> Yes, there are perfectly valid reasons to wish to enact regime change in Iran. The Islamic Republic has long been a menace to the region and a sponsor of terror worldwide. It does pose an “existential threat” to Israel, as the Israelis are never tired of saying. And, yes, the regime recently engaged in a brutal repression of protestors, killing an estimated 30-40,000 people. But, as extensive reporting has documented, the decision to attack Iran had more to do with a calculation that this would be a geopolitically opportune moment to strike as opposed to believing that imminent threats from Iran warranted the escalated use of force.
What an odd quote.
You get to "as the Israelis are never tired of saying" before "killing an estimate 30-40,000 people". To finish it off, the note that now is a easy time rather than a forced time. Many Americans would not wait for Iran to point a nuke at them before attacking!
The Iranian Islamist regime was clearly intent on manufacturing nuclear weapons, presumably for use not only against Israel but against the US as well, which its leaders have persistently vilified as "the great Satan." The ayatollahs and their followers are religious fanatics, moreover, who glorify suicidal attacks that, like those of 9/11, involve indiscriminate slaughter of Israeli or American "infidels" as religious martyrdom that will be richly rewarded in a postmortem paradise. Hence there's good reason to suppose that if the ayatollahs were to have nuclear weapons at their disposal they would not be deterred by concern for self-preservation from using them to attack population centers in the US and Israel. Given that, US and Israeli leaders had, and still have, an ethical obligation to use any means necessary to prevent them from acquiring such weapons -- regardless of the preferences of UN officials, other political leaders, self-appointed moral arbiters, or popular sentiment.
What a dunce. That's the thought I have every time I read Sam Kahn. Do you think we should attack at an inopportune moment? The world is better off with the Iranian regime gone. Finish the job.
the PROBLEM is they will NOT :"finish the job". The regime is way too entrenched, institutionally. Only way would be boots on ground and that's a price Trump won't pay (though I would pay it)
nah BALDERDASH Mr. Kahn....... if there is ONE geopolitical threat that is worth overthrowing, even with boots on the ground (temporarily) it is THIS regime. This is merely some of the payback they deserve for the 1979 hostages and the bombing of Marine Barracks in 1980 which caused Reagan to hightail it out of the MIddle East. Every POTUS has declared they will not allow it to get nuclear weapons and every POTUS has failed to do anything about it, perhaps because they deemed the costs too high. Well.. at THIS particular time, the costs were NOT too high and finally one person had the cojones to stay true to his/US word. The "moral high ground" would be the eternal gratitude of about 75% of the Iranian people, 85% under 45. THAT is a moral high ground worth aspiring to, even without the geopolitical factors.
If Mr. Kahn cannot tell the difference between Iran and the US, then you have lost any ability to make distinctions. Waiting for a threat to become imminent against a foe intent on your destruction and taking steps to do so is not a good idea. Just ask Mr. Churchill, who warned the allies not to wait for Germany to rearm under the Nazi regime. Both houses of the US Congress were given the chance to end the military attacks but chose to reject resolutions to do so.
I don't think the author is saying that the US and Iran are morally comparable, only that the US is not longer a clear good guy, just much less bad (I'd argue this goes back a lot further).
As regards the imminent threat, Netanyahu has be claiming for 30 years that Iran were weeks away from having a nuclear weapon, which was clearly not true. Nevertheless, there was a clear danger and the JCPOA deal massively reduced this danger until Trump withdrew during his first term. Following that, the progress towards weapons-grade enrichment accelerated exponentially and now we're confronting a war with no apparent goal other than increasing prices for consumers in the US (and elsewhere).
Finally, the support of Congress for anything means very little these days. Votes go almost exactly down party lines with no discussion or room for bipartisan agreement. This will of course continue when/if the Democrats win back one or both houses. This is not good for democracy when the voting public is split down the middle. Half the population is going to be delighted and the other half screwed over no matter who is President. This cannot be good for the country.
