Not really - you’re giving the Israeli defences a chance to shoot down everything. Overwhelming it would require a massive barrage all at once - something the Iranians have been worse and worse at since the 1st and 2nd nights of the war.
If they could have launched a bigger wave, I’m sure they’d have done so in response to the US attacks.
The Iranian tactic of small barrages makes as much sense as the bad guys in a Kung Fu movie circling the hero and attacking one at a time.
Iran doesn’t need to import uranium, they have their own deposits on their own territory. They literally have to just dig it up out of their own backyard. That’s one reason limiting their nuclear ambitions has always been a problem. There’s no way to eliminate their soure of materials short of invading and taking over the country.
Sure, but the world community cannot and should not trust them to enrich their own uranium, based on their behavior.
They can dig uranium up, ship it elsewhere, and import fuel rods. We don’t need to tolerate them having an enrichment program.
You’re sort of ignoring the fact that the process for refining nuclear fuel for genuinely peaceful purposes i.e. power generation is different than that required for weapons-grade material.
It is entirely possible for Iran to have developed a nuclear industry that involved making their own fuel rods without the centrifuges and other equipment required to make weapons-grade materials.
But they chose not to do that, which is why they can’t be trusted. They clearly always wanted the weapons option.
Of course, taking other options which don’t require that level of isotope separation can result in very different power plant designs, like the one at Chernobyl which has its own set of problems…
Is it a different process using different equipment? My understanding was that it’s the same exact process, you just do it for longer on the same batch of Uranium to get more highly enriched stuff. Hence how Iran was able to claim that all of their equipment is for peaceful processes, but then able to ratchet up the percent when they decided to without needing to build new plants.
What? How would they enrich their uranium from the mined 0.17% to the required 5% for fuel?
That, is clearly true.
That would be suicidal, Iran’s bargaining chip is their missiles, launch them all and there is nothing left but a very pissed off adversary sitting on nukes. So yes if they want to launch a death’s hand attack yes that would lead to maximum destruction, but if they are in it for the long haul they need to use them stragicially and sustainably.
To add Israel is the aggressor here, such an attack could reverse that international opinion.
Are they though? Seems like both Israel and Iran are equally the aggressors and Israel just has the upper hand.
This was pretty recent:
And Iran has sponsored a lot of the unrest in the Middle-East.
Correct me if I am wrong, but none of that family of Atomic Demolition Munitions was configured as an earth-penetrating bunker buster. The SADM, for example, was in theory supposed to be planted by a paratrooper, while the W72 was mounted on a television-guided glide bomb.
If you wanted to “nuke 'em” I believe a B-2 bomber can deliver a B61 or B83 nuclear bomb.
What?
They can’t launch them all at once because they only have so many launchers.
On nights 1 and 2, they were aiming for around 100 missiles a night, in two barrages.
Since then, their capacity for launching rockets has greatly diminished. I don’t think they’ve managed more than 30 rockets in a wave in quite a while.
Shooting 10-30 rockets at a time makes it easier for Israel to shoot them all down.
Iran has been implying that the lower volume is strategic. But if so, you’d expect that on “special occasions”, like the eve of the US entering the war, they would carry out their warnings to up the ante again. But their wave last night was not much bigger. So it seems that their capacity truly is reduced.
Is that international opinion? What I’ve seen is that even Europe is supportive again. I think at a diplomatic level most countries recognize that Israel has been under attack by Iran’s proxies for years, and most recently since Oct 7, and that Iran’s nuclear program being taken out is a good thing.
With the caveat that I’m a civilian with no special connections…
Yes, you can use the same process for both weapons and fuel grade uranium but you don’t have to do so. Fuel uranium “only” needs to be refined to 3-5% U-235. Weapons grade needs to be 90% of that. Clearly, machinery that can gives you weapons-grade can churn out fuel grade rapidly, and I believe that’s the rationale that Iran has been using. On the other hand, to get to the 3-5% you can use much less capable machinery. Sure, eventually it might get you to weapons-grade, but not in any sort of reasonable time line. Meanwhile, if you are serious about “only civilian use” you’d be pulling that fuel-grade off the line as soon as it reaches 5% and not leaving it there longer.
Just like everyone else I’d imagine - industrial facilities that can do the work of refining uranium, processing it, and separating isotopes.
I’ll also note that the Canadian designed CANDU reactors don’t even require that - they can use nuclear fuel at the 0.7% isotope ratio. This is a proven technology at this point (thank you, Canadians) so, again, if the Iranians were actually on the level about “please don’t bomb us, this tech is strictly for peaceful purposes” they could have been building CANDU reactions and making their own fuel rods without the need to invest in expensive centrifuges.
Again - you can’t trust them, they clearly want a weapons option here.
That process is enrichment.
That’s also a viable alternative, I agree.
Or launch from a submarine, for the ultimate “shoot and scoot”.
But, honestly, can we PLEASE keep the “nuclear option” off the table? Pretty please?
Technically, a Medieval blacksmith’s coal-fired forge and a modern steel production plant are both metal working, but the possible end products are going to be considerably different even if much of the chemistry and physics are the same.
There are a number of nations that work with nuclear power that includes things like isotope separation who nonetheless are not considered to have the capability to produce weapons-grade uranium. The machinery they use is adequate to produce fuel-grade uranium, it is not adequate to produce weapons-grade.
Or, like I said - they could have gone with the CANDU design. Which doesn’t necessarily save money (safe nuclear power costs money, and the CANDU requires heavy water, which costs more than dipping regular water out of the nearest river or lake) but it is unequivocally NOT something that would produce weapons.
Returning to breaking news, I’m now getting news alerts that a “top US general” says the site was severely damaged, but it’s too soon to know if Iran retains nuclear capability.
(No doubt there are more details if i click the links, but i haven’t.)
Indeed: Iran’s parliament voted to close the Straits of Hormuz; now the Supreme Leader makes the final decision.
I wonder if closing the waterway is bad for the US because it’s inflationary, or good for the US because we can sell our domestic petroleum for more?
Ask the guy one pump over the next time you go to the gas station. Unless he’s an unemployed roughneck, I can guess his answer.
It would definitely be bad for the economy of Iran, I can say that much
So is being bombed to rubble; they don’t have anything to lose at this point.