if you’re going to claim that “breaking the UN charter!” is your bottom line to determine what is right or wrong, I have a whole oil tanker load of shit of stuff that Iran has done to spew all over that, lol.

Classic whataboutism.

I never said Iran was some kind of angel regime. I never defended any of the illegal shit Iran has done.

I stated, quite clearly, that the US and Isreal have started a war of aggression against Iran, in violation of the UN charter, and tried justifying it as being a “preemptive attack”. The primary point is: That’s a gross violation of international law, and should be condemned.

The initial point I made was regarding the irony in that by attacking Iran “preemptively” at regular intervals, they end up proving to Iran that their sovereignty won’t be respected unless they have a strong deterrent (e.g. nukes).

if you’re going to conflate this with the attack on Iraq you’ll have to elaborate a bit more

Iraq, Venezuela, … the point (which stands) is that the US (and Israel) have shown time and again that they will blatantly violate international law and attack others in order to preserve their “national interests”. No one should be surprised when that results in countries like Iran trying to develop strong deterrents like nukes.

Lets put it this way: When was the last time Iran launched a “preemptive” strike on Israel or the US?

Finally, to be completely clear: I’m not condoning any violations of international law. I’m actually sticking to a principle here and saying that one country attacking or coercing another is wrong, no matter who does it. That means russia is the bad guy when they attack Ukraine, the US is the bad guy when they kidnap Maduro, Iran is the bad guy when they organise terror attacks in Israel, Israel is the bad guy when they bulldoze civilian apartments with tanks, etc. etc. etc.

There are two primary points here:

A) Just the past couple of years there has been an assassination of a high-ranking officer in Iran, and iirc a bombing of their consulate in Beirut. None of these are related to the nuclear program, they weren’t even claimed to be related to the nuclear program. I also mentioned other countries: the whole “Iraq has WMD’s”-thing comes to mind.

B) Regardless of the above, both the US and Israel have signed the UN charter, explicitly stating that the will not attack other countries just to get their way. Doing that puts them on the same level as russia when it comes to respecting international law. Saying “you should have done as I said and you wouldn’t have gotten beat up” doesn’t justify beating someone up.

We can flip that argument though: “These people keep trying to make nukes to stop me from bombing them. Maybe if I stop bombing them and instead try to make something like the old Iran nuclear agreement, they won’t see a massive need for nukes”.

The thing is, the US+Israel have shown time and again that they will conduct bombings and assassinations on Iranian (and other) soil regardless of whether the country in question is actually anywhere close to building nukes. So the idea “maybe we should stop trying to build nukes” just falls flat on its face once the US+Israel bombs you anyway, which is basically what’s happening here.

unless you’re on their side it’s a very good thing if they don’t get them.

Of absolutely! I would much prefer that Iran (a fanatic, fundamentalist government) do not get their hands on nukes.

I’m just pointing out the irony in that bombing them “preemptively” around once a year, and in general breaking all kinds of international law against them (assassinations etc.) is basically just yelling to them that “As long as you don’t have nukes, we can do whatever we want to you, and murder your people as we please. We’re also gonna keep doing exactly that, regularly, to stop you from getting nukes!”

If that doesn’t convince someone to do everything in their power to build nukes, I don’t know what will.

Ironically, attacking someone “preemptively” because you think they’re about to develop nukes really just proves to those being attacked that they need nukes, because you won’t respect their sovereignty without MAD. I think it’s very clear to anyone with eyes and half a brain that the US+Israel wouldn’t have attacked Iran if it could result in Tel Aviv being glassed. Thus, the only logical conclusion from Irans side must be that they need to work even harder to develop nukes if they want the US+Israel to stop bombing them “preemptively” once a year or so.