Surely if Kerry won in 2004, we would have had Romney landslide over Kerry (post-Katrina, post-Financial Collapse) in 2008, Romney beat Hillary in 2012 and then a nasty Trump vs VP Ryan primary that allowed by then generic dem Obama eek through in 2016 with no mandate for change, before giving Trump v2 the presidency in 2020 on the back of COVID lockdown anger & racial animosity, no? But "most consequential" really seems to be mostly a function of time. Think of the the 220 years of shit a butterfly flap could disrupt by flipping the 1800 election to Burr... THAT has to be the MOST CONSEQUENTIAL election
I saw some posts about Taibbi and Greenwald. I would love to see people like Matt Y and Matt T responding to each other’s views. An intellectual & politically diverse group of substack writers forming a group to challenge (and support) each other’s views. Ideally for the consumer, I could sign up for a package of writers for one price. I might pay $20/month for the two Matt’s and someone like Andrew Sullivan…maybe someone else to like Brianna Joy Gray or Jane Coaston. This would be particularly interesting if they pushed and poked at each other’s perspectives. Certainly wouldn’t have to interrupt their current work. It could just be a little addendum, like I saw Taibbi said this about…here’s why that is wrong or misleading. I enjoy seeing views get challenged.
Regarding Hillary Clinton, I don't think anyone of sound mind thought it impossible she could lose.
Look, we all have a friend here or there who secretly admires Trump's viciousness and powerlust. We all of us, even fans, saw Clinton as a distrustful, mediocre politician, albeit with an inspiring resume and roster of achievements. She drove all of us bonkers with her scripted, hesitant manner, political poison in a narcissistic era.
BUT. . . fact remains, had she won, she would have been the first woman president, and the first woman to be the most powerful human on Earth since Catherine the Great, or maybe ever.
That prospect, and temptation, was what led Democrat elites to stick by her, more than anything. More than antipathy for Bernie, or disdain for Biden. Speaking only for myself, and people in my orbit at the time.
Thanks for your post, which was actually insightful and quite courageous. I hadn't been able to express my support for Clinton at the time in as eloquent terms as you have.
What basis is there to think that counterfactual-Biden would have pursued immigration reform? Reality-Biden's record on immigration so far is, to use a technical term, shitty.
Also, the part at the end doesn't really engage with *why* progressives think Obama's presidency was a failure. You could make the same kind of non-substantial list of good traits about Bill Clinton, but that wouldn't make him anything other than a center-right President in reality.
Any election which an idiot and/or a wannabe fascist could win is a watershed. 2016 was consequential because Trump is a sharp departure from last Republican nominees
I agree that 2016 was the most important election of our lifetime, and in addition to the cascade of bad consequences described in the original post, I would add that it led to the complete collapse of belief in democratic norms and institutions among Republican elites and the Republican activist base. Whether or not Trump wins by the normal election rules in 2024 or wins because GOP state legislatures in swing states throw out urban votes and award electoral college votes to Trump (ratified by a GOP controlled Congress in January 2025), the abandoning of basic democratic norms by one of our two parties is a big deal. Conservative Never Trumpers have been attuned to this loss of faith in institutions from the beginning, and rightfully so. It has the potential to unleash a lot of chaos and uncertainty, since once one side abandons the norms, the other side is a sucker for still trying to respect them or uphold them in some way. It can lead to a lot of unrest and social disruption, on top of the all of the policy losses described in the original post.
After the midterms, Joe should announce that he’s not running in 2024. He’s dead man with a walker anyway. Dem’s need to find a viable candidate.
Social media has changed politics. Coalition forming is less linear now. A candidate doesn’t have to conform to the norms of the party’s as much. A more populist politics can create coalitions of strange bedfellows. It’s interesting…
Biden can't not run in 2024 because, if he fails to run, that basically guarantees Harris is the nominee and she would be at greater risk of losing to Trump.
