Yes, we are on our third ticketing system on our team with dead refs to old issues. PR without a commit documenting why you need a change does not normally get approved and helps a lot also at present and future review time. Lots of value for new devs to see how thinking went and why something exist and not something else etc.
Documenting it also forces people to think why they are adding a change in the first place. Code added without purpose becomes dead weight and tech debt.
Look, I'll make this easy to understand. The parent comment that this stems from said:
> It can't convey what decisions were made, what alternatives were discarded, what business motivations may have led to that code.
If you're advocating this should all go in commit messages then I don't know what to say that I haven't already, it objectively doesn't belong there. The end.
Sure but code can't capture everything. Maybe with enough comments I guess, but not code alone. For example, code won't tell you that this feature was timeboxed hence this edgecase was not supported
You'll at least need the discipline to include the ticket ID in the message. Links to documentation are ok, but they will likely rot and even if they don't the content may change such that it no longer accurately reflects the commit changes.
Yes, I think people who are anti squash merge are those who don't work in Github and use a patch based system or something different. If you're sending a patch for linux, yes it makes sense that you want to send one complete, well described patch. But Github's tooling is based around the squash merge. It works well and I don't know anyone in real life who has issues with it.
And to counter some specific points:
* In a github PR, you write the main commit msg and description once per PR, then you tack on as many commits as you want, and everyone knows they're all just pieces of work towards the main goal of the eventually squashed commit
* Forcing a clean up every time you make a new commit is not only annoying extra work, but it also overwrites history that might be important for the review of that PR (but not important for what ends up in main branch).
* When follow up is requested, you can just tack on new commits, and reviewers can easily see what new code was added since their last review. If you had to force overwrite your whole commit chain for the PR, this becomes very annoying and not useful to reviewers.
* In the end, squash merge means you clean up things once, instead of potentially many times
Forcing a single commit per PR is the issue imo. It's a lazy solution. Rebase locally into sensible commits that work independently and push with lease. Reviewers can reset to remote if needed.
You can, but most of us work in Github and having a PR to dump commits to is very easy and convenient. Then, when you get some feedback on your PR, you can dump more commits and it's very easy for the reviewer to see what has changed since the last time they reviewed it.
I feel like what you're arguing is that you should clean up your commits before anyone else sees them. Fair. But you could also clean it up right before merging to main. It's not that different, except the latter is much less annoying, particularly when going back and forth with people.
I know this is a very github centric workflow, but that's where most engineers work now, and it's nice and easy. This wouldn't work for eg: contributing to linux, but that's not what most of us do.
This is where the "Trunk based development" people live - I personally believe that commits should be atomic, because git bisect on smaller meaningful commits is a hang of a lot better than a monster 90 file change commit
Yikes, so basically Iran gets everything it wants. It paid a heavy price for it, but it would get so much out of this. At pre war ship rates, that toll would be ~$90B per year ($45B if split half with Oman). Iran's government generates something like $40B in income, so this would be absolutely monumental.
Posts like this from the HN community are almost surreal. Any review of the actual deal would show a two week ceasefire in exchange for the strait being open and safe while negotiations continue. This 10 point plan is just a place to start talking, no country has agreed to anything on it. How is this missed on the community here?
No it would be trivial to gain a thorough understanding of Middle East politics and the oil market for an enlightened people who were able to become foremost experts in epidemiology, molecular biology, global supply chain logistics, the war in Ukraine, semiconductor manufacturing, and many other fields entirely self-taught simply by obsessively reading social media and wikipedia.
"Infotainment" is the term I've heard to describe Reddit and other talking websites. People are looking to "win" like they do in sports or other recreational activities. It's a kind of fun that disguises itself as learning-- minus, of course, the actual work.
I understand this perspective a lot more.
I assume they're going to haggle and work on a few items, and adjust pieces here and there.
What if they at least get sanctions lifted, that would be huge, no?
Going to be an interesting couple of weeks.
Change this line from : "so basically Iran gets everything it wants"
to "so basically Iran would get everything it wants under this plan".
I'm not so dumb to understand that this will be the final plan, just commenting that this is incredibly bad for the US as is laid out.
> Any review of the actual deal would show a two week ceasefire in exchange for the strait being open and safe while negotiations continue.
Speaking of this community being kinda dumb - do you really think this ceasefire is enough for all ships to go on their merry way? Deals mentioned over social media are not enough to convince insurance companies that all is safe. And 12 hours later we now have evidence of this - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/strait-hormuz-sh...
Also, my original point is that there is nothing in that deal that is a better long-term outcome than what we had before the war. Maybe that will change in the final deal, but the fact that the starting point of the negotiation is 100% on Iran's side is not where you want to be.
