This article, UPI via Yahoo News, quotes Russia as saying other nations will give Iran nukes after this strike:
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, knowing who the nuclear nations are. I don’t get the impression that any of them have sympathies with Iran that would extend that far. Also, why buy trouble? If you gave Iran a nuke and they used it, Israel and the US would retaliate against all involved and then some.
The same article also claims that Fordow was emptied a couple of days ago. Now I don’t think you can just pack centrifuges onto trucks and drive them elsewhere to set up but Iran may have a good sized chunk of fissile material that is now the world’s hottest hot potato.
It doesn’t quote “Russia” as saying this, it quotes Medvedev, who is notorious for his trolling on Twitter. It kinda seems like that’s his official state role?
Attacking Iran was polling at like 15% earlier in the week, until I’m shown otherwise “of course it’s good politics!” doesn’t strike me as obviously correct.
World Wrestling Entertainment is currently scheduled to have major shows in Saudi Arabia next Friday and Saturday. I’m not sure I’d be going that close to Iran right now.
If this is where direct US investment ends, Israel’s operation concludes in relatively short order after degrading Iran’s nuclear capacity to a level they’re happy with and we don’t get Syria-like stories out of Iran during the remainder of Trump’s term I think Americans are not going to care.
As has been mentioned in a number of other threads, Medvedev seems to function as Putin’s little troll, making all sorts of deniable threats. He’s the one who periodically floats using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, which, thankfully, hasn’t happened yet.
Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be watched, and I am worried about what he says, but not in a literal fashion. For that matter, he he did, I could see various Western powers (though probably not the USA these days), floating the idea of giving Ukraine/Taiwan nukes by the same standards.
None of which I hope happens, well… 99% of the time at least.
Let’s say the USA and Israel suddenly stop all strikes now. Iran can’t exactly “call it a day,” but would they really say, “We’re shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea until you apologize and pay reparations” or something like that?
There is an aspect to this that I can’t figure out. Let’s say someone does gift Iran a nuke or they manage to roll their own. What do they do with it? If the answer is that they would immediately use it on Israel, sure but what then?
First, you have to assume that Israel is expecting this kind of attack and may even be prepared for it. So you can put it on a missile and launch it at Tel Aviv but it might get shot down and then you’re out of nukes. I would assume that if you attempt to nuke Israel, they flip one or more back at you. Iran doesn’t have an Iron Dome and Iran’s air defense network is various piles of smoking scrap right now. So are you prepared to shoot down an Israeli cruise missile or SLBM or lob toss from a fighter jet?
You could try to smuggle one in. A truck, a ship, a cargo plane, a light aircraft? But again, has Israel ever thought of this? Do they have some means of detecting nuclear contraband as it is inbound? Assume they do. Assume even if this perimeter wasn’t solid before Oct 7th, it is solid now. Sneaking a nuke into Israel seems like a good way to lose your nuke to a waiting commando team that is on permanent hot standby for just such an occasion. And again, Iran would find itself in the position of having tried and failed but the retaliation would be the same as if they had succeeded.
And if, God forbid, they did actually succeed, well… then what? The loss of life would be catastrophic but a single nuke wouldn’t destroy the nation. Israel would recover. And Israel’s military command absolutely has to have counter-strike plans that would be so much worse for Iran than the loss of a single city.
Iran can build a nuke. As I understand it (thanks Tom Clancy, The Sum of All Fears is a great book!), a nuke isn’t particularly difficult to build if you have the fissile material. But Iran can’t use a nuke unless they want to face an immediate barrage of nukes headed in their direction. Is it worth it? Just to hurt Israel? Knowing the price would be the absolute destruction of Iran?
As long as we are wildly speculating, if Iran were to start with 400 kg of enriched uranium and process it into highly enriched uranium, why assume they would waste it on shitty 1940s bombs? One should be able to get, let’s say, 20 bombs out of that much uranium.
Is there any evidence for any actual nuclear weapons testing in Iran? Or is it more of a Sadaam Hussein sort of thing?
which makes sense to me and is exactly what I was suggesting.
Now, if you want to know for sure what Iran has or has not done with a particular batch of uranium, you would have to convince them (again?) to let the IAEA inspect it. Otherwise, who knows where it is, or whether it is being enriched.
As it’s been since the USSR exploded its first device, the most important use of nuclear weapons has been as a threat, to make other countries take you seriously.
Take a look at how Trump has been “negotiating” with Iran up until now. It’s his usual bully bluster, “We’re so tough, give us everything, and fuck you in the process, you weakling losers!” But if Iran actually builds a bomb and demonstrates it to the world, suddenly that bluster isn’t as intimidating. Suddenly, we have to actually start taking their positions seriously, we have to listen to what they actually want, and we have to actually give them something.
Iran has been heavily sanctioned for decades, which has limited their economy and kept their people down. If they get the bomb, maybe we might have to ease up on some of that, to keep them from going off half-cocked. We’d have to start treating them less like Afghanistan, and more like Pakistan.
I agree, they’re asking for time to regroup. That said, as long as America and Israel firmly demand a few key non-negotiable point, I think that’s OK.
Demands must include:
Provisions that will punish Iran, through sanctions and military action, for funding terrorist proxies
Iran is completely out of the enrichment game
Strict limits on the size, range, and number of ballistic missiles Iran can field
Regular inspections to ensure that the regime complies with the above
If they don’t want to take that deal, we can go right back to fighting. Israel’s jets could definitely use some maintenance, and I doubt Iran can fix their air defense web in that timeframe.