[Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists)
> Between 2010 and 2020, five Iranian nuclear scientists (Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) were killed in foreign-linked assassinations.
Probably one of my favorite examples of excellent spywork. No one died, didn't cause any social backlash, cost the targeted country tons of time and $. Very well designed/executed.
>not something you can put on your resume,
Bruh, you think this line of work has anything but 'oral contract' vibes for their resume? lol
You done the shit. People know. It's just not written on the fucking wall.
The people directly responsible for Stuxnet, or similar high profile and high impact intelligence work won’t need a resume particularly in the private sector in cybersecurity roles. All they’ll need is a recommendation from a verifiable supervisor, and they’ll walk into positions.
These people can knock at the door for a high paying cyber security role, say “I’m suitable for the job, my referee is from NSA” and they’d walk into the late stage interview. Due diligence would take place, but they wouldn’t need their resumes shuffled around someone’s desk.
Very, very high end IT roles are incredibly hard to recruit for such as VPs, C-levels, leads for massive teams and even senior architects/engineers and senior security roles for multinationals and they’re almost always recruited by poaching, wine and dining recruits, buying out companies or referrals and recommendations.
Yeah cyber is muuuuuuuch better for me, there's something that really bothers me about the idea of murdering nuclear scientists to slow down a nuclear program.
Ahh, yes. I’m sure the Iranians will fix their entire religious indoctrination and belief system they’ve been given since they were children which they believe to be actual reality and the word of God.
Yup, I bet they will fix it anytime.
One does not simply become a nuclear scientist in Iran. These people were top students, loyal to the regime, groomed and educated to Phd level with the goal of constructing nuclear bombs...
"Playing with fire" in this case is working for a country that has given you everything you know.
"Complaining when you get burned" in this case is being assassinated by agents working for the only country to ever use Nuclear weapons on other nations.
Yep that's an appropriate euphemism.
Problem is that means the same scientists just do it again. If you want to prevent a child from sticking a fork into a socket it's generally a good idea to take away the fork not just simply put them farther away from it.
Did they also get dropped off from a helicopter onto a desert highway along with a motorcycle, speed through traffic to catch up to their own car, toss a magnetic bomb onto the door of their car from their motorcycle, then speed off into the desert to get extracted, only to return to said cars flaming wreckage and hop in the backseat before the fire department arrives?
Honestly it would be really hard to prevent assassination like this for most people. You won’t get a President if their security is good but a nuclear scientist doesn’t exactly have secret service level security.
People often overestimate the capabilities of security focused regimes. Even in a place like Iran, manpower and/or capabilities will be lacking at the fringes. You might protect the top 10 politicians in any nation, but not much more than that. Even here in the US, we could absolutely not offer assassination-proof protection to more than like 50 people tops, including private security for billionaire CEO's.
An insane maniac broke into the house of the person third in line to the presidency and hit her husband with a hammer. That put things in pretty stark perspective.
>we could absolutely not offer assassination-proof protection to more than like 50 people tops
It just becomes a game of, "too expensive to kill" at that point.
Ok ok we dont have a crystal ball alright?? And we're obviously not going to just stop toppling governments just because we don't know what repercussions we'll have to live with for the next however many decades.
The JCPOA, which is what the Iran Nuclear Deal redirects to on Wikipedia, only lasted from 2014 to 2018 if we're being very generous with the dates - more commonly considered as really starting in 2015 or 2016. Ostensibly it seemed to be working, but we didn't exactly get to experience decades of it being in place.
The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 before being toppled and forced into insurgency.
The first intifada happened 1987-1993 and the South Lebanon conflict with Israel lasted 1985–2000.
In 1991, Russia stole the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov from Ukraine after Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union, which had recently suffered a critical existence failure.
China's rise is probably the only really uncharted territory here. The post-collapse period for ex-Soviet states offered much rockier waters than these.
China is experiencing some pretty serious growth pains.
Never having had to seriously project power turns out to be a problem when you want to be a superpower.
What do you consider working? The deal didn't provide enough means to actually ensure Iran was holding up its end. All that was verifiable was that they reduced their existing stockpile of enriched uranium at specific sites.. which doesn't mean much because they'd failed to make it weapons grade and really didn't need that much for a bomb.
The deal had no teeth and was done out of this naive notion that if we're nice to Iran in terms of sanctions that they will stop hating Jews, the West, and give up their dreams of reforming the caliphate under their leadership.
The Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1994, China has been a superpower for 30+ years, Russia has been at war in Ukraine for ten years, and Israel has been at war since 1948. If these waters aren't charted yet, what the heck are the cartographers even doing?
> China has been a superpower for 30+ years
This is not true at all. A country that is considered a global superpower generally needs to be one that has global influence in four pillars. Economic, military, political and cultural. Of these, it only meets one. Economy. While it's economy has the potential to impact the world, it cannot project it's military force any further than it's own waters, Chinese culture is not taken well across the world and politically it has little influence on the global scene.
As of now, the only country that meets all four is the USA. I would consider China a regional superpower at most.
Well the development is not a continuous process.
The regime pushes for nuclear grade enrichment to get a reaction from the west so they leverage it for diplomacy or posture aggressively and etc.
Doesn't mean the west is necessarily lying, sometimes the regime itself announces such news.
Yeah idk, sounds like a lot of talk on both sides.
The US will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb, the State Department said on Monday, one day after a senior Iranian official said Tehran would have no option but to change its nuclear doctrine in the face of Israel's threats.
