sandal wearing goat farmers with a negligible fraction of the resources of Iran, after his bombing campaign singularly failed to achieve anything except a pledge not to attack specifically american ships (ie less than 1% of world freighter capacity).

The current US Intelligence Assessment is that Iran does not have a weapons program. "We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so." That is literally literally the lede from the current (March 2025) assessment. The estimate is that it would take them 3 years to have working nukes, from when they made the decision to restart. That is not breakout capacity. You can continue with throwing words at the screen and moving goalposts as much as you like, that's the facts. As for accusations of selective quoting, I notice you've reposted the same 14 year old quote, yet again, minus the bits I quoted from it about the IAEA and US saying Iran hasn't had a program since 2003, ie 22 years ago. End of story.

Sigh. "U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so."" It's literally literally on this page it's so recent. Now, to condense down your massive screed to the relevant bits: The IAEA did not agree with you. If you'd bothered to actually read what you linked. Not for the first time. And neither did US Intelligence either. The choice is: agree with Gromnir's definition of weapons program, or the IAEA's and US Intelligence. Not a difficult choice. Sheesh, they even admit pretty much everything concrete came from AQ Khan and was shared with Libya as well, everything else is conditional, ie may have done. You are, at best, arguing that 22 years ago Iran had a weapons program. It's good that you don't believe Israel is doing it for that reason, but that is the reason they have stated no matter how much you don't like that fact.

Eh, there's a certain irony you accusing someone else of having a ketamine moment and using reddit arguments in consecutive sentences. Fortunately, I always take ad hominems as an admission that the person making them has no better argument. You've saliently failed to address Israel's claims, instead choosing to argue something completely different. I'm not even sure what at this point. That Iran had a weapons program 22 years ago? Even if true it's still so what if they didn't/ don't have one now. You can't even argue there's been a change of leadership, since if they had one in 2003 and it got cancelled, then it was cancelled by Khamenei. As for your 'condemnation' of Israel, lol. Another 59 palestinians killed going to a food site. Still a complete mystery to Gromnir what Israel's intentions are. We all know what your attitude would be if it were dead Israelis instead; then the motivations wouldn't be a mystery. And of course, despite all that you're perfectly willing to argue Israel's case when it attacks Iran. That is pretty much the definition of deciding one side is the good guys. If there's one thing that is grimly amusing though it's the cognitive dissonance. Those sites are from 2003. Which is probably why the quarterly report was approved by a tiny majority, along partisan lines; 19 out of 35. To put that in perspective, it wouldn't have passed the UNSC, even without China and Russia's veto.

Never bothered isn't quite fair, their most advanced system may be late 90s tech but they were actively blocked from getting more advanced systems. It's also taken most of the SAM output of the west to have success/ 'success' with Ukraine. Can't really expect Iran to compete with that.

And you still think making incredibly long and incredibly irrelevant posts works on me. You can argue what you want using decade+ old sources all you like. Fact remains, Netanyahu has consistently lied about one or both of Iran's ability to make a nuke, andor its will to. The absolute best you are doing is arguing that Netanyahu only lied about Iran's intention to make one. As such, Israel's attacks have no justification as self defence. Sheesh, Bruce does a better job of arguing the actual point. Consider that. Your problem, fundamentally, is that you want Israel to have a good, justified, moral reason for how it's acting because you've got them labelled as the good guys. "U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Iran has yet to begin a weapons program, but has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so." Funny you didn't quote that part of the article, since it's most relevant. Not sure how seriously to take the BBC now. They can't even bring themselves to condemn Israel bombing their Iranian counterpart and thus making BBC House a legitimate military target for everyone in the future.

Sigh. That's completely pointless word salad. Again, Netanyahu's accusations of imminent nukes for Iran are 27 years old. His ridiculous bomb graphic at the UN is 13 years old. He has always maintained Iran are developing the capacity and always has said they have the will to build them. 27 years is not by any reasonable definition imminent, neither is 12. You cannot be one year, months, weeks away from something you want to do imminently and as a matter of policy for 27 years. Or if you prefer 324 months/ 1404 weeks. The accusation is so old Leo DiCaprio wouldn't consider dating it. There are two options: Netanyahu was lying about the timeframe. Or he was lying about the will to make. Those are the only options.