Nobody knows what "the actual deal" is because we have pathological liars on both sides (well, especially pathological on one side, most just utilitarian on the other)
Iran's version of events includes the Iranian military controlling the Strait and incurring fees.
he's chickened out of getting regime change primarily.
in terms of shifting war goals, he's chickened out on getting back to the status quo from before the war.
rather than chickened out, the US is the sound loser of this war. the best outcome the US can negotiate for now is worse than what they could get before the war
Meanwhile Iran continues to blow up oil prices which is devastating for the entire world's economy, to say nothing of the USA's economy and especially Trump's popularity.
How is it backing down when his threat was we’d do it if they didn’t agree to open up the strait, which is now open?
I don’t like the way he does things but we’ve seen Trump’s playbook enough to see what he does. Big threat, followed by the US getting some sort of capitulation from it. He then doesn’t follow through with the threat.
That’s not chickening out. That’s just negotiating with a big stick.
The strait is not open, Trump is pretending it is, to save face. Iran is charging $2M per ship, which will net them $90B and that is significantly higher than their oil revenue ($60B). Plus they get to keep their enriched uranium. Yes they lost some buildings and bridges but the strait fee is enough to rebuild. Iran is in a stronger position now than when the war started. TACO Trump lost the war.
Iran wants to charge $2M per ship as part of it's ceasefire conditions - which will almost certainly be rejected since that would impact every ship/nation traversing these waters. Waters that are not owned by Iran.
> Plus they get to keep their enriched uranium.
There's 0% chance of that happening.
> Iran is in a stronger position now than when the war started.
All of Iran's senior leadership are dead. Most or all of the "second-string" leadership is dead. All but their ground-force military is destroyed.
It's stunning to me, that people still do not understand Trump's one-and-only playbook. He literally published a book about his one-and-only strategy all the way back in 1987 - yet people still freak out when he makes big demands then settles for more realistic options. The guy literally has used the same strategy over and over, and everyone acts like it's the first time every time.
It's also stunning to me the very same people that were losing their minds about threatened events immediately switch into "TACO" mode when those events don't happen.
In this situation, Trump made wild threats and demands if Iran didn't agree to a ceasefire. Iran initially rejected but then some 6 hours later accepted. The one-and-only playbook strikes again.
What is stunning here is that some people think Trump has a reasonable strategy. What works in the business world is not the appropriate approach when working with other nations. When you threaten to kill an entire civilization, that damages US's reputation, regardless of what that threat accomplishes. Today the Pope is admonishing us and our closest partners such as UK is shunning us. US is now seen as a shit country on the level of North Korea. TACO Trump needs to be removed from office ASAP.
Even as Trump was threatening to wipe out Iran’s civilization unless Tehran agreed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, he was actively looking for a way out of the crisis. Trump then got Pakistan to post a fake plea to himself on X [1]. A few hours later Trump accepted the fake plea.
I mean, neither one did what they said they would do, if they had both done what they said they'd do, I guess we'd have nuclear war, so. (To the extent that you can't get anything consistent out of what Trump says he will do it's literally not possible, because he constantly contradicts himself.)
If the madman act had worked there would've been some significant changes before the bombings last year. Or, ok, maybe you gotta show them you're serious. But the madman act would at least then prevent needing to attack for weeks this year. Oh, nevermind. But... third time's the charm, right! He's definitely gonna get what he wants this time?
The people running the country, killing protestors, etc, aren't trying to "win" in the same way Trump is. It's easier to avoid regime change than it is to cause it from air strikes.
We must have a completely different definition of 'it worked'. The only thing that worked here is that he managed to get Epstein off the front pages, but that will only work for so long. Oh, then there is Cuba of course.
Why do you still believe there's any crime at all that could somehow turn around the people who support Trump?
Do you really think, after over a decade of buying into a cult, they will suddenly give up after seeing slightly better proof of things that are already widely known?
It's delusion to think this has to do with Epstein. Israel committed to this war Oct 7th, and the Trump admin jumped in for worse reasons: They thought they were special and could win. They thought they would be seen as strong.
Why do Trump friends own so much news and media if Trump believes he has to make up a war to distract from Epstein?
No amount of preachers raping kids has stopped fundamentalists christians from supporting their institutions that enable such activity. They are some of the same people who support Trump. They don't care if he personally raped a kid. "The ends justify the means". 2A folks support him even though he has directly said he wants to take guns from people without due process and even though he said Pretti should not have brought a gun to a protest, something that Kyle Rittenhouse supporters probably should have a problem with.
They don't care. The ends justify the means. They've never cared about the actual person involved. Everything they say in defense of him is post-hoc rationalization and entirely a front. They do not care.
The 12 D chess explanation, people still believe this?
This whole thing is a debacle. Trump was manipulated by his betters into engaging a war he doesn't understand at all [0], and while flailing he just reached for the most insane threat he could imagine.
The madman theory ironically actually requires a sane and competent person to perform the bluff, [1] which is not the case here.