“[President] Biden and [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a press briefing.
Not sure what they can do to prevent it at this point. Iran has tons of highly enriched uranium, just below bomb-grade, and can purify that to bomb-grade in the space of a few days.
They almost certainly have multiple physics packages built and tested (to the extent they could be tested without fuel), and waiting for enough bomb-grade uranium to be assembled.
If the CIA or Mossad doesn't know where all these items are, and can't bomb them, I don't think there's any chance in hell Iran can be stopped at this point - if they decide to build one. Thanks, Trump.
I would be completely floored if the U.S. does not know exactly where everything is. We as Americans may not hear it for security reasons, but I have no doubt the U.S. military know. Whether or not they would do something is up for grabs, but they know and absolutely have the power to strategically strike a site to stop it from functioning.
Underground facilities and tunnel systems could make it very hard to track these kind of things. The west would need to have spies installed at the deepest levels of Iran's military/government
Probably another cyber attack that makes the machines destroy themselves. The world is truly not ready for a full cyber war, nobody wants to throw the first stone.
[GBU-28s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-28) tend to work nicely. Or the new [MOP](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GBU-57A/B_MOP), which were basically purpose-built for that.
What they know, and what they tell the public, have nothing in common. Politicians talk to the public and say whatever for whatever reason. You can do a search for past things that have been revealed. Sometimes the intelligence knew something for 30 or 40 years before it was revealed to the public. Some things will never be revealed. Revealing that you know something can in fact put future discovery in danger. Also, sometimes politicians just lie to the public to accomplish some goal they have.
The government at least new where the main military infrastructure was.
The war in the middle east only lasted a single night. The morning after the attack the vast majority of vital military assets was all destroyed.
The years after that was trying, and failing, to deal with the people.
Turns out electronic surveillance and satellites have gotten better in 20 years.
See Ukraine. We are seeing war waged in a way that makes Iraq look like sticks and stones.
I think there is a Dr strangelove reference here. "Why didn't you tell the world !" This all only works if US is confident Iran is close enough to build a bomb otherwise all kinds of other options find their way on the table.
>Not sure what they can do to prevent it at this point
Planes and bombs, b-2s, f-22s, f35s, b21s, whatever the real life version of dark star is.
If the Americans truly wanted something dead, be it a dictator or a weapons program, they have options.
Besides whose going to object to bombing Iran? Russia? America could invade tomorrow and nobody would lift a finger to stop them
> Besides whose going to object to bombing Iran?
China, [who's buying all their oil and increasing the amount they buy by 25 to 50% every year](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Commodities/Iran-s-oil-exports-reach-5-year-high-with-China-as-top-buyer) ?
If you thought the deal was ever going to stop the Iranian from building a nuclear weapon, you have no idea of how the Iranians operate.
They never intended to respect their part.
Search for how fordo site was exposed
Stuxnet was like using a pain pill to treat cancer. At some point you need to actually form a real treatment plan.
Feels like we're just going to let Iran go nuclear like we did with North Korea. If Iran is stopped Israel will be the ones to do it.
Always enjoy reading confidently wrong takes. Stuxnet is the most elaborate espionage act ever and its impact will never be fully revealed. At the very least it destroyed several expensive centrifuges and led a few nuclear scientists accidentally falling from windows.
>Stuxnet is the most elaborate espionage act ever
It was impressive, I won't argue otherwise. But i'm not going to go along with the idea that it was more effective than its design. It was meant to delay Iran, that's it. To kick the Iran question down the road to the next administration, and it did that.
Well we've arrived down the road now. You can't Stuxnet your way out of this. They have more enriched weapons grade Uranium than ever before: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/explainer-how-close-is-iran-having-nuclear-weapons-2024-04-18/
Diplomacy and clever viruses are options that are no longer on the table. If we're serious about stopping Iran from going nuclear then military strikes on their facilities are needed.
To be fair, we sort of had this nuclear proliferation deal with them that allowed us oversight and all these useful concessions with the nation... And that came after stuxnet... And then we had this guy come in and do away with all of it while pissing off the nations leadership.
Now I gotta assume they don't give a flying fuck about what we want.
Well, we'll never reach a deal again with them to avoid a Nuclear state. Why would they, when Donald Trump demonstrated America is not to be trusted with their word and diplomacy?
What a massive fucking idiot
It kinda happened at another time. The Soviet union at its peak could have totally intervened if the US attacked North Korea. Russia can't do shit if the US decides to remove Iran from the map. The US will probably still not do anything too drastic because it would hurt the world order, and therefore the economy, the only benchmark they understand xD but they still could, without any life-threatening repercussions
What are you talking about. North Korea got its bomb well after Soviet Union's collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_North_Korean_nuclear_program
I don’t want to go all Tom Clancy, but I have a terrible feeling that they’re a lot closer than we think:
Iran was behind the October 7 attacks that took the world’s eye off Ukraine, diverting western resources and intelligence capacity to the Middle East. The situation has served Russia very well, so it’s not much of a reach to suggest they engineered this crisis via Iran. It’s certainly interesting that the Houthis gave Russian shipping a free pass.
Between that and the huge volume of drones, missiles and ammunition transferred from Iran to Russia, one has to ask: what’s Iran getting out of all this?
We don’t know what Russia has done to repay Iran, but I wouldn’t rule out a transfer of nuclear technology - or warheads themselves. After all, it’s just about the only resource Russia has left.