Someone might challenge her in the sense of declaring a candidacy, but I'm skeptical that any such person would really sincerely try to run against her absent some crazy results in early primaries/caucuses. Unless he's dead or comatose, Biden would have to endorse Harris or his name would be a literal curse word in Democratic circles for eternity. And, unless Harris actually commits a crime or something, no one is going to be able to attack her on unlikability/unelectability grounds without being eaten alive by the progressive sphere.
The same kind of thinking had people believing a white man would not get the nomination in 2020. Joe did, with significant Black support being a big reason. I just think these things are hard to predict. I wish we could bet on it. I would take the field against Kamala.
It's absolutely true that we would have been better off with a Biden or O'Malley presidency and a temporarily Democratic Senate in place because it's pretty much a law of the universe that Democrats are better for the country and the world than Republicans.
That would be the case for 2017-19.
The downside is that we would currently be in the midst of an economic collapse that would make the Great Depression look like a garden party.
COVID comes in early 2020 and the economy shuts down in a panic. President Biden goes to the solidly Republican Congress to plead for his $2.2T CARES act to keep the economy on bare life support while his administration figures out the best way to fight the disease. Ryan and McConnell -- the former with his sad puppy dog eyes and moral high-handedness and the latter with barely disguised glee -- say "Oh no, and debase the dollar and unleash hyperinflation? Let the free market work it out!" And nothing gets signed, and no help goes out to a comatose economy.
I'm trying to imagine what the country looks like in that situation, and following the 2020 election but I guarantee it wouldn't be with "a candidate who paired broadly Trumpian policy ideas with more Romney-like atmospherics and presentation". It would be a 1932 wipeout for the Democrats and echoes of Father Coughlin matched with a right-wing Huey Long.
If Bernie hadn't run in the primary would Hillary have won? I know that the retrospective view is that she was a terrible choice because so many people hated her but that wasn't true when she was Secretary of State. I don't think Bernie would have won because the people who wanted to vote for an angry populist still would have voted for Trump who would always be angrier than Bernie and they don't actually seem angry at corporate America, just at cultural elite America that looks down on them or whatever. I think that Biden would have won, but I think it would have been a terrible choice for him -- people need time and space to grieve and I guess it's because I am a big Obama fan, but I truly believe that Obama did not encourage Biden to run because he cared about Joe Biden and knew his heart was broken. I think that the 1980 election was the most important election of my lifetime and we are still living in it's aftermath.
I understand classifying 2004 as a low-stakes election relative to 2016 and 2000, but it produced the Alito and Roberts appointments--which were pretty meaningful long-term wins for the Right.
You didn't mention RBG, but one big question mark in this counter-factual is whether she retires before 2018 or not. Since the Dems lose the senate in 2018 and the WH in 2020, the Republicans still get to appoint a 5th (more conservative than Kennedy) justice if she still refuses to strategically retire.
One possibility is that the insanity of not retiring in 2017 is even more obvious than in 2013 and this leads both RBG and Breyer to do the right thing. But it's a pretty huge question either way.
The fact the Breyer is apparently really and truly going to wait until Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader again before dying is the single most concise indictment of the legal/judicial arm of the Democratic Party that I can imagine.
Feel like we almost can't overstate how bad the Iran stuff is, especially as it mostly flies under our radar. It's..... it's so bad. Iran is now on a pretty direct path to get a nuclear weapon, I've seen arms control experts compare its current trajectory to where North Korea was just prior to getting the bomb. Obama successfully pulled them off that path, but Cotton and other Republican Party crazies told them (Cotton wrote the mullahs a letter!) that there was no point in abiding by the agreement as a future R President would just revoke it. Now Biden is trying to negotiate another arms agreement with them, and Cotton & Cruz & the other crazies are directly telling Iran again- in writing- 'don't bother agreeing to anything, Republicans will revoke the deal immediately in the future'.
Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, and no matter how bad you think their government is- that's an argument for them *not getting one*. If they do successfully test one, the US would have to at a minimum conduct extreme bombardment to destroy it- thus starting yet another Middle Eastern war. With the US thus distracted, I'm pretty sure China would invade Taiwan posthaste, and who knows what Russia would be up to in Eastern Europe. This is where the hawkish wing of the GOP is leading us, directly to World War 3
In an ideal world, I'd strongly prefer for the Islamic Republic not to have nukes, but for entirely different reasons. Iran getting the bomb is an entirely manageable problem for Israel, and basically nobody else. There is no earthly reason that we should conduct "extreme bombardment" of _anybody_ just to prevent the Israelis from having to ever consider anything other than a maximally belligerent foreign policy.
The problem with a nuclear Iran is that it makes the rest of the world strongly invested in _preserving_ the current Iranian government, on the grounds that the only thing worse than a nuclear Iran is a nuclear failed state in a protracted civil war a la Libya or Syria. (And it would be much, much worse.)
But we have probably shat that bed permanently at this point.
"If they do successfully test one, the US would have to at a minimum conduct extreme bombardment to destroy it- thus starting yet another Middle Eastern war."
That would be a colossally stupid mistake on the part of the United States. A nuclear Iran is not our problem, unless we make it one by not being able to quit our obsession with the Middle East region even though it has long since lost its strategic importance to the US.
As I see it, having nukes is in Iran's best interest - full stop. They have a much stronger strategic position relative to the US, the Saudi's, etc. once they do and given the blinding obviousness of that, I don't see how anything we do either through the Obama agreement or through Trump sanctions does anything besides slow things down a bit.
One of the under appreciated lessons of Iraq is that it would have never been invaded if it actually had nukes. You can invade to try and stop a country from getting them, but once they actually have the weapons the MAD principle kicks in and changes the dynamics enormously.
I have no expertise of any kind in this area, but I'm not sure weapon production is enough to achieve MAD. They would also need some kind of serious delivery system, the ability to protect their production and storage sites, and a secure supply of fissile material.
Let's say they create one secretly and are well into producing a second by the time US/Israel/Saudi intelligence services find out. Their ability to deploy that first nuke and finish producing the second doesn't seem that high even if just Israel alone responds.
Even if they produce, say, a dozen warheads, they would probably be able to deploy to a local battlefield but unlikely to Tel Aviv and almost certainly not to the US, whom they would need to be able to hit for MAD to kick in.
No strategic expert either, but IMO its really more of a timing perspective. If the US were to invade, then Iran can use the threat of a nuke to deter. Could they destroy the entirety of the US like Russia or China - probably not. Can they pose a serious threat to having a boat sail into NY, San Francisco, Houston, etc. harbors and set off a couple of nukes - yes. The latter would be sufficiently destructive that it completely changes the US risk relative to intervention.
The thing that gets me is that one of the arguments for invading Iraq was that it would convince Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program because they would know that the US would not tolerate any nuclear proliferation. I always thought that was a bizarre idea — if the US has your country on its axis of evil list, the most obvious way to prevent an invasion is becoming a nuclear power.
I think if you could really dig into the psychology of hardcore Iraq war proponents and get past their evasions, you'd find that none of them actually cared about nuclear nonproliferation per se. Their root motivation was a belief that whoever has the biggest balls wins in the long run, and nothing else really matters next to that.
"...every two-bit dictator out there needs to lay hands on a credible deterrent if ever on the US's shit list. I'm sure Tehran, Pyongyang, and Islamabad will be happy to oblige before the decade is out."
I disagree for two reasons:
1) All nuclear powers want the club to very small, because it then gives them outsized influence and because every country that gains them increases the risk that some country will have them used against them. Iran might be allies with Hezbollah, but do they really want them to have nukes outside of Tehran's control - I doubt it.
