The CIA (lets for now ignore the alleged Director of the CIA) has for years been saying Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. Iran has been saying for years it does not have a nuclear weapons program. Every country has the right to pursue a civilian nuclear energy program.
The IAEA said earlier this year that Iran had enriched uranium to 60%. Uranium is enriched to 3-5% for nuclear energy, and 90%+ for weapons.
Don't be silly. Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Were they actively racing to a bomb? No. (That's what the CIA was saying). Did they enrich uranium to near-weapons grade so they _could_ race to a bomb, in a matter of weeks, if they decided to do so? Absolutely.
They need one or at least the idea of one if they want to deter Israel who has 200/300 bombs. If they don't want to end up like Iraq or Syria they kind of need this.
This is when people like me comment "According to US media, Iran has been a matter of weeks away from developing a nuclear bomb for over 20 years now".
Their now dead leader wrote a fatwa against nuclear bombs (as well as chemical bombs). Probably because Saddam using US chemical bombs on more than 50000 civilians a few decades ago did radicalize him against WMD.
They definitely have a 'nuclear program'. They have a 'nuclear program' to generate energy. They are a country on this earth and have the right to do this.
Just because we play rhetorical tricks and try to equate "nuclear program" with "nuclear weapons program" does not make it true.
Building a nuclear weapon that can be carried by Iraq's missiles is relatively difficult, because miniaturizing nuclear weapons requires much more complex designs. It took the US and the USSR quite a few test explosions to achieve such a warhead.
Building a bulky nuclear weapon that fits in, say, a shipping container, is not hard if sufficient highly enriched uranium is available. That's Hiroshima level nuclear technology, the gun-type bomb.[1]
This is the difference between the "years away" and the "weeks away" estimates.
Depends on whether the the delivery method is an ICBM or a shipping container.
To be 100% fair to the GP: indeed, Iran does not currently have an active weapons program. But they do have a weapons program, but they used it so far more for leverage. The truth is nobody really knows what they would have done had they achieved the status of nuclear armed power. But given that even the mullahs understand that there is a bit of a difference between threatening to annihilate Israel and actually doing so with all of the consequences attached to that I think they would be more like Kim or Putin than say the UK or France. They would use it for even more leverage and as insurance against being attacked.
Either way: the US is quick to say who can and who can not have nuclear weapons, but at the same time the US is the only country that ever did use them and it is one of very few countries that has (implicitly) threatened their use in recent memory. The only other two countries to do so are Israel and Russia.
Or maybe they know how much more difficult it is to go from 60% to 90%+?
Iran will pursue the bomb now with triple the effort they put into it so far. As will every other crappy country that has the talent, the facilities and the money. That's a lot of countries. Because all of them see the difference between Ukraine, North Korea and Iran: if you have the bomb, they leave you alone. Kim obviously had sponsorship.
The only thing holding back an Iranian nuke tomorrow is the fact that Pakistan and Iran do not see eye to eye on a few things. But Pakistan has vowed that if Israel should ever use nuclear weapons on Iran that Pakistan would hit Israel in the same way.
Keep in mind that they are right next door to each other and have a long term relationship.
When Trump canceled the Nuclear agreement with Iran, Iran immediately started enriching uranium into ship's reactor grade, and apparently started working on a nuclear submarine.
At the same time Iran emitted a domestic law prohibiting anybody from working towards nuclear weapons. The law was in effect up to the moment Trump ordered and killed the Ayatollah, by the way.
He's been impeached by the _house_ not by the Senate. The US Senate is extremely complicit with the administration. Something the founders did not intend
Upthread is discussing whether the Dems could flip the necessary seats to impeach and convict.
(And no, there is no way they will. It would take winning 20 out of the 22 seats, and losing none, assuming a party-line vote w/ independents siding with Dems. That won't happen. Also, the required vote in the Senate is two-thirds, not "60".)
Whenever I click through the 10 screens I need to get through to pay at Target or the local large grocery store, and I'm not even talking about Self Checkout, I seethe thinking maybe the "YOU WILL EAT THE BUGS" guys have the right idea. There's no way my elderly mother would be able to deal.
Any non-thick headed comms org would have jumped at the chance to convert this into promoting how the team has gone above and beyond to take care of one of their most loyal long term fans and turn this into a feel good story suitable for People and Yahoo Sports.
I also get bombarded by anti-Saikat ads, most from "Abundant Future", which appears to be a PAC funded by Garry Tan and the Ripple guy. the ads loudly proclaim that AOC tweeted once that one of Saikat's tweets is divisive, and that Saikat is a millionaire. This coming from two guys who control a huge pile of money in San Francisco.
It's not confirmed but I agree it was very likely a US strike. An accidental one.
Assuming the US did not intend to kill school girls that is also not a war crime. You can certainly argue that this happened due to the US decision to go to war and claim the actions to not be moral (or illegal as some have stated). Others might argue that more harm would occur if no action was taken and that the action minimizes the overall harm (e.g. to the Iranian people or others).
You could also argue that attack was intentional. I don't think there's any evidence of that and I'm not sure what purpose it served if it was one.
It is difficult to extract the real purpose of most things about this war, if you're in the US, since almost every single part of it seems against the US' interests and public face.
You're probably technically correct and that the US didn't intentionally look in Google Maps for an elementary school and decided to destroy it. But did we really need to Double Tap it?
That tweet by Timothy Snyder is quite ridiculous. There's just no way that's the motivation behind all this.
Unfortunately it's also the only motivation anyone has presented that there is any real hope of actually achieving. And it's the kind of excuse trump could use to become glorious dictator. Or at least I wouldn't be surprised to learn he thinks it is.
No, I really don't think that's why this war was started. I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America. But it just might be what he will get, whether he likes it or not.
> I don't think trump actually wants terrorist attacks in America.
He might not but he's surrounded by christian evangelist lunatics who think bringing about the end times is their moral responsibility and, more importantly, they are in charge because Trump is an addled idiot who has fewer thoughts in his head than an orange cat.
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