Israel and Iran - Will we see air strikes soon?

An old classmate of mine is from Iran, and even though he didn't talk about it too much, when he did I do remember him being strongly against the current regime.

That is very simply false. They are neither well respected nor do they have just as many friends as enemies. Their two biggest protectors only do so because they have a vested economic interest in maintaining the authoritarian regime there, not because they have good relations with Iran. The Arab world hates them, as does the West. Iran has no allies to speak of, and only one state that it could reasonably be called 'friends' with, which happens to currently have an Islamist government.

Stop making this about Israel. This is not about Israel. It's about Iran. Iran is not in the right, you've admitted as much already. There is no 'leveling of the playing field' in nuclear politics, nor do they have a right to a nuclear weapon. Nuclear fairness has been legally (and logically) tossed out the window. Proliferation, as you also agreed, is inherently bad.

Hate Israel if you want; call them genocidal and warmongering and whatever else springs to mind. Don't let that hate blind you, as it is now, to the threat Iran, or Iran's nuclear ambition, poses. Who loses out if Israel bombs Iranian nuclear sites? Absolutely no one. Who loses out if sanctions and the IAEA fail, and Israel doesn't bomb Iranian nuclear sites? Everyone. Your false sense of fairness and hate towards Israel don't do anyone any good.

Arabs fucking hate Iran to the point Saudi Arabia would go out of there way to see Iran gone.

Careful man, the 'right to exist' is a made up term to aid rejectionism of a peace settlement. States can be recognised that they exist, but their 'right' is completely bullshit.

Firstly, I don't hate Israel but by the same token I don't love any country. Secondly, I think the gist of what you're saying is that the ends justify the means. I'm sorry but I can't agree here, not least because there are obvious ways of resolving this without violence. Like I suggested before, if Israel offered to be opened up for inspection, just like Iran, that might be a great starting point. Negotiations are ongoing with the IAEA, and how do you know that an attack on Iranian facilities wouldn't start a war? It'd be even worse if we found out afterwards that Iran wasn't building nuclear weapons, like the US Defence Secretary believes.

Not to mention that Israel attacking Iran would be yet another illegal activity:

(Noam Chomsky - The Iranian Threat)

Hiroshima was an industrial center.

That's whats funny about the japanese those instalations were either out of supply, abandoned, bombed earlier, or taken.
We had to force surrender because we knew Stalin would later back-stab us. let's face it Stalin was too paranoid
about the west and openly hated us.

And the West wasn't paranoid about Stalin and openly hated him? Not to mention that's still not an excuse to nuke thousands of civilians.

Plan A: Drop two bombs on japanese industrial centers to either 1. Force a surrender, or 2. Bleed them out faster
Plan B: Wait a few months, invade the japanese mainland, drop 5-9 nuclear bombs in the beachhead, force a surrender.
Plan C: Wait several years for them to bleed out.

Results and Risks:
Plan A: High civilian casualties, destroy industrial centers, fastest way
Plan B: Highest casualty rate estimated in the millions, both civilian and combatant; second quickest way force a surrender.
Plan C: Lowest casualty count, longest way to force surrender, but USSR could invade and take Japanese land.

Pick your choice and explain why.

You forgot an option D where the US won't be selfish assholes and blow up random civilians, but can still nuke a lower priority target which would still force Japan to surrender without costing too many casualties. Otherwise: C. The nukes wrecked the Japanese, and the Germans initially wrecked the Soviets. I don't know if the Soviets were willing or even able to invade a Japan that wasn't struck by those nukes.

Also, why nuke them twice? Surely one would suffice, and again, not on a densely populated area. No matter how you look at it, it was an unnecessarily cruel act.

They were freaking industrial centers. The Japanese mixed their civilian centers in completely with their industrial centers.

Which isn't exactly strange. Also, I wasn't saying the US needed to destroy industrial centres, demonstrating the power they held would've been enough. Also, it still doesn't explain why two bombs were dropped.

They didnt surrender after the first.

Hiroshima was a major harbor and Nagasaki was making endless numbers of Zero Fighters. Taking those out would weaken their air power even further and wreck shipping lines because they have to relocate vessels and cargo to other ports.

Weren't they dropped within hours of eachother? I'd personally think they could've waited a lot longer, especially seeing the communication at the time.

Wait, never mind, they were dropped three days apart and the surrender followed 6 days after that.

And regular tactical air raids couldn't take these out without either evaporating or irradiating those 150,000 - 250,000 people?

Also:
This might be useful for future references and such.

You know about the Allied bombing campaign over Germany. They leveled Dresden and several other cities. A bombing campaign would have been much more devastating to Japanese cities since they were often tightly packed and highly populated.

The bombs were devastating but they were really used to show how much power we had over the Japanese and the fact that we can wipe them out with only a few bombs.

The bombs killed thousands of people, but how many more would be lost over an invasion, a bombing campaign.
Dropping the bombs was in my opinion the quickest and least deadly way to end the war.

Rotterdam was bombed to all hell as well, I was wondering if tactical precision bombing could've taken out the military and industrial targets without killing all those civilians. The targets were chosen specifically for causing maximum damage to the entire area.

Again, I stated I personally preferred the digging in option. A full on invasion was a ridiculous idea, the Japanese knew exactly where the US would strike, and maximised their defences in those spots, so the invasion would be like in WWI where the US ran right into enemy fire. Carpet bombing would've had the same effect (arguably less, without the radiation and all that claimed around half of the victims, if I read correctly) as the nukes, without the clouds, of course.

To get this a little bit back on topic

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/02/13/bombers-target-israeli-diplomats-in-georgia-india/

Fox News? Hmm, I don't know about that.

Yet digging in led to the risk of Soviet intervention and them taking a chunk of Japan. There would be a Tokyo or Kyoto Wall if that happened. The Soviets did take most of Eastern Europe under their curtain and took Prussia from the Germans.