Apparently, neither you nor Sam Kahn recognizes that ridding the chief sponsor of terrorism of a vast and growing missile supply does not qualify for being a "good guy". The JCPOA did nothing to limit Iran's supply of ballistic missiles, each of which can inflict great damage and casualties. Secretary Kerry said the Obama Administration would address that fear separately but it never did. With sufficient ballistic missiles that can overcome missile defenses, Iran would be near impregnable while it funds proxies to fight Israel and US bases and ultimately develop nuclear weapons. But even without a nuclear weapon, the massive supply of ballistic missiles, funded partly with the money Iran received and could have received from reduced sanctions, could overwhelm regional US allies, including Israel. Iran should have been kicked out of the UN years ago for threatening to destroy a UN member and taking actions to do so.
On the Congress, it is worth remembering that a majority of the Senate voted against the JCPOA, but Obama arranged the vote not as a treaty but a bill that required 60 votes to stop the agreement. Moreover, the House voted not to continue Obama's bombing of Libya. Neither Libya nor Serbia (bombed under Clinton) posed any threat to the US or allies, unlike Iran. I see the opposition of Democrats to at minimum dramatically reducing the power of Iran as inexplicable, other than an opposition to Trump.
You've nicely underlined one of my main issues of this attack on Iran (and I have absolutely no sympathy with the ruling bodies of that country - oppressing their own population and sponsoring terrorism in other countries is despicable). The problem is that, usually when a war starts, there's a goal and this has been variably claimed as punishment for their support of Hamas et al, punishment for the oppression of their own people, being a threat to the region through use of conventional weapons (though that's not really been claimed too often as it's pretty clear that Israel is more powerful in that regard) and developing nuclear weapons. Defining what it is you want allows you to decide when it's time to stop.
I have no issue with kicking Iran out of the UN for threatening to destroy another UN member state. but do you then agree that we need to do the same to Russia for clearly stating a desire to destroy Ukraine?
I understand the point about the erosion of the forms and ceremonies that once accompanied American power. The rituals (UN debates, coalition language, legal justifications) did matter. They created a framework in which the exercise of power could be presented as something more than simply power.
But I am not sure the break is quite as clean as suggested. The liberal order always lived with a tension between principle and power. The United States acted unilaterally before, and the system managed that contradiction for decades.
I think what may be changing is something subtler. It’s not that power has suddenly become naked. It’s that the language that used to accompany it, i.e., the effort to situate action within a broader normative story, seems to be fading. The fig leaf was always thin, but it served a political purpose. Once those narratives disappear, legitimacy becomes harder to rebuild. Not because power has changed, but because the shared story that once helped justify it is beginning to fray.
And there is something else that feels a bit odd in the argument. The piece acknowledges that there may be “perfectly valid reasons” for regime change in Iran. But treating regime change as a morally acceptable instrument of policy anywhere has always been fraught. Even when the target regime is deeply objectionable, the act of overthrowing governments from the outside carries its own moral and political costs.
Let’s remind ourselves of a few things: criticism of Israel gets you booted out of the US if you are a green card holder, and if you are a university and “allow” criticism of Israel, your funds are cut. The US government has weaponised accusations of “antisemitism” to discredit its adversaries. Almost all old-school antisemites support Trump however. Of course we know that what they call antisemitism is objecting to the idea that Israel has a right to kill whoever is inconveniencing them. Bibi, even more than Putin, gets what he wants from Trump, and just like Putin has repeatedly humiliated him without being punished. Side note: Epstein worked for both the Russians and the Israelis. Everything the US does in the Middle East, such as financing the Gaza genocide and providing diplomatic cover for it, massive attacks on the people of Iran under the guise of “liberating” them, is basically the execution of Israel’s geostrategic project of uncontested military domination over the Middle East. See a pattern? I’m not sure I would call the US a hegemon. Hegemons tend to take decisions that benefit themselves, not the countries that dominate them. As a matter of fact, hegemons are not dominated by another country. Not sure if Israel is a hegemon, but the US certainly is not.