There's no chance. This whole thing has been an utter disaster for western credibility including the US. Every single country that actually cares about Ukraine has watched Israel crap all over their talking points and had people outright laughing at them for the hypocrisy about war crimes and aggressive war. They've proved every single accusation about their inconsistency and bias to be correct. They've even managed to invalidate the old canard "at least our side didn't invade its neighbours". Trump may feel he has to jump on board now to preserve his credibility, but only because this has been an unqualified embarrassment for him- the deal maker who pledged to stop all the wars. You could build an ANFO bomb. Anyone can. It takes no specialist training or education at all. You had illiterate Afghans who'd barely seen electricity in their lives building them. Leave out the FO and people can and regularly have made one accidentally so much so there's a wikipedia page dedicated to listing them. But you need very, very specific ingredients to build a nuke. Without those ingredients it simply won't work, as a matter of basic physical reality. Dirty bomb, sure. That however would be extraordinarily disingenuous since New Zealand could build one of those, and we don't even have a reactor. So could Fiji. We've been told by Netanyahu for 27 years that Iran was going to imminently have the capability to build them, and that they would. Thing is, it doesn't even matter when debunking that if they've been a year away since then. For very, very obvious reasons. Which, I suspect, I will have to state anyway: if they've actually been a year away for a decade but not got there then the only logical conclusion is that they don't actually want to have nukes, which makes the second part of Bibi's accusation untrue. Unless, maybe, they feel forced to by an existential threat. Either way, Netanyahu has been wrong for at least 26 years. He may be right, now, and if he wants someone to blame he can always look in the mirror.

We've had months of the US and various Israelis saying the plan is to depopulate Gaza, months of a completely illegal blockade of essential goods and more than year of indiscriminate large scale bombing, shootings and artillery. We've had systematic targeting of journalists, the specific and targeted murder and torture of medical workers, those counting the dead and aid workers, imposition of concentration camps ("islands of peace" or whatever bollocks Hagani came up with) those seeking food aid and the deaths of women/ children/ men are in near perfect ratio to the population's. It's pretty bloody obvious what is happening and the endgame is unless you really, really, really want to ignore the truth. Or to put it another way, just imagine the reaction and terms that would be used if it were China or Russia* doing it, instead of Israel. We've had Israel break the truce in Gaza, we've had Israel invade Syria, we've had Israel continue bombing its neighbours and all the rest. We've had Israel launch an attack on Iran with no proximal** reason. Definition of a rogue state and everything is perfectly well explained by the pattern of sociopathic narcissism that has so very clearly been exhibited by its leadership, and enabled by the unrestricted support of a bunch of gross hypocrites and moral cowards in western leadership. *Strangely, the same people who burble on about 377 Ukrainian children being 'kidnapped' as a clear cut case of 'genocide' suddenly develop blindness when it's 20k Palestinian children being killed by Israel and hundreds of thousands more being starved, and the same reporters reporting that outrage and describing Putin as an indicted war criminal decide the Palestinian children all just died, who knows what of? and still describe Netanyahu as just Israel's PM. **First occurrence I could find of "Iran imminently going to have nuclear bomb" from Bibi is from... 1998. The first estimate I could find from US intelligence was that they could have one by 2000. Iran nukes and cold fusion, perpetually just a little longer away.

