Yves here. Even though Rob Urie is correct to be very worried about the potential for nuclear escalation, he makes a key assumption which I believe leads him to considerably over-estimate the odds of the US (or its Israel attack dog) resorting quickly if at all to that option. Of course, we are led by recklessly stupid people who think using a “tactical” nuke is no biggie.
Yes, it seems to be true that the US cannot destroy all or even most of Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, underground missile caches and launch silo, and underground factories. Ted Postol has come to the same conclusion as Scott Ritter, cited below.
However, destruction of these facilities is not an objective but a pretext. The objective is regime change. If the Collective West succeeds in that aim, it can simply have its pet new government give access to all these bunkers and let the new masters decide what to do about them.
Indeed, there is a very big argument against destroying these bunkers, even if we could. Iran has a lot of missiles, including hypersonic missiles, a type of weapon the West has yet to put into production. The Collective West is extremely short of missiles. What better way to replenish our kit for the purpose of Project Ukraine and Project Get China than take a big cache from Iran? Recall (and I do not know by what process) that a lot of Syria’s weapons allegedly made their way to Ukraine.
So I am sticking with my early bet: that the real plan is to pound Tehran, as Israel did with Beirut. It was the toll on civilian life and infrastructure that led Hezbollah to back off on its campaign in support of Palestinians. Sure, the US and Israel will also pound on Natanz, Fordow and Isfahan. Even if the Israel plus its NATO friends could destroy them, that would not achieve regime change. Failure to do what is deemed to be sufficient damage could thus justify further attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.
Another factor to consider in the immediate trajectory is that Western outlets are admitting that Israel is taking body blows from Iran, such as the very-pro Israel Telegraph three days ago in Iran’s high-tech onslaught punches deadly holes in Israel’s air defences. The Washington Post has said that Israel will only be able to intercept Iranian missiles for another 10 to 12 days, not that it is doing all so well even now.
One would think that the evidence that the war has not gone according to US and Israel plans would lead to quick US entry, and not just quick US threat display.
However, US/Israeli self-serving propaganda is leading to official belief in a variant of a familiar narrative, “Iran is just about to run out of missiles. From Larry Johnson:
I am reliably informed by someone with access that Trump and his team believe, based on Israeli intelligence, that Iran is running low on missiles and will soon exhaust their supply. This is utter nonsense. Iran has been building and stockpiling missiles for more than twenty years. These missiles are stored safely underground, out of the reach of Israeli and US bombs.
In other words, the US is likely to be overconfident yet again over what it can achieve via conventional means. I suspect we’ll have to see the US and Israel encounter more cold doses of reality before they decide whether to go the nuclear route.
And a not-quite-as-fast-as-some-fear escalation path increases the odds of Iran play the “closing the Strait of Hormuz” card, which might get Mr. Market to knock some sense into Trump’s head.
By Rob Urie, author of Zen Economics, artist, and musician who publishes The Journal of Belligerent Pontification on Substack
As this essay is being written, military supply ships, aircraft carriers, and refueling aircraft are being sent by the US to West Asia as the US appears ready to formally enter the war that it started with Iran. With nuclear weapons being the only option left for busting Iran’s bunkers (details below), their ‘pragmatic’ use for bunker busting would cross every nuclear red-line that an increasingly resistant world has put forward. Once the nuclear line is crossed, it is a matter of days or weeks until human life on the planet ends. The escalation logic is inexorable.
Despite press assurances in the West that the attack on Iran is an Israeli affair, the fingerprints of the US can be found all over the plot. As the initial attack was ongoing, the US Navy attempted to shoot down Iranian missiles as Iraq, under the control of the US, closed its airspace to Iranian fighter jets. Donald Trump’s claim that ‘he knew everything’ is because the US is uniquely responsible for the attack. At this point, claims that ‘it was Israel’ are quaint.
Graph: Over recent decades, Israel has been the largest recipient of US foreign aid by a significant measure, with most of it aid being used to buy weapons and materiel. Lest this remains a mystery, the US gives Israel money to buy weapons from the US, and Israel does so. In other words, the US launders payments to private military producers by running them through Isreal. Source: Council on Foreign Relations.
Scott Ritter offered that the US has already deployed its largest conventional bunker buster, the thirty-ton air-fuel bomb, which failed in Yemen against less deeply buried bunkers. This leaves the US with nuclear weapons as the only escalatory step available. However, nuclear weapons represent a boundary which once crossed, can’t be uncrossed. The Russians have promised no first strike. But they have also warned that once the boundary is crossed, they will respond in kind.
Remarkably, the list of nations in West Asia that have been unilaterally attacked by the US since 2003 matches both the list of nations in line for US regime change operations leaked by retired US General Wesley Clark in 2003, as well as most of the nations that form the Zionist fantasy of Greater Israel. Given that Donald Trump was not in the government in 2003, the current US policy was set in motion twenty-two years ago.
This last point requires further explanation. The reason why Donald Trump’s foreign policy so closely resembles Joe Biden’s foreign policy is because presidents don’t decide US foreign policy. Consider, the attacks on both Iran and Russia were conceived and put into action at some time prior to the present. The scuttlebutt in the establishment press keeps landing on eighteen months ago. Joe Biden was president eighteen months ago, not Trump.