> Yes, there are perfectly valid reasons to wish to enact regime change in Iran. The Islamic Republic has long been a menace to the region and a sponsor of terror worldwide. It does pose an “existential threat” to Israel, as the Israelis are never tired of saying. And, yes, the regime recently engaged in a brutal repression of protestors, killing an estimated 30-40,000 people. But, as extensive reporting has documented, the decision to attack Iran had more to do with a calculation that this would be a geopolitically opportune moment to strike as opposed to believing that imminent threats from Iran warranted the escalated use of force.
What an odd quote.
You get to "as the Israelis are never tired of saying" before "killing an estimate 30-40,000 people". To finish it off, the note that now is a easy time rather than a forced time. Many Americans would not wait for Iran to point a nuke at them before attacking!
The Iranian Islamist regime was clearly intent on manufacturing nuclear weapons, presumably for use not only against Israel but against the US as well, which its leaders have persistently vilified as "the great Satan." The ayatollahs and their followers are religious fanatics, moreover, who glorify suicidal attacks that, like those of 9/11, involve indiscriminate slaughter of Israeli or American "infidels" as religious martyrdom that will be richly rewarded in a postmortem paradise. Hence there's good reason to suppose that if the ayatollahs were to have nuclear weapons at their disposal they would not be deterred by concern for self-preservation from using them to attack population centers in the US and Israel. Given that, US and Israeli leaders had, and still have, an ethical obligation to use any means necessary to prevent them from acquiring such weapons -- regardless of the preferences of UN officials, other political leaders, self-appointed moral arbiters, or popular sentiment.
What a dunce. That's the thought I have every time I read Sam Kahn. Do you think we should attack at an inopportune moment? The world is better off with the Iranian regime gone. Finish the job.
the PROBLEM is they will NOT :"finish the job". The regime is way too entrenched, institutionally. Only way would be boots on ground and that's a price Trump won't pay (though I would pay it)
With the difficult landscape of Iran this effort would be even less effective than in Vietnam.....
nah BALDERDASH Mr. Kahn....... if there is ONE geopolitical threat that is worth overthrowing, even with boots on the ground (temporarily) it is THIS regime. This is merely some of the payback they deserve for the 1979 hostages and the bombing of Marine Barracks in 1980 which caused Reagan to hightail it out of the MIddle East. Every POTUS has declared they will not allow it to get nuclear weapons and every POTUS has failed to do anything about it, perhaps because they deemed the costs too high. Well.. at THIS particular time, the costs were NOT too high and finally one person had the cojones to stay true to his/US word. The "moral high ground" would be the eternal gratitude of about 75% of the Iranian people, 85% under 45. THAT is a moral high ground worth aspiring to, even without the geopolitical factors.
With the difficult landscape of Iran this effort would be even less effective than in Vietnam...
you may want to revisit your geography and topography maps?
If Mr. Kahn cannot tell the difference between Iran and the US, then you have lost any ability to make distinctions. Waiting for a threat to become imminent against a foe intent on your destruction and taking steps to do so is not a good idea. Just ask Mr. Churchill, who warned the allies not to wait for Germany to rearm under the Nazi regime. Both houses of the US Congress were given the chance to end the military attacks but chose to reject resolutions to do so.
I don't think the author is saying that the US and Iran are morally comparable, only that the US is not longer a clear good guy, just much less bad (I'd argue this goes back a lot further).
As regards the imminent threat, Netanyahu has be claiming for 30 years that Iran were weeks away from having a nuclear weapon, which was clearly not true. Nevertheless, there was a clear danger and the JCPOA deal massively reduced this danger until Trump withdrew during his first term. Following that, the progress towards weapons-grade enrichment accelerated exponentially and now we're confronting a war with no apparent goal other than increasing prices for consumers in the US (and elsewhere).
Finally, the support of Congress for anything means very little these days. Votes go almost exactly down party lines with no discussion or room for bipartisan agreement. This will of course continue when/if the Democrats win back one or both houses. This is not good for democracy when the voting public is split down the middle. Half the population is going to be delighted and the other half screwed over no matter who is President. This cannot be good for the country.
