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HAPPENING NOW: ISRAEL LAUNCHES MASSIVE ATTACK AGAINST IRANESE NUCLEAR FACILITIES—AIR RAID SIRENS HEARD ALL ACROSS ISRAEL—MASSIVE AIR ACTIVITY OVER IRAQ-SYRIA BORDER—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS CONFIRMED IN TEHRAN INCLUDING COLLAPSED BUILDING—IRANIAN FIGHTER JETS SEEN TAKING OFF FROM AIRSTRIPS NEAR TEHRAN—BALLISTIC MISSILE LAUNCHES REPORTED IN IRAN—REPORTS OF EXPLOSIONS AT US BASES IN IRAQ—MULTIPLE EXPLOSIONS HEARD NEAR IRAN’S NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY—VIDEO FOOTAGE SHOWING NATANZ NUCLEAR FACILITY BURNING—UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT THE CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE IRANIAN MILITARY HAS BEEN KILLED IN A TARGETED STRIKE
—Inb4 source
—Inb4 “low effort post ban” Additional facts and my thoughts will be added as the situation develops
Some background for those just tuning in.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/damning-iaea-report-has-given-israel-additional-pretext-to-strike-iran
In short, Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the head of state for the Islamic Repubic of Iran has stated on multiple occasions his desire to see "the Jews driven into the sea" and "eradicated". To this end it has been the official position of the Isreali government for decades now that a nuclear armed Iran poses an existential threat, and that they will take any and all action neccesary to prevent this. Most of the negotiations between the US, Iran, and other Arab countries over the last 15 years (Obama's vaunted "Nuclear Deal" and Trump's "Abraham Accords" to name two examples) have been oriented towards heading off this eventuality. However a recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests that Iran has been concealing thier true capabilities and that they may be mere weeks from having a functional bomb if they do have one already and that furthermore they are expanding thier uranium enrichment facilities.
Iran has been weeks away from having a functional bomb for the last 20 years. It may sound like a joke, but I'm guessing it's their actual policy. There's currently a fatwah against nuclear weapons, and while Western ears may hear that as a half-hearted "we really mean we aren't developing nukes", the Iranian government violating its own fatwah would cause a loss of credibility that could be fatal to the regime. The goal appears to be "nuclear capable", meaning that if there were some existential threat, like a full-bore invasion, they could quickly produce a nuclear weapon, because at that point the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Unless Israel seriously ratchets up these attacks, I doubt we'll ever see Iran openly testing nuclear weapons or making public announcements that they have them. Because if they do that apropos of nothing, what do they have to gain? People get even more pissed off than they already are, and Saudi Arabia starts its own nuclear program.
I think it may have been the lying about thier existing capabilities while looking to expand said capabilities that might've tipped the scales.
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I'm curious: is there any other set of countries where this is considered the case? I honestly can't think of another that would have a legitimate concern that some other specific country getting the Bomb would be that big of a concern.
Cuban missile crisis. The USA essentially has it as a rule that no other western hemisphere country will have the bomb. We just don't notice it because it's so thoroughly accepted as obviously true.
Please let me be obnoxiously pedantic and note that at least two more countries have their nukes in the western hemisphere.
Not the person you replied to, but not that obnoxious, since I don't know which ones you're referring to?
The UK and France. Although it’s almost certain that Russia and China have nuclear-armed submarines on patrol in the western hemisphere, too.
I wouldn't be sure about either one of Russia and China. I can't find any indication it has changed since then, but it was late Soviet policy to operate its SSBNs from "bastions", highly guarded areas in friendly waters. The noisy environment this created made the comparatively less stealthy Soviet SSBNs stand out less than they would on their own. On their own, they would have an SSN shadowing them, ready to sink them within minutes of war being declared.
China's SSBNs are pretty crude designs for now, decades behind the west. Though of course, they iterate quickly and can be expected to catch up quite fast, assuming they're getting some help from Russia which is not as far behind the west. And that they have homegrown SSBNs at all is no small feat. But considering how noisy they are, they would not feel comfortable operating them outside of safe areas either, meaning they are believed to also operate on a "bastion" doctrine.
A former submariner I talked to said they mostly shadowed chink subs in the South China Sea.
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Closest facsimile i can think of would be North and South Korea, though that is tempered by the consideration that even though they are both "officially" still in a state of war, both have repeatedly and publicly stated that they are waiting for the other to break the cease-fire, and so the cease-fire has continued to hold.
In contrast Iran has been providing technical and financial support to Hamas and the Houthis as well as taking pot-shots at the other Gulf states for decades now so thier credibility on the whole "we're not looking for trouble" front is basically zero.
Also North Korea has plenty of artillery trained at Seoul regardless, as I understand it. I'm not sure a nuke would actually be more destructive than the conventional capabilities.
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