Logically, the Western attack on Iran required 1) a will to attack and 2) the capacity to attack. Neither alone would motivate the act. Will without capacity lacks capacity. And capacity without will lacks will. Israel possesses will but not capacity. And the US supplies the capacity with full understanding of what it will be used for. This makes the US a participant in Israel’s actions. American prosecutors regularly prosecute those who provide criminals with the weapons they use in their crimes.
Ominously, it was the US that cancelled the sixth meeting between the West and Russia to discuss peace in Ukraine. The cancellation followed a reported enthusiastic phone call from V. Putin to Donald Trump. Mr. Putin undoubtedly detected a mismatch between what Mr. Trump is saying and the facts as they can be determined. More to the point, the Western effort to assassinate Mr. Putin while attacking Russian nuclear assets looks very much like the current Western effort to decapitate the Iranian regime with its attack on Iran.
Despite the tone of the phone exchange, Mr. Putin is reported to have offered to mediate between Israel and Iran, and Mr. Trump is reported to have been open to the suggestion. That this is taking place as the US is moving military personnel and equipment into place in what is increasingly looking like the launch of an American war across West Asia, suggests that Mr. Trump is saying one thing while doing another.
According to the informed speculation in the US, the initial attack on Iran was intended to produce a result akin to the dissolution of Syria. Decapitation strikes were supposed to break Iran’s will to fight as US bombs destroyed what is alleged to be Iran’s ‘nuclear program.’ With the decapitation effort ongoing, the West hasn’t yet been thwarted. But Iranian missiles landing in Tel Aviv wasn’t supposed to happen. As it currently stands, Iran can land hypersonic missiles inside Israel at will.
The pretense that Donald Trump is being sandbagged by neocons into prosecuting wars that he doesn’t want is wearing thin. His ‘tweets,’ or whatever one calls the technology this week, that proclaimed his role in the airstrikes launched against Iran, suggest that he is in junior high school, a boy, likely American, and is desperate for recognition from his fellow humans. What they didn’t suggest is that he understands the power that he wields to destroy human existence.
Where this lands with respect to Iran is that Russia has lots of business with Iran, it has a soft defense agreement with Iran, and unless the Russians have suddenly ‘gone American,’ Russia understands that the US is coming for Russia if it (US) prevails in Iran. Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he is a willing foot soldier in the Western imperial project. The strategic inflexibility that this program implies will end the world.
To the US – Israeli claim that Iran must end its nuclear weapons program, the US intelligence services have repeatedly stated that such a program does not exist, Meanwhile, Israel is known to possess 75 – 300 nuclear weapons that have never been declared, and are therefore illegal. The point is that the US has no ideological or moral qualms regarding the possession of nuclear weapons. Differences emerge over who it is that possesses them.
With the wars in Ukraine and West Asia now merging, the economic basis of the conflict is being revealed. The US is trying to destroy BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Iran joined BRICS in 2024, and isn’t represented in the acronym. Three of the BRICS nations possess nuclear weapons— Russia, India and China. An economic bloc (BRICS is a soft bloc) that possesses nuclear weapons makes it a geopolitical bloc.
Ritter also identified a complication in the Iranian predicament when he pointed out that Iran’s policy of near-enrichment violated thresholds that the US will not tolerate. However, under existing nuclear agreements, Iran appears to be within its rights to possess the enrichment program that the US is objecting to. Nevertheless, and despite the fact that Iranian negotiators had already agreed to the Western level of enrichment, US proxy Israel attacked Iran without warning or provocation.
Ritter’s point is important. But given that Iran is already in compliance under existing agreements, it devolves to might makes right, which is an operational principle, not a legal principle. With Israel’s illegal cache of undeclared nuclear weapons, the US conspicuously couldn’t care less about nuclear proliferation, else its primary target would be Israel. With might-makes-right as its operating principle, the rest of the world can comply with the US or destroy the US. What it cannot do is to negotiate for peace.
In history, the first time that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran would have a nuclear weapon ‘within a matter of days’ was thirty years ago. He has been wrong for thirty years. All of the US intelligence services agree that Iran 1) has no nuclear weapon and that 2) Iran has no program to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Netanyahu, like Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine, is in power because of his skill at doing the bidding of the US. In the present case, he is simply lying.
Ugly American Lindsey Graham, with 82 of his ugly American brethren and sistren in tow, Senators all, is now demanding the complete destruction of Iran. Why? Iran has no nuclear weapons and it has no nuclear weapons development program. If Mr. Graham truly disagrees, why doesn’t he hash this out with the intelligence agencies? Between them, the bet here is that the intelligence agencies have collected and considered the evidence, whereas Mr. Graham hasn’t.
For those who recall George W. Bush’s ‘Iraq WMD’ fraud, this is well-trodden territory. Mr. Trump’s innovation is to forgo seeking cover from the difficult-to-pin-down ‘international community.’ Implied is that the North – South divide has redefined the relevant boundaries. In attacking Iran, and through it, BRICS, the Western pretense of fealty to ‘the rules-based order’ has given way to the West being the premier rogue international actor.
