U.S. President Donald Trump said on social media Monday that Israel and Iran have agreed to a “complete and total ceasefire” to be phased in over 24 hours.
However, two wrongs don’t make a right, and these attacks remain blatant violations of international law and the UN charter. If “we” want to maintain any semblance of supporting a rule-based world order, as opposed to just “right of the strongest”, we can’t accept these kind of violations of international law.
Legally speaking, I agree. I’m speaking strictly from a strategic or game-theoretical standpoint. I see this as a binary situation: either we physically stop them from building a nuke, or they will build one. I’d much rather we strike preemptively now - so long as it actually stops them - than have to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran in the future, especially given their history of threatening violence, using violence, and funding violence.
Nukes never should’ve been invented in the first place. But we can’t put that genie back in the bottle, so this is the best we can do given the current situation. They don’t have to pursue one - they’re choosing to, knowing full well the potential (now actual) consequences. I’d argue that the tragedy of a nuclear detonation in a major city far-outweighs, by orders of magnitude, the human and geopolitical cost of preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. I’d be against it too if the facility were in Sweden or Finland - but it’s not.
Legally speaking, I agree. I’m speaking strictly from a strategic or game-theoretical standpoint. I see this as a binary situation: either we physically stop them from building a nuke, or they will build one. I’d much rather we strike preemptively now - so long as it actually stops them - than have to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran in the future, especially given their history of threatening violence, using violence, and funding violence.
Nukes never should’ve been invented in the first place. But we can’t put that genie back in the bottle, so this is the best we can do given the current situation. They don’t have to pursue one - they’re choosing to, knowing full well the potential (now actual) consequences. I’d argue that the tragedy of a nuclear detonation in a major city far-outweighs, by orders of magnitude, the human and geopolitical cost of preemptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. I’d be against it too if the facility were in Sweden or Finland - but it’s not.