2) Another side effect from 9/11 was that it reinforced MAD to the world. The US was hit !relatively! lightly compared to what other countries have suffered or what a WMD would do and we lost our minds - invaded two+ countries, spent a fortune in money and political capitol trying to track down and destroy who did it. It took 20 years before our blood lust ran out and Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan. I could see Iran (or other countries) wanting nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the US, but should anything they develop and sell ever be used against the US, its likely we would include them in a nuclear response because we've demonstrated very clearly we actually are that crazy.
I agree with much of this, except, I don't think it's at all likely, much less a given ("the US would have to...") America would attack a confirmed nuclear power, which Iran would at that point be. Maybe Israel would. Iran can't be any worse than North Korea, and we didn't attack them.
Well, amend that to I think it's likely the US would do a preemptive attack. Maybe Iran isn't any worse than North Korea, but the US national security apparatus/blob is much more hostile to Iran. And I'd imagine a nuclear-armed Iran would start making hostile, threatening statements to Israel pretty fast.
The US might peremptorily attack when they think Iran is close, or after a nuclear test but before they're actually able to put it on a missile. Not saying I support it! But I think it's definitely something that could happen....
We'd have to be crazy to attack Iran anyway, nukes or no nukes. Just as it would have been crazy to attack pre-nuke NK. Bill Clinton actually considered it for a second in 1994, but he realized it would have been a catastrophe.
I agree that it's highly unlikely the US attacks a confirmed nuclear Iran. But what I wonder is what a future timeline in which Iran develops nuclear weapons, and US begins to hedge it's agenda in the Middle East accordingly, looks like versus a baseline in which the US stops caring so much about Middle East oil, and begins to back down its commitments in the Middle East accordingly.
Surely if Kerry won in 2004, we would have had Romney landslide over Kerry (post-Katrina, post-Financial Collapse) in 2008, Romney beat Hillary in 2012 and then a nasty Trump vs VP Ryan primary that allowed by then generic dem Obama eek through in 2016 with no mandate for change, before giving Trump v2 the presidency in 2020 on the back of COVID lockdown anger & racial animosity, no? But "most consequential" really seems to be mostly a function of time. Think of the the 220 years of shit a butterfly flap could disrupt by flipping the 1800 election to Burr... THAT has to be the MOST CONSEQUENTIAL election
I saw some posts about Taibbi and Greenwald. I would love to see people like Matt Y and Matt T responding to each other’s views. An intellectual & politically diverse group of substack writers forming a group to challenge (and support) each other’s views. Ideally for the consumer, I could sign up for a package of writers for one price. I might pay $20/month for the two Matt’s and someone like Andrew Sullivan…maybe someone else to like Brianna Joy Gray or Jane Coaston. This would be particularly interesting if they pushed and poked at each other’s perspectives. Certainly wouldn’t have to interrupt their current work. It could just be a little addendum, like I saw Taibbi said this about…here’s why that is wrong or misleading. I enjoy seeing views get challenged.
I am in the market for a Substack bundle.
Regarding Hillary Clinton, I don't think anyone of sound mind thought it impossible she could lose.
Look, we all have a friend here or there who secretly admires Trump's viciousness and powerlust. We all of us, even fans, saw Clinton as a distrustful, mediocre politician, albeit with an inspiring resume and roster of achievements. She drove all of us bonkers with her scripted, hesitant manner, political poison in a narcissistic era.
BUT. . . fact remains, had she won, she would have been the first woman president, and the first woman to be the most powerful human on Earth since Catherine the Great, or maybe ever.
That prospect, and temptation, was what led Democrat elites to stick by her, more than anything. More than antipathy for Bernie, or disdain for Biden. Speaking only for myself, and people in my orbit at the time.
What were her achievements?
Thanks for your post, which was actually insightful and quite courageous. I hadn't been able to express my support for Clinton at the time in as eloquent terms as you have.
What basis is there to think that counterfactual-Biden would have pursued immigration reform? Reality-Biden's record on immigration so far is, to use a technical term, shitty.