With the CIA the likely lead in the permanent government’s move to accelerate WWIII in West Asia, Donald Trump seems to have made his peace with the agency. For the American people, this is truly unfortunate. While he revoked security clearances for the rogue elements who directly interfered with his 2020 electoral prospects, he left the operational core unmolested. This is why Genocide Joe is followed by Genocide Don. Carnival barkers for empire, all.
That the tactic of using military drones that had been hidden in anticipation of future use took place mere weeks apart in both Russia and Iran, considered in conjunction with decapitation efforts against both regimes, suggests that a singular geopolitical strategy / actor unites the efforts. That Russia has had an agreement with Iran to build between two and eight nuclear reactors for civilian nuclear purposes complicates the geopolitics.
Image: Donald Trump and Miriam Adelson. Ms. Adelson contributed $150 million to Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign in return for favorable treatment of Israel. Debate has raged over whether Trump would honor the commitment. The answer is in. With military equipment being rushed to West Asia, the Zionist genocide remains intact. To be clear, this refers to genocide by Zionists, not genocide against Zionists. Photo source: Middle East Eye.
Donald Trump’s subterfuge by publicly pronouncing ongoing negotiations with Iran as preparations for attacking it were underway will likely turn out to have been too-clever-by-half. The race in future negotiations with the US will be over which party screws the other first. The logical end of this, where communication becomes a matter of competing lie-bots. is particularly unconstructive given the prevalence of nuclear weapons. The limited utility of fake negotiations— they only work once, suggests that maybe real negotiations would have been the better strategy.
That Miriam Adelson paid Donald Trump $100 million to attack Iran, and that Mr. Trump is dutifully doing so, illuminates a brave new way-of-doing-business for the US. Joe Biden performed this same service for only about 4% ($4 million in campaign contributions) of Mr. Trump’s take. Possibly the US wishes to set up a ‘marketplace’ for launching wars for foreign interests. This could be DEI for politicians, bringing equity to the commission of genocide.
As unpleasant as doing so may be under the circumstances, the point must once again be made that Donald Trump’s actions with respect to Israel and Iran date to decisions made by the permanent government of the US in the 1990s – early 2000s. While it would be heartwarming to imagine that Adelson wasted her money on a deal that had already been made, Donald Trump either was never in on the deal, or he lied to his MAGA devotees about wanting peace.
With little ability to affect US foreign policy in the near term, the American people have some decisions to make. Donald Trump and his advisors have been astonishingly reckless with respect to nuclear weapons to date. The Western attack on Russian nuclear assets would have ended humanity were Russia guided by less steady hands. Should Trump use nukes in Iran, no human will get a good night’s sleep for the remainder of human existence.
There is no electoral solution to the problem of Trump, just as there was no electoral solution to the problem of Biden. The permanent government in the US is impervious to electoral outcomes. Donald Trump may have imagined that by firing Federal workers through DOGE, the permanent government would be diminished. But the workers he fired weren’t, with a few exceptions, making policy. The result is that Trump is acting the puppet while believing himself to be the puppeteer.
If they care about living for more than the next few hours, Mr. Trump’s foreign policy handlers should warn him against using nuclear weapons in Iran. While in his lizard brain, Trump may believe that using nuclear weapons will increase the size of his penis (peace through strength) , what doing so would in fact accomplish is to turn it into stardust. Everyone who controls nuclear weapons has the same power that Trump has. Why we need to learn this lesson the hard way is a bit of a mystery.
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I just wonder if this war with Iran is Trump’s attempt to secure a legacy. Peace negotiations in Ukraine aren’t proceeding as quickly expected, and tariffs alone won’t onshore industry to America. So maybe fixing the issue with regime change in Iran is something Trump wants to be remembered for.
Most of the “Non White World” is hoping for “US Regime Change”.
Something to think about .
Not just the non-white world.
That deranged message from Huckabee was the tell. Trump desperately wants a Democratic party-esque smart war or something like the first three weeks of Iraq. He is ranting about awesome power, and yeah, the ability to send missiles and destroy a building hundreds of kilometers away is the power of the gods. Iran can do that too. Then he has surrounded himself with baubles of past glory. He desperately wants to be a statue on horseback eating a big mac.
Besides legacy, he’s running into the flaw all deeply orientalist institutions have. They can’t see the other as equal or comprehend when they reach near peer status. My gut is the Pentagon who would be blamed first is the only institutional opposition.
Trump’s big plan is to build a business empire throughout the ME for himself and his sons and son in law. For this he needs a friendly and functioning Israel (to give him depopulated Gaza) and a cowed and theoretically friendly Arab world. It’s all grotesquely amoral and what I find astonishing is that he is allowed to start phone companies and other money making pitches while serving as president. The corruption is so utterly up front.
The fact that nobody seems to be objecting to this no doubt reflects the corruption of our ruling class in general. Cue Michael Hudson.
No healthy society could make someone like Trump president and the fact that he is in this position is likely is due to his opponents, the Dems, also being a party of grifters at this point. The frog is boiled.
