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Iran has everything to lose and nothing to gain by declaring nuclear capability.
Reaction to this top-level post on Iranian nukes.
It's very possible Iran ALREADY has the weapons in their arsenal.
But the weapons are militarily and strategically useless for Iran in this particular situation.
Because every current adversary already has nuclear weapons, and more of them, and could retaliate forcefully.
Why they probably have them:
Between how much time they've had to develop them, and that the half-ton of 60% HEU could have be easily boosted to weapons grade by removing the third of lighter uranium atoms from it (it'd only take days), it's nonsensical to believe Iranians do not already have nuclear weapons or couldn't have them. Making an detonating an implosion uranium bomb is something the Chinese managed in 1963 or so. Today, with supercomputers and more mature nuclear physics knowledge out there, it's not hard at all.
The 15 bombs Iran could have if we take IAEA at their word, which if used, would result in destruction of Tehran and other major cities, could kill perhaps 300-500k Israelis. It'd not destroy the country, cause it to be overrun etc.
Iranians know that if they nuked an Israeli air-base, Israelis who have more bombs would H-bomb all of their major military sites and production facilities. They're probably working on hydrogen bombs, but have not conducted a test yet. So, there are no useful targets for these bombs at all. There's no reason to say you have something you cannot even use.
Israelis do not have the resources for a sustained campaign, so why strike them? They were going to give up their campaign sooner or later.
So, in conclusion:
Obviously, even if they had the bombs, they'd keep them secret, locked up in a bunker and work on producing hydrogen bombs and ICBMs and enough of a tunnel network to guarantee survival of a second strike capability.
Announcing that they have the bombs would
the only upside would be boosting national pride.
This seems to be missing the point. Iran doesn't need enough nukes to win, they just need enough to make the cost of a nuclear exchange so high Israel would never risk it. Think about Saddam Hussein in 2003, if he has 10-15 nukes would the U.S. be willing to invade? How many nuclear strikes on Israel, are an acceptable price to pay for getting rid of him?
That's what I am saying.
But the only way to do it is thermonuclear weapons.
20*20 kilotons on Israel would be catastrophic but it'd be survivable for Israel.
It'd not be survivable for Iranian government.
100*400 kilotons would destroy Israel, possibly even partially prevent retaliation.
That's the moment when Iran would have true deterrence and MAD with Israel.
Being able to wound the enemy and then assuredly die is not deterrence.
States are made out of individual humans which make their decisions, not some abstract grand strategy player. For example, 9/11 was only a papercut for the US, something on the level of an animal killing a villager in Age of Empires, perhaps. But it still ended up shaping a decade of US politics, because people care more about this kind of things than deaths from traffic.
Getting nuked would be like 9/11, but worse. Normally, this is the place where I would say that there is no way Netanyahu would survive this politically, but given him doing just fine after the Hamas attacks suggests I do not have a working model of Israeli politics.
Politicians pay attention to tail risks, and try to avoid them. For a conventional Iran, the 1% most unfavorable outcome for Israel of an Israeli airstrike is that Iranian rockets fired in retaliation kill a couple of hundred Israeli. For a nuclear Iran, the 1% outcome is that they nuke a few Israeli cities, killing tens or hundreds of thousands.
The other thing to remember is that there is an escalation ladder even once the nukes start flying. For example, a nuclear Iran might nuke an Israeli airbase in retaliation to a conventional bombing. In this situation, Israel would not get a pass for whatever retaliation they might visit on Iran. Glassing Tehran would not be an option, at most they could nuke an Iranian base. Even if things get to the point where cities are nuked, Israel might get away with killing 10x as many Iranians as they kill Israelis, but not with 100x. If they glass all of the Iranian cities, they will get the same repercussions than if they had nuked them without provocation, so whatever considerations are keeping them from nuking Iran right now would still be the same.
Finally, we can use past prisoner exchanges to get an idea of how much citizens and enemies weight in the Israeli utility function (to the degree that it is coherent). The exchange rate peaked in 2011 at 1027 Arabs per Israeli, but has cratered since Hamas has taken their hostages. But I imagine that killing 2M Iranians for 100k Israeli, while being a favorable exchange rate given both population sizes, would not be seen as favorable by Israel.
It shaped politics that much because it was basically a godsend, a moment some of the PNAC crowd have been secretly praying for.
Funny:
They were actually not that stupid and wanted to axe new carrier construction, but did not manage to do so.
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