Agreed. You also heard that we were very nearly nuked as the old Soviet's regime's last desperate act as they were being toppled in Moscow? [ Assuming this was a true story, and not further disinformation to legitimize a ruse. ]
Deterrence is a balancing act on a the razor sharp edge of a sword.
Indeed it was, and people in the rosy-view of victory forget the sheer terror we were managing...the very real efforts of the Soviets and Chinese (still to this day) deployed immense civil defense works and structured their forces to actually "prevail" in any exchange, leaving them with the only surviving population and a nuclear blackmail force to rule by fiat over the remnant of the planet.*
The Iranians already have a back door avenue of attack, they call it "terrorism" and they pretend that they aren't responsible, because the are not in control of the passions of various oppressed groups all over the world.
And isn't it interesting how the Russians and Chinese provide sophisticated arms to them (often covertly, and denying "willful" complicity when caught) and advise these regimes, and run diplomatic cover for these shenanigans at the U.N. And we never bust them on it. Never.
No, deterrence will not work, if it is maintained by allied regimes that think appeasement is preferable to military strength, and military strength means a willingness to use military force when a certain line is crossed. The Iranians will cross that line, and we will back down. Why should they fear? Poof goes deterrence!
Agreed.
It takes resolve. It also takes capability...which the RINOs and liberals in their "superpower" arrogance think we have supreme advanatages in. We won't after we are hit by a surprise first strike. This is what they never factor in. They only look at pre-war strike potentials. They never look at the issues of "survivability" "endurance" or "credibility". They frequently discount the possibility of being caught unawares with confabulatory assertions of our national technical means of intelligence. We never did detect all those SS-22's and SS-23s salted away in burrows in Eastern Europe by the Soviets. And the Russian "federation" never admitted to the deceptions in their SALT II negotiations. It was only the people of those countries who ratted out the Russians that let us catch the deception. We never punished the Russians for their brazen and willful acts of malice in this regard. Just like W still does nothing about Putin's deceptions, the continuing refusal to allow Yarmantau Mountain to be inspected, etc. And on China, we just breezily ignore their awarding tremendous accolades on the authors of "Unrestricted Warfare." And now they are both commencing major modernization and rebuilding of their military from the ground up...with the oil money they are flush with in Russia, and our imports of Chinese manufactures which the Regime skims S200 billion/year or so off of.
Why do I veer off on this digression? Because it bears on our enemy's assessment of our actual resolve. Our willingness to draw lines which are indeed flash points for our taking decisive action.
I don't think we can have any confidence that they haven't concluded that this administration and all likely successors...are appeasers, and too weak to ever respond with force against anyone of their caliber. Especially if the attacks against us are launched by their proxies. We will always just meekly accept their plausible denials of complicity...no matter how improbable.
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*And interestingly enough, the Russian Federation is not dismantling the primary instrument of their first strike threats...the SS-18...whereas we discarded our ace card, the MX...and four Trident subs, denuclearized all our B-1Bs, limited B-2's to a pathetic 20 bombers. All unilaterally.