Attacking Iran will fail and the longer it goes on the less there will be left of an Israel to support. Whereas if he simply told Israel to stop then the Iranians would stop as well. This war has already been lost. Someone should tell Trump.
I call it war porn. The over machismo that we are all powerful and other countries will quake in their boots seeing our manhood. According to our propagandists we have superior weapons of all stripes (we know in reality we have defective, poorly performing, over-priced machines designed to fight two wars ago), we claim to have superior intelligence on everything (other than we basically keep getting everything wrong). The MSM is telling us, because they’re supposed to, that the Irani government is ready to collapse.
Based on all this, I can’t tell you how many people I know are living in a altered reality that if we drop one bunker busting bomb Iran’s nuclear program is effectively done and a pro-US government will magically appear. Have they learned no lessons.
What in some ways confuses me, or makes me wonder, is what the Saudis are saying to Trump? They must be aware that Iran as a nuisance is way better than utter chaos.
Violence porn pervades Hollywood. Not just with the “romance” of war, but with the “romance” of justice. The detectives always get the bad guys, and those they miss get nabbed by the courts. Cops, courts and cages are how to handle all aberrant behavior, even domestically.
How much crime do police actually solve? In 2022, California police solved 13.2% of crimes reported. So cops are horrible at catching criminals. Yet, as US population increased 42% (1982 – 2017) spending on policing increased 187%. As the Firesign Theater sings: “We’re bringing the war back home.”
This is why the US incarcerates at 4 – 5 times the world’s per-capita average, 6-7 times the French and Canadians’ per-capita incarceration. So…is French and Canadian crime much worse than US crime? Nope. Their crime rates are lower. One significant difference: the US has more than a half million medical bankruptcies annually. France and Canada have single-payer healthcare.
There is some comfort to be had sleep-walking through life, entertained by the various pornographies, and the more pain inflicted by public policy, the more it’s tempting to doze off. But closing one’s eyes and stopping up one’s ears is not a winning life strategy. It’s not even a good strategy for crossing the living room without bumping into the furniture.
Very good.
Totally irrational policy.
The only way to reverse this is in the UK, France and the USA, not Iran etc.
Time to pierce the Proxy Veil?
Yves. S: And a not-quite-as-fast-as-some-fear escalation path increases the odds of Iran play the “closing the Strait of Hormuz” card, which might get Mr. Market to knock some sense into Trump’s head.
Which of course is precisely the argument that those advisers who are competing to take the most extreme position on crushing Tehran (and other enemies of the West) and winning this war now will be using on Trump and other pols to advocate for a nuclear strike/strikes against Iran ASAP to settle things.
That said, I’d guess the odds favor the scenario where, as you say, the US/Israel don’t escalate to nukes quickly.
But then again, I’m an optimist, and these are astonishingly stupid people, and psychopaths/seekers of power are, anyway, usually short-term thinkers by definition.
There’s another form of thinking, transhistorical/theological, that needs to be included. Bibi’s framing of genocide as a war against the Amalek works to put him and his followers in company with the Zionist greats of thousands of years ago. Apologies to Fidel, who was not at all of this stripe, but Bibi’s version of “History will absolve me” allows his actions to be validated within a very concrete fantasy in which he becomes quite a hero.
As I bring up here from time to time, this kind of omnipotent thinking involves a regression to the cognitive functioning of small children. It isn’t just a fantasy that’s cordoned off from regular thinking, like thoughts about vacation that are sequestered from the daily grind. It tends to take over corruptively, in part because the omnipotent stance entails so much imagined and real damage to others that the omnipotent thinker has to cut themselves off from reality. It becomes “weakening” to think of the damage — guilt and shame start to get going and second thoughts arise. And so to top things off reality-oriented advice appears threatening. Bibi’s genocidal actions, the realization of a political project imbued with irredentist theology, mean he is caught up in these dynamics full time.
Given Trump’s stupidity and recklessness, and the fact that Dr. Strangelove lives on at the heart of the US deep state, this bleak assessment of the prospects for our immediate future is all too plausible, as Ritter and others have warned, Yves’s hopeful assumptions of rationality on our part aside. It was dumb luck we avoided all-out nuclear war in 1962, when we had leaders with a measure of sanity on both sides. All the sane and intelligent leaders are on the other side now. Once we take our nuclear genie out of the bottle, there may be no going back, as up the escalation ladder we go. It will give new meaning to Trump’s “winning”. Pity there will be so few outside the bunkers to share in the triumph.
Well, back in 2016 he did say we’d get tired of winning: perhaps this is what he meant.
This statement seems to dangle the possibility of decisions on the part of average US citizens that does not exist. To wit,
I agree completely with Rob’s assessment of the situation as it has developed, so to my limited understanding there is no political solution to this deep-seated problem. We cannot vote our way out of it. There was zero recognition by the state of the largest nation-wide demonstration in history (from what I’ve read) — a total vote of non-confidence — but perhaps it is naïve to have expected one. The house of government itself is rotten, a host almost completely consumed by a parasitic organism. The infected ‘deep state’ and its funders will likely respond violently to any attempts at extirpation. So what do we do? A national strike? What other strategies are available? I hope I’m not violating NC site policies by asking these types of open-ended questions (for which I have no answers), but I have a real sense of doom here.