Also, the part at the end doesn't really engage with *why* progressives think Obama's presidency was a failure. You could make the same kind of non-substantial list of good traits about Bill Clinton, but that wouldn't make him anything other than a center-right President in reality.
Any election which an idiot and/or a wannabe fascist could win is a watershed. 2016 was consequential because Trump is a sharp departure from last Republican nominees
I agree that 2016 was the most important election of our lifetime, and in addition to the cascade of bad consequences described in the original post, I would add that it led to the complete collapse of belief in democratic norms and institutions among Republican elites and the Republican activist base. Whether or not Trump wins by the normal election rules in 2024 or wins because GOP state legislatures in swing states throw out urban votes and award electoral college votes to Trump (ratified by a GOP controlled Congress in January 2025), the abandoning of basic democratic norms by one of our two parties is a big deal. Conservative Never Trumpers have been attuned to this loss of faith in institutions from the beginning, and rightfully so. It has the potential to unleash a lot of chaos and uncertainty, since once one side abandons the norms, the other side is a sucker for still trying to respect them or uphold them in some way. It can lead to a lot of unrest and social disruption, on top of the all of the policy losses described in the original post.
Oh God, this is depressing.
After the midterms, Joe should announce that he’s not running in 2024. He’s dead man with a walker anyway. Dem’s need to find a viable candidate.
Social media has changed politics. Coalition forming is less linear now. A candidate doesn’t have to conform to the norms of the party’s as much. A more populist politics can create coalitions of strange bedfellows. It’s interesting…
Biden can't not run in 2024 because, if he fails to run, that basically guarantees Harris is the nominee and she would be at greater risk of losing to Trump.
I don’t think it remotely guarantees she would win. People would challenge her and right now it looks like she would lose.
Someone might challenge her in the sense of declaring a candidacy, but I'm skeptical that any such person would really sincerely try to run against her absent some crazy results in early primaries/caucuses. Unless he's dead or comatose, Biden would have to endorse Harris or his name would be a literal curse word in Democratic circles for eternity. And, unless Harris actually commits a crime or something, no one is going to be able to attack her on unlikability/unelectability grounds without being eaten alive by the progressive sphere.
The same kind of thinking had people believing a white man would not get the nomination in 2020. Joe did, with significant Black support being a big reason. I just think these things are hard to predict. I wish we could bet on it. I would take the field against Kamala.
I’d like to see liberal, likeable, analytical, contrarian. A more mainstream Andrew Yang…
It's absolutely true that we would have been better off with a Biden or O'Malley presidency and a temporarily Democratic Senate in place because it's pretty much a law of the universe that Democrats are better for the country and the world than Republicans.
That would be the case for 2017-19.
The downside is that we would currently be in the midst of an economic collapse that would make the Great Depression look like a garden party.
COVID comes in early 2020 and the economy shuts down in a panic. President Biden goes to the solidly Republican Congress to plead for his $2.2T CARES act to keep the economy on bare life support while his administration figures out the best way to fight the disease. Ryan and McConnell -- the former with his sad puppy dog eyes and moral high-handedness and the latter with barely disguised glee -- say "Oh no, and debase the dollar and unleash hyperinflation? Let the free market work it out!" And nothing gets signed, and no help goes out to a comatose economy.
I'm trying to imagine what the country looks like in that situation, and following the 2020 election but I guarantee it wouldn't be with "a candidate who paired broadly Trumpian policy ideas with more Romney-like atmospherics and presentation". It would be a 1932 wipeout for the Democrats and echoes of Father Coughlin matched with a right-wing Huey Long.
If Bernie hadn't run in the primary would Hillary have won? I know that the retrospective view is that she was a terrible choice because so many people hated her but that wasn't true when she was Secretary of State. I don't think Bernie would have won because the people who wanted to vote for an angry populist still would have voted for Trump who would always be angrier than Bernie and they don't actually seem angry at corporate America, just at cultural elite America that looks down on them or whatever. I think that Biden would have won, but I think it would have been a terrible choice for him -- people need time and space to grieve and I guess it's because I am a big Obama fan, but I truly believe that Obama did not encourage Biden to run because he cared about Joe Biden and knew his heart was broken. I think that the 1980 election was the most important election of my lifetime and we are still living in it's aftermath.