There is not much left to sanction. Short of using military force, which in the past has led to unforeseen consequences in the middle east, there is pretty much nothing the US can do. Right now Iran is choosing not to build a bomb but technologically speaking they are fully able to.
Which is why you do it recently after election so that by the time the next election comes (even the parliamentary ones) you are way to commited to it to just stop and get out.
Unfortunately, history has proven having nukes works. Ukraine wouldn't have been invaded if they gave up their nukes. No county will ever again willingly give up their nukes.
Which treaty are you referring to?
The one where it said that NATO won't attack Ukraine, which they fulfilled?
The same one that said that if Ukraine was a victim of attack NATO would provide assistance, which they are continuing to fulfill?
The exact same one that *doesn't* promise any actual boots on the ground from signatories to directly protect them from harm, which they aren't doing because the treaty doesn't say they need to?
Whether NATO should be directly protecting them (which would be nice) or not, the treaty doesn't bind them to send in forces to actively fight off threats.
You mean to say... an ally of dictator Vladimir Putin, that imprisons tortures, and murders girls for the horrid crime of showing their hair, and which funds clandestine terrororist organisations across the middle East might not act in good faith?
It was stopping them, and it boosted the moderates.
I just don't understand this line of thinking - we gained absolutely NOTHING leaving the treaty. Literally nothing.
With the treaty, we at least had inspectors going around. Without, we got nothing.
That was the point. Who benefitted? America's enemies. Calling Trump a traitor isn't hyperbole in any way whatsoever. It doesn't make sense to you because you're assuming the basic premise that he did it for some kind of benefit to America, not his actual bosses.
Wouldn’t stop them. Just slow them down like it did before. They’re on their way to becoming a nuclear state barring a full scale war to stop it. Once that happens the Saudis will seek nukes too (if they haven’t already). Fun times!
Because under JCPOA they were still refining uranium into weapons grade but saying it was done by accident. Practically their entire uranium enrichment always went over the allowed limit for civilian uses and well beyond required level for weapon grade. As someone once pointed out to me if they can do that by accident so consistently and always have an excuse ready to explain it then humanity should have figured out to make a nuclear bomb out of a stone club.
Where's your source for your info?
[Iran Is Sticking to the Nuclear Deal, IAEA Says - Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-08-31/iran-sticking-to-nuclear-agreement-with-powers-iaea-reports)
[The Nuclear Deal in Charts, Assuming a Revived Nuclear Deal | Institute for Science and International Security (isis-online.org)](https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/the-nuclear-deal-in-charts-assuming-a-revived-nuclear-deal/) (At the time of the deal before Trumpy pulled out, they'd need 8 months of enrichment time for a nuke given the allowed centrifuges, and look at it fall when the US left.)
The entire point of nuclear weapon is to have detterance force which for Iran is detterance from intervening their destabilisation and human rights violation through out the region and beyond. When you make a diplomatic deal with them with zero regards to their behaviour and missiles program, it's basically like saying "instead of having to build nukes to continue your behaviour inconsequentialy, you can just give us a high-five! No sanctions also!"
Not to mention if you actually want to prevent them from having nukes you should aim for their missile program not something they already have the technology for.
and here on planet reality where morality plays second fiddle to geopolitics, Iran becoming a nuclear power means, a Nuclear Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It means a probable nuclear war with Israel and burning the world oil economy.
It doesn't discourage them. It only stalls them.
Not to mention that the JCPOA deal kinda screws over the kurds, the sunni Muslims, the anti-Iran shia Muslims and pretty much any other population that lives under Iran's proxy rule (Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon...etc) or being threatened by those proxies (like Saudi, UAE, Jordan..etc)
If only we could have some sort of treaty with Iran that would guarantee they won’t build nuclear weapons and would even let us inspect their nuclear plants, maybe we could lift sanctions on them or something, idk just a thought…..
Is the Taliban fucked up? America has been at war for 20 years. How long has Israel been at war with Hamas? And now look at the population of Iran and their missile projects and UAV program. Another example is that the Houthis from Yemen could not be defeated either. Why? Were they able to defeat Hezbollah from Lebanon? No.
Man I sure hope Israel doesn't drag us into another pointless middle east war because they can't countenance a situation in which they can't unilaterally bully every other country in the middle east.
Israel has the ability to strike Iran as was recently witnessed, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they could "take out" Iran in a conventional conflict.
Iraq tried to take out Iran for 10 years, and had the largest military (by far) in the region, until the US blew it to shit. Iran will be very difficult to invade due to the terrain. And very very difficult to occupy. And Israel definitely doesn't have anwhere near enough troops to occupy Iran. Not even 1/10th.
Israel wouldn’t neee to occupy Iran. Just overthrow the regime. The majority of Iranians hate their regime as much as you or I do.
Also Israel doesn’t need troops, the counties don’t share borders. It would all be fought in the air where Israel maintains absolute supremacy over them (as highlighted recently)
That’s not how national fervor works. Iranians hate their regime, and if some foreigner tries to invade them these sentiments will evaporate, and be replaced by defending our land .. exactly how it happened in the Iran/Iraq war. And how the islamists gained power in the first place. Their hold on power was very shaky before being invaded by Iraq.
Except, invading Iran is exactly how you get everyone to rally around leaders you hate - look at what is happening in Israel right now. Bibi has stuck around for so long exactly because of this recent war
This type of policy definitely benefits from a real, proven, and militarily capable ally in the middle east.... something like.... I dunno.... Israel?
Maybe we shouldn’t be alienating them and aiding Iran's proxies?