I don’t think that asking these open-ended questions is a violation of the site’s policies, it’s answering those same questions that pose the problem. The trend in the country is to keep your opinions to yourself. The ruling class, and NC is not in any way a member of that class, wants you to keep your mouth shut and your mind empty. To find an appropriate way to resist that clampdown is open to all of us, and needs to be practiced. Find your niche.
I’m not sure that regime change and the end of Iran’s nuclear programme are separate objectives: indeed, one can be seen as a by-product of the other. I think it’s clear that two things are true for Iran, (1) it has the capability to move relatively quickly to an operational nuclear capability but (2) it has not yet made a decision to do so. This puts Iran in the same category as about half-a-dozen other states in the world that have a dormant nuclear capability. For Israel and the US, an Iran which was bloodied and humbled and gave up its nuclear programme would be the best outcome, and certainly better than an inconclusive war with tremendous destruction on both sides that might or might not physically destroy the components of the programme. This could well leave something similar to the current regime in control, but no longer with nuclear aspirations.
This may be what the Israelis are trying to do though obviously destroying actual components of the programme or bringing down the regime would be welcome if either could be accomplished. I suspect that they have drawn the wrong conclusions from the defeat of Hezbollah. With Hezbollah they managed to win not by wiping out its forces (it still has sizeable forces available) nor by destroying most of its arsenal, but by destroying its command and control system and killing large numbers of key leaders and commanders. The knowledge that this could only have been done if the organisation were thoroughly penetrated by the Israelis was another body-blow. Then Hezbollah threw in the towel and stopped bombarding Israel. In addition, non-Shia Lebanese opinion was highly critical of Hezbollah for drafting the country into an unnecessary war at the behest of Iran (which forbad Hezbollah to use its most advanced weaponry), and the Shia community itself was angry because it had borne the brunt of the destruction, especially in the South. (Beirut, in fact, was largely untouched;: I was there a couple of weeks after the bombing, and the damage in the Shia suburbs near the airport was not visible from the road.)
None of this is likely to be true for Iran. All accounts suggest that even the anti-government forces are rallying round, and the Iranians can continue to bombard Israel longer than the Israelis can destroy their missiles. Relatively quickly this will become clear, and it’s hard to know what will happen when the Israelis realise they have miscalculated. Getting the US involved is not in itself a military solution: it just escalates the problem. Even if, somehow, US capabilities could destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, Iran could destroy Israel, and I don’t think anyone in Washington would see that as a fair swap.
I don’t think there is any chance of using nuclear weapons, not least because the only ones the US could deploy quickly would be free-fall gravity bombs launched by aircraft flying very near to their targets. Even leaving aside the tremendous political consequences, the aircraft would have to survive the Iranian AD system, and would have to be based in a neighbouring country, to which nuclear weapons would have to be moved. That’s not something you can conceal, and it takes a lot of time and effort. (It would be too dangerous to base them in Israel). Nuclear weapons no matter how exciting, are a distraction from the wider issues, and I think it’s unfortunate that people are obsessed with them. There was no danger of nuclear armageddon after the Ukrainian attack on Russian nuclear-capable aircraft, and I said so at the time. Now, the incident is slipping out of the popular memory.
There are many who dispute your claim, that Iran could move to an operational nuclear weapons program quickly, starting with the US intelligence community. Let me turn the mike over to Larry Wilkerson, who knows a thing or two about this topic. This is from a machine-generated transcript which I tidied up but did not check closely v. what Wilkerson said, so forgive any small glitches. From Dialogue Works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiYieN38leo
Yes, and I have made the same points myself, that a functioning nuclear weapon is very different from a critical mass of uranium. Everything goes at the speed of the slowest, and the most difficult problem is probably the physical construction of the warhead. Some commenters here have suggested that Iran is more advanced than the CIA estimate (such estimates are always cautious and hedged around with caveats) but if you measure the time from taking a political decision to having a working weapon, then three years may well be reasonable.
But that doesn’t really change the argument; There’s a lot of evidence that Netanyahu felt pressed to act now, before US-Iranian talks could achieve anything, and the exact timescale of nuclear development doesn’t really change the question. I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that Iran would have the capability tomorrow.
As an engineer, I have to disagree with this presumption that all the weapon design and manufacturing has to wait until the fissile material is available. There’s no reason for that. Containment and delivery system has been understood for years, not least by Pakistan, so the back end could have been developed already. Probably not actually manufactured, because that would have a very bad look if discovered by spies, but ready to go.
Tim H’s point is exactly the one made a few days before his assassination by Iran’s top nuclear scientist. He said the remaining steps to a nuclear bomb are rather trivial and would take mere weeks following additional centrifugal ion. He said Iran has long ago figured out how to construct a bomb with the necessary shape and implosion characteristics. He added that Iran has no intention of completing these steps. Am I the only one who saw this short video? I have seen no comments from anyone, although events over the following two days have been overwhelming.
There are a number of nuclear options. Perhaps I am showing my ignorance, but what is an operational nuke? Is a dirty bomb one end of the spectrum? How about a dirty bomb targeting a nuclear reactor? Nuclear reactors are now fair game.
