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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   25864 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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So if Iran doesn't want nukes then why is giving up enrichment such a deal breaker for them? They'd rather apparently be all killed than negotiate on this.

They do want nukes. No matter what one's opinion about the war is, and mine is against it, the fact is that they clearly want nukes. They would be insane not to want nukes. Having nukes is just better in almost every way than not having nukes, if you can afford the high price tag of building and maintaining them. For Iran's government nukes are the only possible way of guaranteeing their system's survival, other than a Russian or Chinese commitment to defend them in case of war, which does not seem to be forthcoming.

Having nukes is just better in almost every way than not having nukes,

I don't think this is the case based off of the game theory of nuclear weapons - the rational response to a country with significant interest in tremendously harming the West nuclearizing is to turn the entire country into glass regardless of casualties the minute it becomes obvious they'll nuclearize. The threat is too severe.

In real life the anti-nuclear taboo would prevent this from happening, but the moment Iran steps out of line the response would immense and civilization ending with tens of millions dead.

We barely made it out of the Cold War and that's with both countries not wanting to use nukes and both countries mostly believing that the opponent didn't want to use nukes (even if for no other reason than nukes = death for everybody).

But Iran wants to use nukes! Some people in the government might not even care if they get away with it because of the religious extremism.

The odds of everybody in the country dying are basically zero in the pre-nuke state. Hopefully the odds would be not great, but you'd have a very real chance of tens of millions of causalities post-nuke.

Having nukes would present at tremendous risk both to the people and the government.

Now, the government likely is totally fine with risking the entire population to persevere itself.

That's a pretty good indication to justify wiping out the Iranian government.

If you believe the Omani negotiator, Iran was willing to give up their stockpile and enrichment in exchange for sanction relief; that was likely the point of building the stockpile in the first place. Once the US tried to regime change them, the calculations shifted.

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