That is certainly a favorable interpretation of events. I don't buy it. I think there's more evidence that he's actually an erratic, compulsive liar than some master strategist. What great deals has he secured for the US?
it really seems like the US is just ceding to iranian terms. the US cant solve the hormuz strait problem militarily, and so it has to come to the table
"I will end your civilization" is not credible. He'd lose a war powers vote and likely be removed if he even started down that path. To say nothing for the logistical impossibility.
He's not doing some Scott Adams master persuader nonsense. He spent a month being ignored by his counterparty so he just kept amping up the rhetoric until he was threating actual genocide. With human shields placed around the infrastructure he promised to attack, the president desperately begged Pakistan to broker a ceasefire with two sets of terms.
They also got to keep their new Ayatollah and continue with their religious government. An escalation of the war would have certainly ended with a complete regime change. Which would have been very expensive in life (Iranians) and money (Americans).
Or with their people rising up, which is I think what the US and Israel were hoping for - though they didn’t seem to plan for a way to actually make it happen.
We will see what happens at the end of this war when people come out of their homes to a crumbling country. They could decide that enough is enough and bring in some change.
Without arms, it is probably impossible for the people to take back their country.
We take the Second Amendment for granted here in the US - but the lack of a similar thing in Iran is what will keep the civilian population under the regime's control - or else another 10k-30k+ massacre.
Getting collectively bombed tends to have a unifying effect. If anything, bombing a populace would decrease the risk of an uprising that supports the bombers.
How would you feel if your city was being bombed by a hostile foreign nation, including a school full of kids? Magnanimous toward the attackers?
There was never going to be a regime change. Continuing the war meant many Americans were going to die (in addition to bankrupting the US). I'm a US citizen and very glad Iran came out on top here.
But, if you had an amazing reputation for paying your debts, and get super low interest rates because of it, and all of a sudden you change your reputation and demand for holding your debt and currency goes down, well, then that's created a massive problem for the currency that reduces everyone's quality of life drastically.
It depends. If it later comes out that their nuclear material was secured by the US, this is much more acceptable - it would seriously incentivize pipeline construction by making passage through the Strait more expensive. Given that closing it is really the only lever Iran has that can put pressure on the US at all, this attenuates that a great deal.
It’s not acceptable on its face, but there’s a lot going on in this conflict that isn’t making the news.
Iran has also been freely bombing Israel and US assets around the Middle East. The Zionists bit off more than they could chew and now Iran is better positioned than ever before. Not only that Iran has earned a lot of respect globally and Israel/the US has lost what little they had left.
It bombarded all its neighbors. What is that if not an escalation against non-aggressors? Not to mention the closing of the straits which is an escalation against many other parties.
Its neighbors are hosting US bases which were used to launch attacks on Iran. Bahrain in particular hosted the largest US radar station in the region which was being used as the control centre to coordinate the attack on Iran [1]. These countries were absolutely not 'non-aggressors'.
Doesn’t excuse bombing actual civilian targets, apartment complexes, &c, nor does it excuse executing peaceful domestic protestors - all of which this Iranian government has done.
Maybe if they, idk, stopped funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and Yemen rebels stopped trying to get a nuke, stopped stockpiling missiles for no reason and stopped chanting death to America we wouldn’t be here.
The Iranian government is terrible, but that doesn’t mean that the U.S. relationship with the gulf states isn’t worse off than in February. The United States made our alignment with Israel hard to ignore and was significantly unable to protect allied countries while drawing fire onto them. It’s entirely possible for both sides to lose a war and I’d bet we’re going to see enough of a shift away from us, likely to China, to solidly count this as a loss.
It hard to say which way this goes. It's a possibility. But China can offer even less protection than the US can.
We have seen that the US ability to project power is great. We've also seen (and I don't think anyone didn't know that) that power has its limits. Especially when it comes to fighting fanatics with nothing to lose.
The US is still the only world power that has the ability to e.g. prevent Iran from just walking in and taking the gulf countries. It's true that protection isn't hermetic.
But hermetic protection is REALLY important when your entire economy is based off of oil and water desalination plants. Iran still retains the ability to damage that infrastructure. The Gulf countries have some hard decisions to make, but I wouldn’t be surprised if several of them sprint closer to Iran. Already we are hearing of a joint Omani-Irani agreement on Hormuz administration…
But it's not new that there's no hermetic protection.
There is no real possible alignment between the regime in Tehran and the Sunni Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. There is no way they are sprinting closer to Iran.
Oman is more complicated but they are also not going to align with Iran.
It's hard to evaluate but I don't see huge shifts from the gulf states. The US is still their best bet (not to mention that they are heavily invested in that). They have major investments that aren't oil, i.e. unlike Iran they can live very comfortably even if the energy sector is shut down. They prefer to make money from oil and gas but they also prefer a weaker Iran.
It's looking like more of the same and counting down to the next round.
