Israel Launches strike against Irans Nuclear Programme

MAGA have followed Trump when he admitted to grabbing women by their private parts. They followed him when he insulted American war heroes ("I like people who weren't captured…" and taking jabs at a gold star family). They followed him when he equivocated on the subject of far-right violence at Charlottesville. They followed him through his blunderous mishandling of Covid. They followed him through his lies about the US 2020 election and resulting attempt to storm the Capitol building which he provoked. They followed him through his criminal conviction. They followed him through his ridiculous claims about tariffs that hurt his own people. These are only a few lowlights that come off the top of my head, btw.

With respect to all of that, why the hell wouldn't MAGA follow Trump through his insistence that America needs to take military action on Iran? MAGA will forgive Trump virtually anything provided that it makes at least a few 'libs' cry.

And this isn't to forget that MAGA figureheads turning on Trump is nearly a standard feature of his presidencies. It's not even the first time Bannon has disagreed with him. We can remember his being ousted from the last administration with Trump calling him 'sloppy Steve' and Bannon being disgusted that Trump's daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared (who Bannon referred to collectively as 'Jarvanka') were top advisors to the president.

I'm going from memory here while making dinner, but didn't Trump say they know exactly where Khamenei is hiding?

If that is true, and they haven't passed the intel on it to Israel it raises some questions about how willing the US are gonna be to get involved further. Also, if they can track him to a specific location yet not ident any locations of these apparent warheads that are ready to 'launch' .. it doesn't say a whole lot about the veracity of that specific claim regarding warheads being a few days out from deployment.

I wasn't saying I agreed with his analysis,just that he put it out there. However some of Trump's usual backers who supported him on everything else have disagreed with him about Iran. I would agree though that given everything else they have forgiven him for they won't abandon him over Iran.

But now the goalposts have been shifted; it's what Iran might do in the future. On that basis would it be permissable if Israel was attacked by another country on the basis of what they are actually doing in Gaza? We have seen the US invade other countries under the pretext of liberating people whose human rights were being violated. If Iran's problems are indeed largely of its own making,then the same argument can surely be made about Israel given its treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

trump talks of now meeting with iran (he hates all the death and destruction) while also stating iran was only weeks from its nuclear bombs

In fairness you had no trouble bringing Iran up umpteen times in the Gaza thread - why was it relevant on that thread, and Gaza not on this? Are these not all the same conflict?

Still illegal under international law. You cannot attack a country because you 'feel' they might attack you in a year or two - this is simply not permitted (no more than you could hop over your neighbour's fence and beat him up because you think he might be plotting something against you).

Iran said they are not building nukes and the IAEA agreed with them so how can you assert that they were close to having nukes? Why does Israel not take the Iranians at their word on that?

Trump told senior aides he approves of Iran attack plans, report says

Donald Trump has told senior aides he approves of US attack plans for Iran, but was holding off on giving the go-ahead to see if Tehran will abandon its nuclear programme, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The IAEA said they didn't have any proof that Iran was building nuclear weapons.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/18/is-iran-very-close-to-building-a-nuclear-bomb-as-trump-claims

“We did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon”

— Rafael Grossi (IAEA Director General)

Also, Grossi goes on to say that it wouldn't exactly be tomorrow that Iran could cobble a nuclear bomb together, in any case.

But Grossi also says,

“While safeguarded enrichment activities are not forbidden in and of themselves, the fact that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon State in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 percent remains a matter of serious concern”

And this is the one which troubles me. If your ambitions are entirely peaceful, why are you accumulating a load of Uranium that is at near weapons-grade? Do you need 60 percent enriched to power a reactor? I don't believe you do.

As far as I know, Israel still doesn't openly admit to even having nuclear weapons, despite it being generally known that they have a considerable stockpile, so this is to say that countries aren't always going to be upfront with their true capability in this regard and ambiguity with it makes sense in order to heighten the deterrent effect.

If someone leaked news of the planned Israeli attack to the Iranians last week, would it have been okay for Iran to have bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa several days beforehand? You would be in favour of this as a 'pre-emptive' strike?