Apparently, neither you nor Sam Kahn recognizes that ridding the chief sponsor of terrorism of a vast and growing missile supply does not qualify for being a "good guy". The JCPOA did nothing to limit Iran's supply of ballistic missiles, each of which can inflict great damage and casualties. Secretary Kerry said the Obama Administration would address that fear separately but it never did. With sufficient ballistic missiles that can overcome missile defenses, Iran would be near impregnable while it funds proxies to fight Israel and US bases and ultimately develop nuclear weapons. But even without a nuclear weapon, the massive supply of ballistic missiles, funded partly with the money Iran received and could have received from reduced sanctions, could overwhelm regional US allies, including Israel. Iran should have been kicked out of the UN years ago for threatening to destroy a UN member and taking actions to do so.
On the Congress, it is worth remembering that a majority of the Senate voted against the JCPOA, but Obama arranged the vote not as a treaty but a bill that required 60 votes to stop the agreement. Moreover, the House voted not to continue Obama's bombing of Libya. Neither Libya nor Serbia (bombed under Clinton) posed any threat to the US or allies, unlike Iran. I see the opposition of Democrats to at minimum dramatically reducing the power of Iran as inexplicable, other than an opposition to Trump.
You've nicely underlined one of my main issues of this attack on Iran (and I have absolutely no sympathy with the ruling bodies of that country - oppressing their own population and sponsoring terrorism in other countries is despicable). The problem is that, usually when a war starts, there's a goal and this has been variably claimed as punishment for their support of Hamas et al, punishment for the oppression of their own people, being a threat to the region through use of conventional weapons (though that's not really been claimed too often as it's pretty clear that Israel is more powerful in that regard) and developing nuclear weapons. Defining what it is you want allows you to decide when it's time to stop.
I have no issue with kicking Iran out of the UN for threatening to destroy another UN member state. but do you then agree that we need to do the same to Russia for clearly stating a desire to destroy Ukraine?
I understand the point about the erosion of the forms and ceremonies that once accompanied American power. The rituals (UN debates, coalition language, legal justifications) did matter. They created a framework in which the exercise of power could be presented as something more than simply power.
But I am not sure the break is quite as clean as suggested. The liberal order always lived with a tension between principle and power. The United States acted unilaterally before, and the system managed that contradiction for decades.
I think what may be changing is something subtler. It’s not that power has suddenly become naked. It’s that the language that used to accompany it, i.e., the effort to situate action within a broader normative story, seems to be fading. The fig leaf was always thin, but it served a political purpose. Once those narratives disappear, legitimacy becomes harder to rebuild. Not because power has changed, but because the shared story that once helped justify it is beginning to fray.
And there is something else that feels a bit odd in the argument. The piece acknowledges that there may be “perfectly valid reasons” for regime change in Iran. But treating regime change as a morally acceptable instrument of policy anywhere has always been fraught. Even when the target regime is deeply objectionable, the act of overthrowing governments from the outside carries its own moral and political costs.
Let’s remind ourselves of a few things: criticism of Israel gets you booted out of the US if you are a green card holder, and if you are a university and “allow” criticism of Israel, your funds are cut. The US government has weaponised accusations of “antisemitism” to discredit its adversaries. Almost all old-school antisemites support Trump however. Of course we know that what they call antisemitism is objecting to the idea that Israel has a right to kill whoever is inconveniencing them. Bibi, even more than Putin, gets what he wants from Trump, and just like Putin has repeatedly humiliated him without being punished. Side note: Epstein worked for both the Russians and the Israelis. Everything the US does in the Middle East, such as financing the Gaza genocide and providing diplomatic cover for it, massive attacks on the people of Iran under the guise of “liberating” them, is basically the execution of Israel’s geostrategic project of uncontested military domination over the Middle East. See a pattern? I’m not sure I would call the US a hegemon. Hegemons tend to take decisions that benefit themselves, not the countries that dominate them. As a matter of fact, hegemons are not dominated by another country. Not sure if Israel is a hegemon, but the US certainly is not.