> it's not new that there's no hermetic protection.
I think what new is the realization of Iran’s willingness to escalate.
> There is no real possible alignment between the regime in Tehran and the Sunni Emirates or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. There is no way they are sprinting closer to Iran.
Can you please expand on that? I don’t understand why they couldn’t be aligned.
Basically they believe the rulers of the gulf countries should be overthrown and that those countries should be run by Islamic rules. So basically MBZ who rules the UAE (as an example) wants to keep ruling the country and strike some balance between economic prosperity and maintaining his rule while Iran would want to see him removed and his government replaced by a theocratic regime. Naturally the UAE also wants not to be bombarded by Iran but the personal survival of the UAE rulers is a bit more important to them than that goal.
> But China can offer even less protection than the US can.
I think a lot of those states are wondering how much protection they’d need if we weren’t based there and drawing fire. China can offer economic stability and sales of modern military equipment for self-defense, and I think the entire world is working through the implications of the United States allowing an unsound octogenarian to destabilize the dollar or declare a major war on a whim. There’s a lot to dislike about China but the gulf states aren’t exactly sticklers for democracy and stability is good for business.
> We have seen that the US ability to project power is great. We've also seen (and I don't think anyone didn't know that) that power has its limits. Especially when it comes to fighting fanatics with nothing to lose.
My unprovable pet theory is that the US would've had less black eyes if we didn't have incompetent people like Kegseth in charge, and especially if he hadn't been allowed to dismiss top brass across the military just because they were too woke/not "warrior" enough.
Hegseth didn’t help matters at all but the problem started at the top. In past administrations, the various people leading the military & State would’ve pushed back against Netanyahu/Graham’s sales pitch that it’d be an easy war, identified actual goals, and planned ahead to achieve them (e.g. assembling a coalition like their counterparts did against Iraq twice) but everyone with backbone or independence was purged under the Republican’s new unitary executive theory. Hegseth was selected because he would never say “sir, that’s a bad idea” as happened so many times during Trump’s first term.
Nobody is taking the side of the IRGC here, it's an awful regime that should fall in a just world. But it's inevitable they will retaliate against their neighbors, if their neighbors are complicit in attacking them. Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait are not innocent, they picked a side and are paying for it.
That’s fine just stop grandstanding about little ole’ Iran being attacked or civilians dying if you don’t care that innocent civilians in other countries are dying. When you do you are taking a side and suggesting Iran is the moral actor here. They’re not.
Lots of people here are taking the side of the IRGC. It's not ok to attack the civilians of the gulf countries because they are aligned with the US whichever way you look at it. Attacking US military assets are fair game.
Lots of people are taking the side of the US, which has attacked civilian infrastructure and killed civilians in Iran and threatened to completely destroy Iran. And you have lots of people taking the side of Israel, which is has been conduction a genocide openly. All the sides have blood in their hands but I would argue the IRGC has the least blood in their hands.
There is no data based view of this world where the IRGC and the Islamic Republic doesn't have the most blood on their hands and is the least moral player here by modern standards by far. Just in 1988 they executed 30,000 people. In 2025 at least 1000. In 2026 10's of thousands.
Dissidents are being hanged in Iran as we write this.
Israel has claims of self defense after being brutally attacked. The US has claims of wanting to take down the regime and prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. You can argue about claims and actions. The Iranian regime has no shred of excuse other than their total lack of humanity.
What in the world?? Iraq was a million civilians killed by the US. Gaza was 100,000 civilians killed by Israel in the last 3 years. And that’s not including all of the other atrocities committed by the two countries.
And there is no proof of the 10s of thousands of protesters killed claiming. That was just propaganda to enable this recent war.
Countries can claim this and that about defense and brutal attacks, and depending on who you are you believe the propaganda or not, but in the end what matters is the destruction and killing they do. Which US and Israel and done more of by a long shot.
I would still call countries that host a radar station non-aggressors as they were not active participants. Either way Iran was pretty selective in terms of its "aggressor" definition. It didn't attack Syria or Iraq despite those countries contributing their air space. It didn't really attack Turkey other than like 3 rockets that were shot down.
Clearly this was not about attacking someone that's attacking you or military assets. This was about leverage. Attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure of countries that are assumed to have some lever over the US to force it to stop while at the same time are too weak or too afraid to defend themselves (which is why you did not see the same scale of attacks e.g. against Turkey despite it also hosting the US). It's a tactic. It's also a war crime.
Russia is the aggressor there, and I don't recall Ukraine targeting other countries with Russian bases. Also, the war in Ukraine is about Russia expanding territory so it involved boots and occupation since day one, which is not the case in Iran.
At least there is an idea that at least one of the reason Russia attacked Ukraine was to prevent it from joining NATO, which would have enabled US military bases in Ukraine.
> Iran didn't escalate against anyone except their aggressors.