It's largely a matter of US attitude. While not explicitly a peace treaty Obama negotiated the JCPOA with Iran fine ten years ago, and it largely worked; even after Trump pulled the US out of it Iran remained in compliance for most (all?) of the agreed restrictions. The subsequent two Presidents failed miserably whether it be with Iran or Palestine because they gave unqualified support to one side. That, fundamentally, is not really negotiating as the mediator isn't actually a mediator but a cheerleader, and it's no surprise that it doesn't work. It's no accident that Obama actually got an agreement against a backdrop of strident Israeli criticism. The original Camp David worked because Israel was willing to give something up and Carter was willing to negotiate in (broadly) good faith. Let's be honest, if they were being negotiated, now, the US would probably be demanding Israel get half the transit fees from the Suez Canal and keep the Sinai. The other half goes to... a US slush fund for investments in Egypt, maybe? Cue unbiased mediators and Hasbara saying how nice Israel is being for not demanding the Pyramids too since the Israelites built them. (To be fair to Trump, he too had a successful negotiation- with the Taleban. While the end result was somewhat embarrassing it was always coming, and was always going to be an embarrassment; it was just a question of how much more sunk cost was going to be added to the tally. Bush and Obama had 15 years of not talking to the Taleban to get Afghanistan in a fit state, an extra 8 years of Hillary was not likely to result in anything other what happened in 2021 happening in 2029 instead)

Would be ironic if Iran bought J-10s since they're (allegedly) a knock off of a design Israel shared with China based on the F-16. Though ascribing Pakistani success to them is a bit like saying how brilliant a Su-24 every time a Storm Shadow/ SCALP is fired by one. The missile deserves most of the credit not the delivery system, and that was the PL-15.

Iran doesn't have any S-400s unfortunately. Their S-300s are old export models too.

Not your best work.

Australia is in the same boat as Canada. They'll always (well, 'always') be loyal to the US, Trump, not so much. Trump's conduct and being seen as Trumpists doomed both countries' conservative opposition parties to electoral losses that they previously looked like they would win. Not following Trump's directions is electorally popular. (Particularly funny is the US threatening to pull out of AUKUS. Which would result in the Australians having paid the french a billion dollar break fee to switch to US subs for nothing. While that was a Morrison vanity project- and the threat is likely just trying to leverage additional purchases*- he tied Australia's defence strategy to it for future governments. Cancellation would be a massive prestige loss for Australia and the UK, and Australia would end up... going back to the French? Guess they could always keep the Collins class even longer**... *coincidentally, we've spent/ allocated $4bn for 4 planes and 4-6 US helicopters. To put that in perspective, we could have bought 28 F-16s for an eighth of that amount 15 years ago, and that's including the prior lease fees. Pretty much total extortion **allegedly so loud initially that RNZN sonar operators thought they had to be decoys during a wargame, because no one would deliberately design them that way)

For this, probably not. A no confidence motion failed a couple of days ago so he has six months (iirc) before another can be called. It may well have been designed to fail so he has some time in case things don't go his way wrt Iran immediately. This is just the natural conclusion of continually telling a sociopathic narcissist that he has your backing no matter what. The logical conclusion is and always will be an attempt to reshape the world as he wants it. That's just who sociopathic narcissists are. Yeah, nah. Though they were clearly informed they also effectively warned Iran publicly about the attack by making sure everyone knew they were withdrawing embassy staff. That's not the act of someone endorsing it, arguably it's the act of someone trying to prevent it. "This was always part of the plan" has been Trump's stock response to nearly every diplomatic set back.

Well, there was very little chance of an actual deal this weekend anyway so it likely wasn't preempting that. Though Trump kind of needs something to claim as a W after all the Ls he's accumulated. But really this is a massive slap in the face for Trump internationally. While he and Netanyahu have not been getting on well not even waiting for the negotiations to wrap up is a pretty calculated insult. Yep. Zero chance of the weekend meeting even taking place, now. Ultimately this is the problem with allowing Israel carte blanche and unrestricted support- you don't preserve your influence, you tell them that whatever they want to do they can do since your support is unconditional. Same goes for the other spineless blancmanges making up the Rules Based Order. If you're ok with genocide- and for all the virtue signalling they are- you're saying that you're fine with anything. (Got to lol at Bruce's reading list. Ynet and INN, just needs to add Memri for the balance of an 'iranian' pov...)

The NZ government wouldn't even do this much, if they thought there was any chance of action from the US in response.