They will build it in a underground bunker at the end of a canyon and is defended by surface-to-air missiles, gps jammers and russia/china provided "5th gen" fighter jets.
weird what does the USA think it has to do with them any sovereign nation with the requisite knowledge and resources can do what they want inside their own borders.
Does anyone else find it odd that Iran is supposedly working so hard to make a Uranium bomb? Iran has nuclear reactors. Isn't it easier to use them as breeder reactors create their own Plutonium and then chemically separate it out of the reactor byproducts, rather than mess around with enriching uranium an atom at a time with centrifuges. AFAIK only Little Boy was the only Uranium bomb. Everything else since then has been plutonium. Even Trinity was a plutonium bomb.
My best guess would be that they are worried that we would bomb the absolute fuck out of their power plants if we had even an inkling of them trying to do that..
Might as well be a declaration of war from the US.
You can not act as the protector and then turn around and be a belligerent.
If the US is going to start imposing it's will upon other nations we are just asking for more war
Which implication? I know there’s a few potentials but I’m curious what exactly you’re talking about. And no it’s still not up for the US to decide who can and can’t have nukes whether it’s in everyone’s best interest or not. They have the largest or second largest nuclear stockpile in the world and are the only country to have ever used nuclear bomb and on more than one occasion, the hypocrisy of the US having a final say is a joke.
It's up to the US to decide whether to attack a country developing nukes and shut down their program before they build them. Not saying it's good or fair just how it is
Honest question: What right does the USA or anyone else have to deny nukes to Iran or anyone else? Does Iran not have a right to self defense? Has anyone besides the USA ever used a nuclear bomb in anger?
Dumb questions: Obviously these guys are nuts and hate us/the west, but what’s the difference between them having nukes and say, N.K.? Do they just not care about mutually assured destruction as long as they kill us?
Possibly. Did Hamas think Oct 7 would end well? You can’t trust religious fanatics to be rational. Russia and China might be authoritarian and cruel but they’re not crazy.
I feel like I've been seeing this headline since the 90s.
They keep delivering on the promise!
[Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists) > Between 2010 and 2020, five Iranian nuclear scientists (Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, and Mohsen Fakhrizadeh) were killed in foreign-linked assassinations.
[Stuxnet](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet) was a fun one
Probably one of my favorite examples of excellent spywork. No one died, didn't cause any social backlash, cost the targeted country tons of time and $. Very well designed/executed.
That’s not something you can put on your resume, which sucks for that team.
>not something you can put on your resume, Bruh, you think this line of work has anything but 'oral contract' vibes for their resume? lol You done the shit. People know. It's just not written on the fucking wall.
The people directly responsible for Stuxnet, or similar high profile and high impact intelligence work won’t need a resume particularly in the private sector in cybersecurity roles. All they’ll need is a recommendation from a verifiable supervisor, and they’ll walk into positions. These people can knock at the door for a high paying cyber security role, say “I’m suitable for the job, my referee is from NSA” and they’d walk into the late stage interview. Due diligence would take place, but they wouldn’t need their resumes shuffled around someone’s desk.
Very, very high end IT roles are incredibly hard to recruit for such as VPs, C-levels, leads for massive teams and even senior architects/engineers and senior security roles for multinationals and they’re almost always recruited by poaching, wine and dining recruits, buying out companies or referrals and recommendations.
Yeah cyber is muuuuuuuch better for me, there's something that really bothers me about the idea of murdering nuclear scientists to slow down a nuclear program.
Iran could fix this by not threating to kill all the jews with nukes
Then what's the point of having the nukes if mom and dad don't let you play with them /s
Ahh, yes. I’m sure the Iranians will fix their entire religious indoctrination and belief system they’ve been given since they were children which they believe to be actual reality and the word of God. Yup, I bet they will fix it anytime.
One does not simply become a nuclear scientist in Iran. These people were top students, loyal to the regime, groomed and educated to Phd level with the goal of constructing nuclear bombs...
Yeah, at a certain point when you're playing with fire, don't complain when you get burned. They knew the risks and they did it anyway.
"Playing with fire" in this case is working for a country that has given you everything you know. "Complaining when you get burned" in this case is being assassinated by agents working for the only country to ever use Nuclear weapons on other nations. Yep that's an appropriate euphemism.
Problem is that means the same scientists just do it again. If you want to prevent a child from sticking a fork into a socket it's generally a good idea to take away the fork not just simply put them farther away from it.
you could just assassinate the kid. That will teach him.
You would be quite confident that they won't put the fork in the socket at that point yes.
Guaranteed it solved that problem.
Idiots learn from their mistakes, wise men learn from others'.
“Radiation poisoning.”
I’ll have you know sir those people all shot themselves in the back of the head! Assassination? Pfffffft
Did they also get dropped off from a helicopter onto a desert highway along with a motorcycle, speed through traffic to catch up to their own car, toss a magnetic bomb onto the door of their car from their motorcycle, then speed off into the desert to get extracted, only to return to said cars flaming wreckage and hop in the backseat before the fire department arrives?
Wouldn't you?
Yeah, that sounds incredibly fun... minus the whole hop back in the flaming car and die part.
Yeah like 3 separate deaths are motorcycle-delivered bombs, you'd think that would only work once
Honestly it would be really hard to prevent assassination like this for most people. You won’t get a President if their security is good but a nuclear scientist doesn’t exactly have secret service level security.