What will Pakistan do to help Iran? Supply a few of the more difficult components? Provide a few working nukes? How about China? Could a few technical documents be invaluable and perhaps relatively safe politically?
I am reading two different things – an operational nuclear weapons program and a nuclear weapon. Are they really both the same thing?
I would expect that the length of time for Iran to complete a nuclear weapon/program? in peacetime is potentially quite different than during war. I could see that war could both shorten and lengthen that transition depending on a number of factors.
For the past few years I have wondered at Iran’s refusal to build a nuclear weapon. I wonder if, in regards to nuclear weapons, are they saints or insane. Perhaps that “or” should not be there.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Dirty bombs have never been done because they make no sense as a weapon. Adding radioactive material reduces explosive power. The only use case I can fathom is to explode one at a transportation hub like Grand Central, since it would have to be shut down for a while to clean up contamination, and the fact of one terrorist act would make commuters nervous about transiting through it once reopened.
Dirty bombs might be useful in something like Saudi oilfields. I think it was Noam Chomsky who pointed out that Israeli jets over flew those oilfields as a kind of reminder to the US that permanently shutting down access to that resource was a possible negotiating chip Israel held.
I think you are completely missing the issue.
Radioactive material is extremely dense. That’s why, for instance, we have used DUI in munitions. It is NOT explosive.
So putting radioactive material in a bomb is doubly at the expense of the effectiveness of the bomb as a bomb: it reduces the explosive power (lower density of explosives) AND reduces the blast force (the explosive force is expended significant in the dispersion of the very heavy radioactive material).
If Iran strikes Saudi oil fields effectively, they will create massive damage via the raging fires, which experts have argued could disperse so much dirty smoke as to achieve a Krakatoa-level short-term cooling and crop failures. There’s no reason to add nuclear bells and whistles that would impede the creation of massive destructive fires.
Note that Iran needed not only nukes but also delivery systems that can reach the continental US, in numbers too.
Otherwise they would make things worse for them, as what would have happened is something like this:
1) Iran does a nuclear test.
2) Iran is them immediately attacked by Israel and/or the US. Potentially, in fact quite likely, using nukes in first counterforce strike
3) Iran fires back at Israel with some nukes put on their existing ballistic and hypersonic missiles
4) Israel is wiped out (plus perhaps Moscow, London, Paris, Berlin, New York, etc., if the Samson option is used)
5) The US then nukes Iran to the stone age in retaliation.
At the end the US is either intact, or has only lost a few major cities, Iran is completely destroyed.
This game Iran loses.
On the other hand, if Iran had 20 nuclear ICBMs with MIRVs/MaRVs (Iran has very sophisticated reentry vehicles already) that can reach the continental US, the US stays out of it.
But the key is that Iran had to reveal having that already in place, before the US suspected it is there, in order not to invite a first strike.
Of course, in the real timeline Iran is already under attack. And that complicates things tremendously, but the basic calculus is the same — just having warheads makes the situation worse for them. They need warheads (and not some 20-30 kt firecrackers either, but serious thermonuclear ones), in numbers, deployed and ready to fire. Like North Korea does.
“the only ones the US could deploy quickly would be free-fall gravity bombs launched by aircraft flying very near to their targets.”
What about submarine-launched nuclear missiles? Are the vessels carrying them too far in the Indian or Pacific oceans, or even in European waters?
“The knowledge that this could only have been done if the organisation were thoroughly penetrated by the Israelis was another body-blow.”
At least from the initial stages of the Israeli offensive, it looks as if Iran is also thoroughly infested by Israeli covert agents — hell, they even set up quite a number of makeshift factories of drones with entire stores of spare parts, as well as remote-controlled missile launchpads.
The only thing preventing use of ICBMs, either sub-launched or land, is that Iran is really close to the Russian borders. So it would be difficult to tell for sure what the target was in the minute or so you have of warning. So launching them means a pretty high risk of seeing a wave of Russian missiles coming back at you.
That, and it would put to end the question “are we the baddies?”
Correct.
Also note how Chinese ICBM silos are located in such places that you can’t attack them with ballistic missiles without at the very least triggering Russian early warning systems, and if firing from the US, flying over Russia directly. The inverse is also true though to a lesser extent.
Over at MoA, I read a thread entry where the poster claimed, and appeared to know, that in Iran EVERYTHING is for sale, that one can bribe oneself into any place, situation, activity, etc., and continue that activity as long as one can keep the money flowing. If that is true, it would represent a bad security weakness for Iran, hence the severe infiltration by Mossad (or whatever one might call the infiltration program).
And in the US, political bribery is perfectly legal, no speculation required. It is enshrined in the “law”
Are you suggesting we could have an internal vulnerability?!
When Israeli oligarchs openly and legally bribe Congress, the political parties, and the emperor himself, the answer is clear. And that is just one aspect of the corruption
I was kind of being facetious. I agree with you.
One could also consider that bribery is a capital crime in Iran, and yes, they do execute people for it. Lesser cases will earn you lashes and decades in jail. Moreover, it’s also a society where loyalty to government and certain type of fanaticism are more or less requirements for advancement in the power structures, of which there are many.