This is categorically false. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iraq, Qatar, (Kuwait,) even Oman and Turkey at various times, and Cyprus. Iran demonstrated superiority in only one respect during this war, and that was in recruiting otherwise well-meaning, levelheaded figures in media and government, even religious leaders, to spout incoherent nonsense as you did here.
Probably a risk worth taking; defending a pipeline is much easier than escorting huge, slow-moving ships through a 24km-wide Strait laced with mines and peppered by artillery and missiles.
Pipelines can be protected. Just putting it in the ground for example. Or you build a "bomb" proof shelter over it - Iran's missiles are not bunker busters, we know how powerful they are and can design for that. Air defense systems are getting better too.
The US has mostly achieved their objectives (as best as I can tell - the strategy isn't exactly coherent) - Iran has much less missiles, and much less ability to produce them.
If there was any outside visible thread of reasoning for this war it was "Iran seems like it could have regime change" and I haven't heard anything saying they're more likely to have a different form of government.
I doubt the revolutionaries sympathizers within Iran liked their children being murdered or infrastructure getting destroyed. All the US has done is a repeat of the same thing they've done for half a century: start a war and immediately get more enemies within the middle east. Perhaps the only change is now the US's allies are distancing themselves faster and further than ever before.
There was a lot more - since mid last summer the US and Iran have been talking. There was some progress on nuclear issues. However Iran refused to discuss their ballistic missile program or funding for the likes of Hezbollah. Just based on that alone it is no surprise that the US got fed up. However you have to pay a little more attention to see that even though it is public.
Sometimes you want someone to do something, but you don't have authority to order them around, and you are bad at persuasion and dealmaking, so you don't get what you want.
If you're not ok with walking away at that point, maybe put a better offer on the table?
I fail to see a better offer. Support for those trying to kill jews is not something I can accept. I don't like any option for dealing with it, but walking away is still evil.
More accurate to say that the US is not willing to pay the price to achieve its objectives I think (depending on who/when you’re asking what exactly the objectives are of course).
Iran was little threat to the US before the US attacked. Now the US likely has earned itself more decades of terrorists, while simultaneously losing its military and political support from other countries.
If the US objective was self destruction or massive face plant, it is certainly getting closer to its objective.
It ignores we already had that, in 2016, with experts from all over the world doing inspections and agreeing it worked. Then Trump blew up the deal against the wishes of the rest of the free world, claiming he’d make a better deal, which he got zero from. Advisors, both hand picked and military, told him this would be the outcome, which he ignored.
We have not set their program to zero. They now have, and will continue to have, people trained in the knowledge of how to rebuild it. They now have massively more incentive to do so. Countries in the region now have more reason to help. Countries the world over have more incentive to contain US idiocy, as yet again we screw their economies for made up reasons.
As do their allies, and the raft of allies the US has lost over this idiocy will hurt US for decades, likely never to be repaired.
This is why Iran has won. The US has so destroyed brand US that it’ll never regain trust anywhere, economically, militarily, or morally.
> It ignores we already had that, in 2016, with experts from all over the world doing inspections and agreeing it worked. Then Trump blew up the deal against the wishes of the rest of the free world, claiming he’d make a better deal, which he got zero from. Advisors, both hand picked and military, told him this would be the outcome, which he ignored.
1) JCPOA was in effect for barely more than two years. Iran's nuclear work prior started way back circa 2000. It was killed before we can say anything about its effectiveness.
2) IIRC, JCPOA didn't prevent Iran from developing nuclear tech. It only limited capacity. They were free to do all the R&D they wanted.
3) Iran was doing weaponization work prior to the deal which they didn't disclose. So taking them at their word on the subject is probably not a good idea.
Trump pulling out from the deal was dumb, because it probably was slowing weaponization down, but the idea that the deal was stopping Iran from developing weaponization tech is not supported by the aims of the deal itself.
> We have not set their program to zero. They now have, and will continue to have, people trained in the knowledge of how to rebuild it.
Very close to it. Lots of facilities were destroyed, and I believe a majority of their scientists were killed.
> They now have massively more incentive to do so.
Debatable. I can see it going either way.
> Countries in the region now have more reason to help. Countries the world over have more incentive to contain US idiocy, as yet again we screw their economies for made up reasons.
Nearly all the countries in the region want Iran gone. They are a destabilizing force for all their neighbors.
> As do their allies
Iran has pretty much 0 official allies. Their only allies come in the form of "we hate the US too, so we will help you be a thorn in their side"
> This is why Iran has won
Won what? If that's winning, then I'll take losing.
> The US has so destroyed brand US that it’ll never regain trust anywhere, economically, militarily, or morally.
This remains to be seen I think. Honestly, if Europe kicks us out I'll be happy personally. I look forward to the day the US isn't running the oceans as a toll road for the globe and everyone handles their own backyards. I think we are far enough past WW2 that the world no longer needs a nanny.