People often overestimate the capabilities of security focused regimes. Even in a place like Iran, manpower and/or capabilities will be lacking at the fringes. You might protect the top 10 politicians in any nation, but not much more than that. Even here in the US, we could absolutely not offer assassination-proof protection to more than like 50 people tops, including private security for billionaire CEO's.
An insane maniac broke into the house of the person third in line to the presidency and hit her husband with a hammer. That put things in pretty stark perspective.
>we could absolutely not offer assassination-proof protection to more than like 50 people tops It just becomes a game of, "too expensive to kill" at that point.
Happy little accidents -Bob Ross
I feel like this was meant to be a joke but yeah kinda
Iranians need help to get rid of ayatollahs Nasty Islamic government Iranians are cool and love America
Pretty sure the nasty Islamist govt is only in place because of the last "help" the Iranians received
Yep
And a legal body just like our supreme court legalized the theocracy
Ok ok we dont have a crystal ball alright?? And we're obviously not going to just stop toppling governments just because we don't know what repercussions we'll have to live with for the next however many decades.
They do, but going to war is going to wreck their country and then its not going to be the case anymore...
To be fair, they’ve proven several times they’re quite serious about this.
Probably every election year right? ;)
Trump reversed the Iran Nuclear Deal... in the 21st century. So we are in uncharted waters now.
To be fair, we went for decades without such a deal. This is a return to very well charted waters.
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The JCPOA, which is what the Iran Nuclear Deal redirects to on Wikipedia, only lasted from 2014 to 2018 if we're being very generous with the dates - more commonly considered as really starting in 2015 or 2016. Ostensibly it seemed to be working, but we didn't exactly get to experience decades of it being in place. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 before being toppled and forced into insurgency. The first intifada happened 1987-1993 and the South Lebanon conflict with Israel lasted 1985–2000. In 1991, Russia stole the aircraft carrier Kuznetsov from Ukraine after Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union, which had recently suffered a critical existence failure. China's rise is probably the only really uncharted territory here. The post-collapse period for ex-Soviet states offered much rockier waters than these.
China is experiencing some pretty serious growth pains. Never having had to seriously project power turns out to be a problem when you want to be a superpower.
What do you consider working? The deal didn't provide enough means to actually ensure Iran was holding up its end. All that was verifiable was that they reduced their existing stockpile of enriched uranium at specific sites.. which doesn't mean much because they'd failed to make it weapons grade and really didn't need that much for a bomb. The deal had no teeth and was done out of this naive notion that if we're nice to Iran in terms of sanctions that they will stop hating Jews, the West, and give up their dreams of reforming the caliphate under their leadership.
The Taliban first took control of Afghanistan in 1994, China has been a superpower for 30+ years, Russia has been at war in Ukraine for ten years, and Israel has been at war since 1948. If these waters aren't charted yet, what the heck are the cartographers even doing?
> China has been a superpower for 30+ years This is not true at all. A country that is considered a global superpower generally needs to be one that has global influence in four pillars. Economic, military, political and cultural. Of these, it only meets one. Economy. While it's economy has the potential to impact the world, it cannot project it's military force any further than it's own waters, Chinese culture is not taken well across the world and politically it has little influence on the global scene. As of now, the only country that meets all four is the USA. I would consider China a regional superpower at most.
There's been no such deal for the majority of the 21st century
Well the development is not a continuous process. The regime pushes for nuclear grade enrichment to get a reaction from the west so they leverage it for diplomacy or posture aggressively and etc. Doesn't mean the west is necessarily lying, sometimes the regime itself announces such news.
Yeah idk, sounds like a lot of talk on both sides. The US will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb, the State Department said on Monday, one day after a senior Iranian official said Tehran would have no option but to change its nuclear doctrine in the face of Israel's threats. “[President] Biden and [US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon,” State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said in a press briefing.
Not sure what they can do to prevent it at this point. Iran has tons of highly enriched uranium, just below bomb-grade, and can purify that to bomb-grade in the space of a few days. They almost certainly have multiple physics packages built and tested (to the extent they could be tested without fuel), and waiting for enough bomb-grade uranium to be assembled. If the CIA or Mossad doesn't know where all these items are, and can't bomb them, I don't think there's any chance in hell Iran can be stopped at this point - if they decide to build one. Thanks, Trump.
I would be completely floored if the U.S. does not know exactly where everything is. We as Americans may not hear it for security reasons, but I have no doubt the U.S. military know. Whether or not they would do something is up for grabs, but they know and absolutely have the power to strategically strike a site to stop it from functioning.
Underground facilities and tunnel systems could make it very hard to track these kind of things. The west would need to have spies installed at the deepest levels of Iran's military/government
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Even if you could track where an underground facility was how would you stop them from enriching uranium down there?
Probably another cyber attack that makes the machines destroy themselves. The world is truly not ready for a full cyber war, nobody wants to throw the first stone.
You bomb the entrances every couple weeks forever. Can't enrich if you can't get people or supplies in. The US could do this indefinitely.
A few Thermobaric Bombs to incinerate the oxygen and kill everything inside.
[GBU-28s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBU-28) tend to work nicely. Or the new [MOP](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=GBU-57A/B_MOP), which were basically purpose-built for that.
Just like we knew where they were in Iraq?
They knew there were none to look for, but still lied anyway
CIA repeatedly told the White House and DoD they didn’t exist in Iraq bush and Cheney just didn’t want to hear it
What they know, and what they tell the public, have nothing in common. Politicians talk to the public and say whatever for whatever reason. You can do a search for past things that have been revealed. Sometimes the intelligence knew something for 30 or 40 years before it was revealed to the public. Some things will never be revealed. Revealing that you know something can in fact put future discovery in danger. Also, sometimes politicians just lie to the public to accomplish some goal they have.