Corrupted, sure, but everything for sale sounds doubtful. And indeed, all claims and proof for corruption in Iran seem to come from people and organizations residing in Germany and UK.
Everyone is compromised that way except for North Korea. China probably is safer than others too, though still not really safe at all.
But everyone who is capitalist has that huge weakness.
This is what the talking heads babbling about “multipolarity” do not understand — you cannot fight the empire while being capitalist. It is fundamentally impossible.
The USSR fought it quite successfully but it was anti-capitalist, and it could only do so on such a basis.
Because what happens if you are a capitalist country is that the fundamental attitude of people becomes that everything is for sale. Including loyalties. There is no such thing as non-corrupt capitalism, corruption is in the very essence of a “democratic” capitalist system.
And this is where the West gains the decisive advantage — once everything is for sale, well, those who control the money supply can buy it.
The Western system offers elites a privileged position locally in exchange for enslaving their people and handing over the resources of the territory for pennies on the dollar of their real worth. Bad deal for the people, but good deal for the elites, so they make that deal again and again.
The only way to resist effectively is to have your society be based on a fundamentalist, quasi-religious militant rejection of capitalist, and to raise generations firmly believing in that rejection.
Otherwise you will be subverted, divided and defeated.
It was the likes of Dzerzhinsky and Stalin who fought effectively. Spineless slimebags like Putin, Lavrov, and their counterparts in Tehran and elsewhere stand no chance.
P.S. Increasingly, as the Empire goes on the offensive in one “resistance” country after another, how North Korea is the only sane country on this planet becomes more and more clear. As incredible as it sounds. Stalin understood it, through bitter experience, the Kims did too, through even more bitter experience, but while after Stalin Soviet elites chose to gradually, then suddenly surrender, in North Korea they doubled down. And so far they are the only place where there is little prospect pager blowing up in people’s face, foreign agents on the ground launching small drones at their air defense installations and strategic nuclear forces, and so on.
The errors of reasoning and bad faith argumentation are operating on a spectacular dimension in your comment.
Just a few problems. There is no evidence of an Iran, or an Iranian regime with ‘nuclear aspirations’. Iran was party to the JCPOA, from which the United States withdrew unilaterally in 2018. A pretty unanimous view, outside the neo-con crazies, regarded JCPOA as a viable path a denuclearized Iran. Yet another path would be a denuclearized Middle East. A conference of 2019 for the establishment of a nuclear weapons free Middle East, had Iran as party. Israel, non-signatory to the NPT and a state that operates outside the purview of international law, was absent. Iran has used every opportunity to prove it has no intention of acquiring a nuclear weapon — to rational observers anyway — who are conspicuously missing in the collective West. In retrospect, this willingness to be party to international law, norms and conventions on the part of Iran has proven to be a critical mistake, because the United States and Israel routinely pi$$ on those things.
Wilkerson has observed, given past behaviour of outlaw states like the US, a democratic Iran would be even more willing to acquire nuclear weapons, than the Islamic Rebpulic, with its religious compunctions.
That’s a straight-up apologia for regime change operation. While we are at it, one is long overdue in Washington, Tel Aviv and London.
No one brings up the subject of nuclear war because it’s ‘exciting’ but because the risks are terrifically high, real and terrifying. However, gaslighting people by risk diminishment would be right in character for an apologist of western supremacy.
Um, you may have missed the fact that I am describing what I believe the Israelis, and to a lesser extent the US, feel, not what I think. There’s a difference you know, and it’s sometimes interesting, and a useful exercise, to try to imagine what others think, even if you don’t like them.
hmm…upon second reading, I realized I missed some qualifiers in your comment.
I don’t believe that either the Israelis or the Americans really believe that Iran is about to get a nuclear weapon. If they were afraid of that, they would have stuck with the JCPOA. The reason why they wanted to get rid of the JCPOA is because it removed the best pretext they could find for launching the regime change war they have been salivating over for 25 years. But they couldn’t just come out and say: “We are going to launch a regime change war for the project of Greater Israel and also to undermine BRICS by taking out China’s fuel supplier and ally,” even though that was always the plan.” So the whole nuclear question is to my mind a red herring.
I agree, regime change plans have been in place for decades, since the Pahlavi regime was overthrown in 1980. And this is not just for Greater Israel (imperial garrison, neo-crusader state), but to serve the long-term policy of the UK/US. I’m sure many in power would like to go back to the days when the UK/US had a puppet regime in Tehran, while stealing their oil/gas, plus control a geo-strategic location, block BRICS and China’s Belt and Road etc. Regime change in Iran serves many purposes for the AngloAmericans
“That’s a straight-up apologia for regime change operation”
In the overall context, I didn’t take that as apologia from Wilkerson. Maybe I missed something.
‘Getting the US involved is not in itself a military solution: it just escalates the problem.’