I understand classifying 2004 as a low-stakes election relative to 2016 and 2000, but it produced the Alito and Roberts appointments--which were pretty meaningful long-term wins for the Right.
You didn't mention RBG, but one big question mark in this counter-factual is whether she retires before 2018 or not. Since the Dems lose the senate in 2018 and the WH in 2020, the Republicans still get to appoint a 5th (more conservative than Kennedy) justice if she still refuses to strategically retire.
One possibility is that the insanity of not retiring in 2017 is even more obvious than in 2013 and this leads both RBG and Breyer to do the right thing. But it's a pretty huge question either way.
The fact the Breyer is apparently really and truly going to wait until Mitch McConnell is Senate Majority Leader again before dying is the single most concise indictment of the legal/judicial arm of the Democratic Party that I can imagine.
Well it's kind of cheating to switch out the candidate. But either way, 2016 doesn't hold a candle to 2000.
Let's dispel this fiction that 2020 was the most important election of the century. It was 2016.
Let's dispel this fiction that 2020 was the most important election of the century. It was 2016.
Let's dispel this fiction that 2020 was the most important election of the century. It was 2016.
Let's dispel this fiction that 2020 was the most important election of the century. It was 2016.
Now I'm sad.
Feel like we almost can't overstate how bad the Iran stuff is, especially as it mostly flies under our radar. It's..... it's so bad. Iran is now on a pretty direct path to get a nuclear weapon, I've seen arms control experts compare its current trajectory to where North Korea was just prior to getting the bomb. Obama successfully pulled them off that path, but Cotton and other Republican Party crazies told them (Cotton wrote the mullahs a letter!) that there was no point in abiding by the agreement as a future R President would just revoke it. Now Biden is trying to negotiate another arms agreement with them, and Cotton & Cruz & the other crazies are directly telling Iran again- in writing- 'don't bother agreeing to anything, Republicans will revoke the deal immediately in the future'.
Iran should not have a nuclear weapon, and no matter how bad you think their government is- that's an argument for them *not getting one*. If they do successfully test one, the US would have to at a minimum conduct extreme bombardment to destroy it- thus starting yet another Middle Eastern war. With the US thus distracted, I'm pretty sure China would invade Taiwan posthaste, and who knows what Russia would be up to in Eastern Europe. This is where the hawkish wing of the GOP is leading us, directly to World War 3
In an ideal world, I'd strongly prefer for the Islamic Republic not to have nukes, but for entirely different reasons. Iran getting the bomb is an entirely manageable problem for Israel, and basically nobody else. There is no earthly reason that we should conduct "extreme bombardment" of _anybody_ just to prevent the Israelis from having to ever consider anything other than a maximally belligerent foreign policy.
The problem with a nuclear Iran is that it makes the rest of the world strongly invested in _preserving_ the current Iranian government, on the grounds that the only thing worse than a nuclear Iran is a nuclear failed state in a protracted civil war a la Libya or Syria. (And it would be much, much worse.)
But we have probably shat that bed permanently at this point.
"If they do successfully test one, the US would have to at a minimum conduct extreme bombardment to destroy it- thus starting yet another Middle Eastern war."
That would be a colossally stupid mistake on the part of the United States. A nuclear Iran is not our problem, unless we make it one by not being able to quit our obsession with the Middle East region even though it has long since lost its strategic importance to the US.
As I see it, having nukes is in Iran's best interest - full stop. They have a much stronger strategic position relative to the US, the Saudi's, etc. once they do and given the blinding obviousness of that, I don't see how anything we do either through the Obama agreement or through Trump sanctions does anything besides slow things down a bit.