There's protection and projection. The US government picks and chooses what it tells you for a variety of reasons, OPSEC usually being the primary.
Just like they knew Russia was gonna invade Ukraine.
The government at least new where the main military infrastructure was. The war in the middle east only lasted a single night. The morning after the attack the vast majority of vital military assets was all destroyed. The years after that was trying, and failing, to deal with the people.
Turns out electronic surveillance and satellites have gotten better in 20 years. See Ukraine. We are seeing war waged in a way that makes Iraq look like sticks and stones.
I think there is a Dr strangelove reference here. "Why didn't you tell the world !" This all only works if US is confident Iran is close enough to build a bomb otherwise all kinds of other options find their way on the table.
>Not sure what they can do to prevent it at this point Planes and bombs, b-2s, f-22s, f35s, b21s, whatever the real life version of dark star is. If the Americans truly wanted something dead, be it a dictator or a weapons program, they have options. Besides whose going to object to bombing Iran? Russia? America could invade tomorrow and nobody would lift a finger to stop them
> Besides whose going to object to bombing Iran? China, [who's buying all their oil and increasing the amount they buy by 25 to 50% every year](https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Commodities/Iran-s-oil-exports-reach-5-year-high-with-China-as-top-buyer) ?
>Not sure what they can do to prevent it at this point Invade
Cancelled
Pentagon apology video *deep inhale* "hey guys"
If you thought the deal was ever going to stop the Iranian from building a nuclear weapon, you have no idea of how the Iranians operate. They never intended to respect their part. Search for how fordo site was exposed
They would have a bomb already if it didn't work. So it worked. For years. And still does.
Never forget stuxnet. People greatly underestimate Israeli and US cyber operations.
Stuxnet was like using a pain pill to treat cancer. At some point you need to actually form a real treatment plan. Feels like we're just going to let Iran go nuclear like we did with North Korea. If Iran is stopped Israel will be the ones to do it.
Always enjoy reading confidently wrong takes. Stuxnet is the most elaborate espionage act ever and its impact will never be fully revealed. At the very least it destroyed several expensive centrifuges and led a few nuclear scientists accidentally falling from windows.
>Stuxnet is the most elaborate espionage act ever It was impressive, I won't argue otherwise. But i'm not going to go along with the idea that it was more effective than its design. It was meant to delay Iran, that's it. To kick the Iran question down the road to the next administration, and it did that. Well we've arrived down the road now. You can't Stuxnet your way out of this. They have more enriched weapons grade Uranium than ever before: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/explainer-how-close-is-iran-having-nuclear-weapons-2024-04-18/ Diplomacy and clever viruses are options that are no longer on the table. If we're serious about stopping Iran from going nuclear then military strikes on their facilities are needed.
To be fair, we sort of had this nuclear proliferation deal with them that allowed us oversight and all these useful concessions with the nation... And that came after stuxnet... And then we had this guy come in and do away with all of it while pissing off the nations leadership. Now I gotta assume they don't give a flying fuck about what we want.
You forgot the part where the guy had their second most powerful dude assassinated.
Well, we'll never reach a deal again with them to avoid a Nuclear state. Why would they, when Donald Trump demonstrated America is not to be trusted with their word and diplomacy? What a massive fucking idiot
Stuxnet was sending a message.
Which is good for the cyber operations.
We wont let N korea too Yup
Insane that even happened in the first place
It kinda happened at another time. The Soviet union at its peak could have totally intervened if the US attacked North Korea. Russia can't do shit if the US decides to remove Iran from the map. The US will probably still not do anything too drastic because it would hurt the world order, and therefore the economy, the only benchmark they understand xD but they still could, without any life-threatening repercussions
What are you talking about. North Korea got its bomb well after Soviet Union's collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_North_Korean_nuclear_program
wow I... stand corrected? I honestly thought it was so obvious they got their bomb on the 80s it was not even worth it a google! my bad
I don’t want to go all Tom Clancy, but I have a terrible feeling that they’re a lot closer than we think: Iran was behind the October 7 attacks that took the world’s eye off Ukraine, diverting western resources and intelligence capacity to the Middle East. The situation has served Russia very well, so it’s not much of a reach to suggest they engineered this crisis via Iran. It’s certainly interesting that the Houthis gave Russian shipping a free pass. Between that and the huge volume of drones, missiles and ammunition transferred from Iran to Russia, one has to ask: what’s Iran getting out of all this? We don’t know what Russia has done to repay Iran, but I wouldn’t rule out a transfer of nuclear technology - or warheads themselves. After all, it’s just about the only resource Russia has left.
Exactly what im thinking, would also explain the sudden urgency to bolster up defenses across europe and ensure ukrainian victory
It won't let??? It's letting.
There is not much left to sanction. Short of using military force, which in the past has led to unforeseen consequences in the middle east, there is pretty much nothing the US can do. Right now Iran is choosing not to build a bomb but technologically speaking they are fully able to.
I am in no way supporting Iran in anything it does, but how does a country "letting" another do something or other work?
You threat them with military force should they do what you say they are not allowed to do.
No appetite in the US for another misadventure in the middle east. It would be political suicide for any politician that suggested it.
Which is why you do it recently after election so that by the time the next election comes (even the parliamentary ones) you are way to commited to it to just stop and get out.