4 years as an provisional deal was done earlier. All us intelligence agencies agreed and testified to congress that Iran was not working towards a bomb as Trump ripped up the agreement. They were all wrong or what?
>This remains to be seen I think. Honestly, if Europe kicks us out I'll be happy personally. I look forward to the day the US isn't running the oceans as a toll road for the globe and everyone handles their own backyards. I think we are far enough past WW2 that the world no longer needs a nanny.
Pretty rich to day this given what US is doing now.
You are ignoring the fundamental difference between the JCPOA's goals and the argument here. JCPOA was not a denuclearization agreement, it wasn't even a "no atomic bombs" agreement. All it did was limit centrifuge count, and enrichment density. Iran complying with those was mostly useless for the goal for the goal of preventing them getting an atomic bomb. It was effectively a stalling maneuver, one that would have partially expired last year.
Or it was working, as intel agencies seems to agree on, and set the stage for future agreements and getting Iran on a path of normalization.
Instead Trump ripped it up and then got involved in yet another useless zionist middle eastern war that only seems to have made Iran stronger and further destroying US reputation.
Comparing their progress towards building a bomb under and after the agreement? We know they followed the agreement with minor discrepancies, and when sanctions started they started breaking it. With no diplomatic agreement and sanctions in place what should Iran be doing? Might as well build a bomb then.
> Comparing their progress towards building a bomb under and after the agreement?
Well yeah, like I said, it was a stalling maneuver. It slowed things down.
> We know they followed the agreement with minor discrepancies, and when sanctions started they started breaking it. With no diplomatic agreement and sanctions in place what should Iran be doing? Might as well build a bomb then.
Well yeah, they were doing that before and during the JCPOA. Why wouldn't they do it after?
Maybe the US military is aiming for a greater level of confidence in order to say "definitely destroyed" than some random guy online needs in order to say "possibly destroyed"?
To whom, and to what? A military threat to the continental US, sure. To US allies in the region, and to the global economy, it appears Iran is a much bigger threat than we were lead to believe, and still are. If anything, they're justifiably more emboldened now than ever.
If you keep picking fights with someone don’t be surprised if they learn how to fight. There’s literally a line in Sayings of Spartans about teaching your enemy to fight by making war with them.
So far, Trump said that the Straight of Hormuz closed is cutting off China’s oil supply and isn’t important to the US, the US doesn’t need allies, but after Trump got zero help from Europe he then proceeded to ask China of all countries to help in the straight?!
Knowing people travelling near and through the Straight, Iran has all the cards. “Iran is of little threat” doesn’t hold water when the US can’t even send ships though to protect container ships
Depends on what you mean by "win". It would be possible to go in, topple the regime and secure the nuclear material. But only at astronomical cost and years of blowback
"Regime Change" has become a modern term for vassalization. We should not be surprised that countries with no reason to be a US vassal, and no long-term ties to the US refuse to remain vassals.
So then what would we achieve? nuclear material is cheap (10s of billions) relative to a multi-decade occupation (single digit trillions). It's undoubtedly true that Iran would revert to it's preferred form of government, geopolitical orientation, and nuclear capability once the US left.
Winning a war means achieving your political goals while preventing the enemy from achieving theirs. Most of the time, you've won the war when the enemy effectively admits they lost.
The lack of will to use sufficient force to win a war is fundamentally no different from not having that force in the first place. Both are equally real constraints on your ability to win the war.
How’d that plan work out in Iraq or Afghanistan, both much smaller, less armed countries? Decades and trillions spent, and what exactly did the US “win”?
Why would the US start this in the first place? Be assured that however this comes out, a “Truth” will be posted assessing it as the Greatest Deal Ever and a Total Win, end of story.
a major reason would be that they didnt think iran could selectively close the strait, and the intelligence about how not liking the current government is not the same as supporting the US
It’s been repeatedly stated by officials that we fought this war for Israel. We had nothing to gain and much to lose, and lose we did. Thankfully Israel also lost and I think this was their last chance at using the US as their attack dog.
People are looking for conspiracy theories when the truth is simple - trump did it because he thought it would be an easy quick win that will put him in the history books.
It’s not a conspiracy theory if Trump and all parties involved explicitly state this was for Israel. The simplest explanation is that they are telling the truth, which makes sense since the US had nothing to gain from this.
Netanyahu has wanted to do this for decades. If you rob a bank, you don't get to say "oh, well, my crazy friend down the pub has been saying we should rob a bank for ages, and I suddenly decided he was right"; you do have some personal responsibility.
Sidenote; there's this weird thing that people sometimes do wrt to Trump (and I think it's both his supporters and detractors to an extent) where they kind of treat him as if he's without agency, and stuff is just happening to him. I think it might be a kind of subconscious response to him being old and coming across as a bit senile, but it is nonsensical.
