we didnt allow them, we sanctioned them and have villainized them on the world stage while allying with their sworn regional enemies (both Islamic and Israeli). we even brokered the Abraham accords in an attempt to harm them economically even further. you can call it warped, but you're being pedantic. I accept there are alternative ways to hamper their progress, you clearly don't.
what's funny is this means you think after we failed in iraq and afghanistan (then syria to boot) we should have also fought a regime change war in Iran? you may be the most neocon person ive ever met in my life. you think tens of thousands of US soldier's lives and a generation of national debt is worth a nuke that Iran would likely never even fire. i dont want them to have one either, i just dont think its worth a river of blood.
This is poor history.
We achieved regime change in Iraq, that's not really deniable. Unless your position is that it's not regime change unless it results in a totally western democracy? The regime changed. This one isn't great either but it's certainly a different one.
Syria was a success based on the actual aim, which was weakening Russia.
I didn't support either of those though. Maybe I'd support taking out Saddam if it were happening today, it's hard to say. I mean, it's easy if you want to use your 20/20 hindsight and put yourself in that position with knowledge that Tony Blair and Colin Powell were wrong/lying.
I've never said I want boots on the ground in Iran. You're twisting my words to the point they are unrecognizable.
In your last post you said, "negotiate, isolate, sanction, embargo. all the while monitoring for anything that smells like a weapon is imminent. then and only then bomb."
I'd like to take us back again to the imperfect nature of international intelligence operations, which you brought up originally. We are not getting every bit of information that exists, and we are not getting any information immediately.
With this in mind, how do you define "imminent" in this specific case? What if they had decided to bring their stockpile to 65%, would that have triggered your "imminent" alarms? If not, what about 70% or 75 or 80?