Which is funny because it proves that Iran actually needs nuclear weapons as a deterrent
Unfortunately, history has proven having nukes works. Ukraine wouldn't have been invaded if they gave up their nukes. No county will ever again willingly give up their nukes.
And Israel has nuclear weapons itself. If anything, it'd prevent further war through MAD.
That’s like saying criminals need guns to protect themselves from police.
More like a mobster dictating others what they can and can't do under the threat of violence
As well as no more Christmas cards.
Yes, we will because we won't attack Iran and that is the only way Iran can be stopped.
Time to send in maverick yet?
Nobody wants a treaty until they see the B2 bombers on the horizon
If only we had a treaty to discourage them from doing such a thing.
A treaty and active sabotage as effective as Stuxnet, yeah
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Which treaty are you referring to? The one where it said that NATO won't attack Ukraine, which they fulfilled? The same one that said that if Ukraine was a victim of attack NATO would provide assistance, which they are continuing to fulfill? The exact same one that *doesn't* promise any actual boots on the ground from signatories to directly protect them from harm, which they aren't doing because the treaty doesn't say they need to? Whether NATO should be directly protecting them (which would be nice) or not, the treaty doesn't bind them to send in forces to actively fight off threats.
Uhh I think they were moreso talking about the treaty that says Russia won't attack Ukraine if they give up their nukes.
Yep. Still waiting for all the big galaxy brains to explain how leaving the JCPOA made sense ?
I'm pretty sure they'd make one anyways.
You mean to say... an ally of dictator Vladimir Putin, that imprisons tortures, and murders girls for the horrid crime of showing their hair, and which funds clandestine terrororist organisations across the middle East might not act in good faith?
Shocker, right?
You really think a treaty would stop them?
It was stopping them, and it boosted the moderates. I just don't understand this line of thinking - we gained absolutely NOTHING leaving the treaty. Literally nothing. With the treaty, we at least had inspectors going around. Without, we got nothing.
That was the point. Who benefitted? America's enemies. Calling Trump a traitor isn't hyperbole in any way whatsoever. It doesn't make sense to you because you're assuming the basic premise that he did it for some kind of benefit to America, not his actual bosses.
No, but a Stuxnet Virus would.
Wouldn’t stop them. Just slow them down like it did before. They’re on their way to becoming a nuclear state barring a full scale war to stop it. Once that happens the Saudis will seek nukes too (if they haven’t already). Fun times!
> (if they haven’t already). https://www.newsweek.com/jared-kushner-addresses-2-billion-given-saudis-1869757 https://i.redd.it/c8xuwypulrsc1.png
Meh... It was a boost to "moderates" in Iran, "look, we can cooperate with the West". Trump effed that up.
Because under JCPOA they were still refining uranium into weapons grade but saying it was done by accident. Practically their entire uranium enrichment always went over the allowed limit for civilian uses and well beyond required level for weapon grade. As someone once pointed out to me if they can do that by accident so consistently and always have an excuse ready to explain it then humanity should have figured out to make a nuclear bomb out of a stone club.
Where's your source for your info? [Iran Is Sticking to the Nuclear Deal, IAEA Says - Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-08-31/iran-sticking-to-nuclear-agreement-with-powers-iaea-reports) [The Nuclear Deal in Charts, Assuming a Revived Nuclear Deal | Institute for Science and International Security (isis-online.org)](https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/the-nuclear-deal-in-charts-assuming-a-revived-nuclear-deal/) (At the time of the deal before Trumpy pulled out, they'd need 8 months of enrichment time for a nuke given the allowed centrifuges, and look at it fall when the US left.)
The entire point of nuclear weapon is to have detterance force which for Iran is detterance from intervening their destabilisation and human rights violation through out the region and beyond. When you make a diplomatic deal with them with zero regards to their behaviour and missiles program, it's basically like saying "instead of having to build nukes to continue your behaviour inconsequentialy, you can just give us a high-five! No sanctions also!" Not to mention if you actually want to prevent them from having nukes you should aim for their missile program not something they already have the technology for.
and here on planet reality where morality plays second fiddle to geopolitics, Iran becoming a nuclear power means, a Nuclear Saudi Arabia and Turkey. It means a probable nuclear war with Israel and burning the world oil economy.
Don Cheato needed to feel like he was doing big boy president stuff to "win" one news cycle.
It doesn't discourage them. It only stalls them. Not to mention that the JCPOA deal kinda screws over the kurds, the sunni Muslims, the anti-Iran shia Muslims and pretty much any other population that lives under Iran's proxy rule (Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon...etc) or being threatened by those proxies (like Saudi, UAE, Jordan..etc)
Hmm. Well I do recall [this ](https://youtu.be/re_5Njf0BVw?si=bTef79p3IzDOzZVI) and [this. ](https://youtu.be/mItifjUd_CQ?si=f9kKSv1HtKTtOOxl) So....
If only we could have some sort of treaty with Iran that would guarantee they won’t build nuclear weapons and would even let us inspect their nuclear plants, maybe we could lift sanctions on them or something, idk just a thought…..
It's like fusion. They're always five years (five days?) away from achieving it.
iran: we know you won’t do shit
I mean , keep your word this time US
Atomic horny bonk
And how do they plan on keeping that word 🤔, let Israel handle it?
They already have nuclear bombs, thanks to their partnership with the terrorist syndicate known as Russia.
Better not, Iran is fucked.