One of the under appreciated lessons of Iraq is that it would have never been invaded if it actually had nukes. You can invade to try and stop a country from getting them, but once they actually have the weapons the MAD principle kicks in and changes the dynamics enormously.
I have no expertise of any kind in this area, but I'm not sure weapon production is enough to achieve MAD. They would also need some kind of serious delivery system, the ability to protect their production and storage sites, and a secure supply of fissile material.
Let's say they create one secretly and are well into producing a second by the time US/Israel/Saudi intelligence services find out. Their ability to deploy that first nuke and finish producing the second doesn't seem that high even if just Israel alone responds.
Even if they produce, say, a dozen warheads, they would probably be able to deploy to a local battlefield but unlikely to Tel Aviv and almost certainly not to the US, whom they would need to be able to hit for MAD to kick in.
No strategic expert either, but IMO its really more of a timing perspective. If the US were to invade, then Iran can use the threat of a nuke to deter. Could they destroy the entirety of the US like Russia or China - probably not. Can they pose a serious threat to having a boat sail into NY, San Francisco, Houston, etc. harbors and set off a couple of nukes - yes. The latter would be sufficiently destructive that it completely changes the US risk relative to intervention.
The thing that gets me is that one of the arguments for invading Iraq was that it would convince Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program because they would know that the US would not tolerate any nuclear proliferation. I always thought that was a bizarre idea — if the US has your country on its axis of evil list, the most obvious way to prevent an invasion is becoming a nuclear power.
I think if you could really dig into the psychology of hardcore Iraq war proponents and get past their evasions, you'd find that none of them actually cared about nuclear nonproliferation per se. Their root motivation was a belief that whoever has the biggest balls wins in the long run, and nothing else really matters next to that.
"...every two-bit dictator out there needs to lay hands on a credible deterrent if ever on the US's shit list. I'm sure Tehran, Pyongyang, and Islamabad will be happy to oblige before the decade is out."
I disagree for two reasons:
1) All nuclear powers want the club to very small, because it then gives them outsized influence and because every country that gains them increases the risk that some country will have them used against them. Iran might be allies with Hezbollah, but do they really want them to have nukes outside of Tehran's control - I doubt it.
2) Another side effect from 9/11 was that it reinforced MAD to the world. The US was hit !relatively! lightly compared to what other countries have suffered or what a WMD would do and we lost our minds - invaded two+ countries, spent a fortune in money and political capitol trying to track down and destroy who did it. It took 20 years before our blood lust ran out and Biden pulled us out of Afghanistan. I could see Iran (or other countries) wanting nuclear weapons as a deterrent to the US, but should anything they develop and sell ever be used against the US, its likely we would include them in a nuclear response because we've demonstrated very clearly we actually are that crazy.
I agree with much of this, except, I don't think it's at all likely, much less a given ("the US would have to...") America would attack a confirmed nuclear power, which Iran would at that point be. Maybe Israel would. Iran can't be any worse than North Korea, and we didn't attack them.
Well, amend that to I think it's likely the US would do a preemptive attack. Maybe Iran isn't any worse than North Korea, but the US national security apparatus/blob is much more hostile to Iran. And I'd imagine a nuclear-armed Iran would start making hostile, threatening statements to Israel pretty fast.
The US might peremptorily attack when they think Iran is close, or after a nuclear test but before they're actually able to put it on a missile. Not saying I support it! But I think it's definitely something that could happen....
We'd have to be crazy to attack Iran anyway, nukes or no nukes. Just as it would have been crazy to attack pre-nuke NK. Bill Clinton actually considered it for a second in 1994, but he realized it would have been a catastrophe.
I agree that it's highly unlikely the US attacks a confirmed nuclear Iran. But what I wonder is what a future timeline in which Iran develops nuclear weapons, and US begins to hedge it's agenda in the Middle East accordingly, looks like versus a baseline in which the US stops caring so much about Middle East oil, and begins to back down its commitments in the Middle East accordingly.