Because Trump is already facing a bloodbath in the midterms and his next step is either a ground war or dropping a nuke, and both of those will ensure he not only loses the midterms but has a legitimate shot at seeing the inside of a prison cell.
Because the escalation Trump was talking about would have wrecked the ME with Iran's retaliation on desalination plants, oil infrastructure, power plants, etc. Which would have been a massive shock to the global economy, along with a large humanitarian crisis inside of Iran and it's neighbors.
Not the military, the IRGC. Which is a religiously indoctrinated military.
So it would still be a theocracy, same as before, but now also run by people who are conditioned to believe that more violence is always a solution to any problem.
> Hegseth: "God deserves all the glory. Tens of thousands of sorties, refuelings, and strikes, carried out under the protection of divine providence. A massive effort with miraculous protection."
The old govt was about to be toppled by people sick of it. The US attack unified those people behind the leaders son, someone they’d not have taken before, and entrenched a new generation against the US. So far the carrot and stick has them openly mocking Trump and the US as Trump makes threat, draws line, folds yet again, repeats.
why do we care? there are many other countries around the world that are much worse and we are not sending our soldiers to die there or spending billions of dollars bombing various islands and mountains to fertilize them for next harvest season
Imagine russia or china sponsoring and arming protesters in US. The last time US was actualyl attacked it put 120k japanese people into concentration camps just because they were japanese.
It's ironic that a country ruled by a pedophile and mass child murderer talks about how good or bad another country ruling class is. Wtf look at you own rulers and ruling class before worrying about what other countries rulers are doing. Most of you buy the bullshit of you being the good guys vs them being the bad guys there is no such thing.
Yea, I do wonder, why that might be? Why is a country 1500 miles away, that doesn't even share a common border, preoccupied with the destruction of Israel to the point it invested hundreds of billion of dollars in its offensive capabilities and network of proxies on every side of Israel, had a special paramilitary wing (Quds Force) for operations inside Israel, had a public clock counting down the existence of Israel and called for the destruction of Israel on each and every opportunity?
What's the obsession with the destruction of Israel? Could it be related to the fact that an Islamic Republic of (...) could not accept a Jewish rule right in the middle of the great Muslim Ummah?
Well, for starters just today they hit cental, civilian areas of Beirut with 100 attacks in just 10 minutes - killing more Lebanese civilians in ten minutes than Iran killed Israeli civilians in months of war. Absolutely vile, with clear genocidal intent, and with the aim of stealing Lebanese land.
You are ignoring the elephant in the room: Hezbollah was literally founded in 1982 under IRGC direction; 1,500 Revolutionary Guards deployed to the Bekaa Valley to organize and train it. It is arguably the most successful export of the 1979 revolution's "velayat-e faqih" ideology. So Iran colonized Lebanon.
Hezbollah formally accepts Khamenei as wali al-faqih the supreme juridical authority. That's not alliance, that's religious-political fealty to a foreign head of state.
Iran provides an estimated $700M–$1B/year, plus missiles, drones, training. Without Iran, Hezbollah's strategic arsenal doesn't exist.
It operates as a parallel state inside Lebanon (own military, telecoms, social services, foreign policy), displacing Lebanese sovereignty in the south and Bekaa.
You are ignoring the mammoth on the room: Hezbollah only even exists because of Israeli aggression; murder, rape, land theft, and as we saw yesterday, civilian massacres.
> So Iran colonized Lebanon
They haven't "colonised" anything, and, at best, it's disingenuous to describe training a resistance group as such.
> It operates as a parallel state inside Lebanon (own military, telecoms, social services, foreign policy), displacing Lebanese sovereignty in the south and Bekaa.
To claim the "officially recognised" Lebanese state is sovereign is utterly ridiculous! They are stooges, tasked with sitting back and doing nothing while Israel carries out ethnic cleansing and genocide. An MI6 front (Westminster Foundation for Democracy) even has an office inside the Lebanese parliament.
Turns out that if you take over a country's government and continuously carry out appalling attrocities against it's people for decades, they will resist.
The US and Israel have killed over 3,000 civilians in this war, mostly in Iran and Jordan. Iran has killed like 30. Their attacks are literally a hundredth of what they got and we're still trying to portray them as the bad guys. Don't get me wrong, Iran sucks, but not because of this
Iran has killed thousands of its civilians. The only reason it has only killed a few Israelis (excluding Oct 7) is because they can't easily get past Israeli defenses.
If what you said was true, we'd have seen many, many civilian deaths in Israel over the course of the war - there have, officially, been less than 50 (note that in the same time period Israel - which has targeted civilian infrastructure such as hospitals in Iran - has killed over 3,000 Iranian civilians!).
But what you're saying isn't true - any of it! Iran has been hitting military targets. And they've been using MIRVs, not anti-personell cluster munitions (you know, of the kind Israel has dropped over 1M of over Lebanon). MIRVs split into multiple, independently targetable missiles when high above ground near the target zone. Cluster munitions wait until they are only some meters above ground, and then explode into bomblets.