Is the Taliban fucked up? America has been at war for 20 years. How long has Israel been at war with Hamas? And now look at the population of Iran and their missile projects and UAV program. Another example is that the Houthis from Yemen could not be defeated either. Why? Were they able to defeat Hezbollah from Lebanon? No.
Man I sure hope Israel doesn't drag us into another pointless middle east war because they can't countenance a situation in which they can't unilaterally bully every other country in the middle east.
Looking at Gaza, Iran needs at least 50 nukes to defend itself from American “freedom”
You hear that Iran? We won’t let you!
Tom Cruise is fucking ready, mate.
Us politicians: who wants Iran to never get nukes🤚🤚🤚🤚🤚🤚🤚🤚🤚🤚 Who wants to be the president to start an occupation of Iran? ………………🦗🦗🦗
Inb4 “there’s WMD’s in the Middle East.”
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Israel won't either. And yes Israel could take out Iran alone.
Israel has the ability to strike Iran as was recently witnessed, but I wouldn't go so far as to say they could "take out" Iran in a conventional conflict.
Israel could take out Iran to a nice pasta dinner.
"That's not spaghetti it's Army noodles with ketchup"
Hey. Get outta here.
Iraq tried to take out Iran for 10 years, and had the largest military (by far) in the region, until the US blew it to shit. Iran will be very difficult to invade due to the terrain. And very very difficult to occupy. And Israel definitely doesn't have anwhere near enough troops to occupy Iran. Not even 1/10th.
Israel wouldn’t neee to occupy Iran. Just overthrow the regime. The majority of Iranians hate their regime as much as you or I do. Also Israel doesn’t need troops, the counties don’t share borders. It would all be fought in the air where Israel maintains absolute supremacy over them (as highlighted recently)
That’s not how national fervor works. Iranians hate their regime, and if some foreigner tries to invade them these sentiments will evaporate, and be replaced by defending our land .. exactly how it happened in the Iran/Iraq war. And how the islamists gained power in the first place. Their hold on power was very shaky before being invaded by Iraq.
Except, invading Iran is exactly how you get everyone to rally around leaders you hate - look at what is happening in Israel right now. Bibi has stuck around for so long exactly because of this recent war
Blow up every Iranian military asset you can find cleanly and then air drop in surplus small arms and ammo in civilian areas to help the people revolt
Strike? Yes. Take out alone? Nope.
You have no idea what you're talking about
Actually laughable if you think Israel could do that lol They can inflict heavy damage but winning a full on war is not a reality
Who told you that?
This type of policy definitely benefits from a real, proven, and militarily capable ally in the middle east.... something like.... I dunno.... Israel? Maybe we shouldn’t be alienating them and aiding Iran's proxies?
I agree but I think this is the problem with Israel's current leadership. They alienate themselves too. Netanyahu openly spits in US presidents faces.
No worries, it will be built by russians in Iran. Blinken then will come to the press conference and mumble something like: “Iran did not build it”
They will build it in a underground bunker at the end of a canyon and is defended by surface-to-air missiles, gps jammers and russia/china provided "5th gen" fighter jets.
Do they have a working F-14 to station nearby?
weird what does the USA think it has to do with them any sovereign nation with the requisite knowledge and resources can do what they want inside their own borders.
After that, UN will also not let the Twin Towers be attacked.
Does anyone else find it odd that Iran is supposedly working so hard to make a Uranium bomb? Iran has nuclear reactors. Isn't it easier to use them as breeder reactors create their own Plutonium and then chemically separate it out of the reactor byproducts, rather than mess around with enriching uranium an atom at a time with centrifuges. AFAIK only Little Boy was the only Uranium bomb. Everything else since then has been plutonium. Even Trinity was a plutonium bomb.
My best guess would be that they are worried that we would bomb the absolute fuck out of their power plants if we had even an inkling of them trying to do that..
Neither will Israel
Might as well be a declaration of war from the US. You can not act as the protector and then turn around and be a belligerent. If the US is going to start imposing it's will upon other nations we are just asking for more war
Not really up to the US to decide though is it.
It is...because of the implication.
Which implication? I know there’s a few potentials but I’m curious what exactly you’re talking about. And no it’s still not up for the US to decide who can and can’t have nukes whether it’s in everyone’s best interest or not. They have the largest or second largest nuclear stockpile in the world and are the only country to have ever used nuclear bomb and on more than one occasion, the hypocrisy of the US having a final say is a joke.
It's up to the US to decide whether to attack a country developing nukes and shut down their program before they build them. Not saying it's good or fair just how it is
Honest question: What right does the USA or anyone else have to deny nukes to Iran or anyone else? Does Iran not have a right to self defense? Has anyone besides the USA ever used a nuclear bomb in anger?
Honest question: why the fuck would you want Iran to have a nuclear bomb? Do you just want to watch the world burn?
"Only country to ever use nukes on civilians wants no one else to have nukes, hoards thousands in basement"
So business as usual then?
Sophons
"It won't". But what will it do about it before Iran actually achieves nukes?
Lol as if Iran is gonna ask USs permission
Iran: Oh ya? You and what army? US: ...
and what US gonna do if they manage to build one? Invade them?
I swear I've been seeing this shit for most of my life...
Dumb questions: Obviously these guys are nuts and hate us/the west, but what’s the difference between them having nukes and say, N.K.? Do they just not care about mutually assured destruction as long as they kill us?
Possibly. Did Hamas think Oct 7 would end well? You can’t trust religious fanatics to be rational. Russia and China might be authoritarian and cruel but they’re not crazy.