On April 6, as many as 50 sites were impacted by missiles and their cluster munitions.
“Iranian cluster munitions struck roughly 50 locations across central Israel, wounding at least six, including a seriously wounded woman in Petah Tikva and a moderately wounded man in Ramat Gan,”
Iran has focused on using cluster munitions in its ballistic missile salvos since the first two weeks of the conflict. However, the proportion of these munitions has increased. By March 10, Israel’s Home Front Command said that 50 percent of the Iranian missiles contained cluster munitions.
On April 1, The Times of Israel reported that “12 missiles carrying conventional warheads with hundreds of kilograms of explosives […] struck populated areas in Israel, causing extensive damage. There have also been more than 30 incidents of missiles carrying cluster bomb warheads hitting populated areas, with over 200 separate impact sites.” A ballistic missile attack on April 4, which led to at least 10 impact sites, illustrated how large an area can be affected by one missile with cluster munitions.
On the other hand I've gotten to use opus-4.6 and claude code and the quality is off the charts compared to 2023 when coding agents first hit the scene. And what you're saying is essentially "If they haven't created God, I'm not impressed". You don't think there's some middleground between those two?
Also they just hit a $30B run-rate, I don't think they're that needy for new hype cycles.
For many reasons. Most of which have to do with government bureaucracy and incentives. HSR in California is thinly disguised jobs program with no real incentive or aim to actually build HSR.
> Switzerland and California have the same population density. Why can’t CA build high speed rail?
Go find the last major Swiss route that was built, and compare its land acquisition difficulties to what happened with the California project. I'll rankly speculate that difference will be the meat of your answer.
Building infrastructure is a skill, a skill you have to constantly work on. If you do it enough and not once then you can learn to get good at it. There is a difference between a long term consistent execution of a infrastructure plan and a 'lets build high speed rail'.
I don't think rules and regulation in California are actually worse then in Switzerland.
CA’s high speed rail isn’t high speed by European standards and it looks on the way to cancelation or significant curtailment. We can’t even manage what y’all would consider slow rail.
I don't know but Swiss isn't the only train system that works but also Spain, Italy, France. Poland has a growing better train system . The swiss system has it's advantages but it is also very expensive.
The advantage of swiss system is fast transfers. Hsr would likely break this system (no point in arriving faster if your connection gets longer by 10-15min
I'm Swiss and I disagree, and so do many experts. First of all, arriving earlier is always good, because many people who get off on that stop still arrive earlier. Also, people who connect to a different mode of transit, such as Trams or S-Bahns very likely can catch an earlier connection.
In addition, if we built proper high speed lines, would could increase the frequency so much that it doesn't actually matter anymore.
So it doesn't actually break the system, it improves it.
That works for Iran because US air-defense is still comprised mainly of advanced and expensive systems (like the Patriot). It doesn't work as well in Ukraine or Russia because both have figured out drone interceptors quite well. Both countries do the type of attack drone clustering you suggest. I read somewhere that a strike like from Russia that might include 60-70 drones + ballistic missiles in the hopes that one or 2 get through.
you miss that i was talking about 650km/h "drones" (because, yes, it was already 3rd year of war, and 200km/h drone like Shahed became much easier target - this is why Russia has started to also use the 600km/h modification of Shahed with RC jet engine). There is related discussion under that comment addressing your point about interception.
>Both countries do the type of attack drone clustering you suggest
Ukraine still isn't completely there. They do attack Russia with up to 200 drones/day. They seem to never cluster more than a few, and the drones they are using are comparably small - 50kg warhead - and slow, 100+ km/h, almost always less than 200km/h. So they are easy to intercept/shoot down, almost never penetrate Moscow air defense, and do noticeable damage only when hitting flammable targets like oil/gas industry related.
Problem is that there was too much propaganda in that war, that parsing propaganda is too difficult even for military watchers, let alone general public. Only when american weapons are being destroyed that, US MIC is willing to acknowledge that may be million+ usd missiles are not solution to cheap drones.
The US and Ukraine have a direct relationship. They don't need to parse anything. Have people on the ground to watch how they conduct war. And bring people to the US to teach their learnings.
It's not that hard, the US just didn't want to do it for whatever dumb reason.
...and how decisively Trump was prosecuted for the 6/1/21 attempted ~coup~ tourism, and for how thoroughly the Epstein child abuse ring was dismantled, and...
Yes, the only chance the US has going forward is to primary all current incumbents and hold both party leadership accountable for complicity in treason.
Haha, by whom? There are zero higher-ups who are actually getting institutional backing and are in favor of this.
Look at how Mamdani didn't even get any backing. Quite the opposite, he was obstructed. And he's 100x more palatable to them than the idea of prosecuting the traitors.
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