Getting the US involved was always the plan. Consider. The Israelis do not have the specialized bombs or the capability of destroying those underground nuclear sites. And yet they launched this war saying that that was their aim. So they bombed some nuclear sites in Iran when, much to their amazement, they realized that they could not hit those underground facilities. And it was then that Netanyahu pleaded for the US to take part in this war with the needed capabilities. Having, behind the scenes, Trump’s agreement to come into this war, Netanyahu then switched demands so now it was regime change in Iran. Let us not forget that there are no people capable of taking power in Iran and it is certainly not going to be the Shah’s son nor the MLK. But if you want to know the Israeli/US aim for Iran, just look at Syria. Certainly the Iranians know this which is why they are not backing down.
As long as Iran has all those missiles they can’t be defeated. Whereas Israel may soon look like it had been hit with atomics. There is no plan here other than getting the US directly entangled in Israel’s various wars of choice–something even Biden and other presidents have resisted. Zionism has nothing to do with America other than via all those campaign bribes that are shoveled to our politicians. If Trump does take this step it will be the ultimate middle finger to the country’s voters by said politicians. Congress needs to be demanding a vote on this and many of them seem to get that.
US has been fighting Iran at least since their support for Iraq in their war.
US. flagged Kuwaiti tankers and fought IRGC in the PG.
1990 was a huge flip when U.S. went after Saddam over. Kuwait. Funding internal terrorists etc.
That said the war on Russia started in1993 when U.S. decided to renege on NATO expansion.
The empire is harmful to truth, and human life
Unfortunately, I don’t believe this is correct. The USA has air-launched cruise missiles and submarine-launched cruise missiles which can carry nuclear warheads, not to mention ICBMs. The whole point of nuclear deterrence is that these weapons are in a constant state of readiness.
Under the INF treaty the warheads were removed from cruise missiles, but Trump withdrew from the INF in 2018.
Clearly thermonuclear weapons are not going to be used. For the rest, as I understand it, the US does still have these missiles but the capability to use them with nuclear warheads today is essentially theoretical. For example the nuclear variant of the Tomahawk was retired decade or more ago, and it’s not clear whether it’s still serviceable, or indeed whether the nuclear warheads (manufactured during the Cold War) are either. In any event, you would have to go through integration, test firings and all sorts of preparatory phases.
The Russians do not believe that. They are quite convinced NATO can deliver nuclear weapons from missile silos. Ray McGovern has described long form that NATO took to using silos which made it impossible to tell what kind of missile was in them, creating great agita in Moscow that they could easily be nuclear missiles.
No, there are no submarine-launched nuclear-armed cruise missiles. The first Trump admin proposed a program to develop one, but the Biden admin terminated it. I think you will see a plan to restart the program, maybe not FY26. The Air Force B-52 delivered ALCM/LRSO provides a similar capability, but without stealth.
The INF did not cover shipboard missiles. It did result in the “chainsawing” of the GLCM missiles in Europe. Nuclear Tomahawk was removed from operational status unilaterally by Bush 41. At the time there was a desire to be able to reconstitute the submarine variant but as submarine combat systems were upgraded that became less and less feasible and at some point (can’t recall exactly when) was dropped.
There is the W76-2 warhead on the Mk4A Trident D5 re-entry vehicle that is in service. Since this is the same missile that carries the W76-1 use of this system is problematic to say the least.
Doesn’t the US retain nuclear munitions of some kind at Incirlik in Turkey, just over the border from Iran? And the medium range missile system that has potential dual use?
I do not know either way, but the Turks have much more control over Incirlik than other NATO members have over their bases. They can deny flight rights. So they could shut down the base if they thought the US was going to deliver nukes and they were not on board. While Turkiye it trying way too hard to have it both ways (denouncing Israel while quietly supporting US operations), I cannot imagine Erdogan participating in nuclear strikes against a Muslim state. He risks the Mussolini treatment.
Assurances that nuclear weapons aren’t a problem are correct until they aren’t. The proximate problem of bunker busting was laid out. The US has used the conventional weapons that it possesses. If it intends to bust Iranian bunkers, nuclear weapons are what the West has.
There is no disagreement over the likely goal of the attack on Iran— regime change. But I don’t get why that is relevant? Articles in the US press this very AM are touting the US getting directly involved in busting bunkers in Iran. This means using nuclear weapons, as I understand it.
How much of the confidence that the Russians wouldn’t have responded to the Western attacks on Russian nuclear assets quite forcefully is tied to the Russians having a grownup in charge? The Russians have limited nuclear threat early detection capability, which led to criticism of allowing the Ukrainians to degrade it further with Western missiles while Biden was in office.
Further, retaliation for the attack hasn’t yet occurred. While, as stated, the Russians have promised no nuclear first strike, how would the US using tactical nukes in Iran shift this thinking?
US B-52 bombers are reported to have been moved to Diego Garcia in anticipation of bombing raids on Iran. Sure, this might be posturing for advantage. But the US has the planes, the US has the nuclear bunker busters, and Donald Trump is saying that Iran’s bunkers must be busted.
Finally, Mr. Trump has been profoundly reckless with respect to the conflicts that he inherited, to little effect so far. What happens when Mr. Trump needs a victory?
Scott Ritter, interviewed by Nima yesterday said that when the US used “bunker busters” in Yemen against the Houthis, they were not effective. They “bounced off”. Ritter also said that DT was a coward and would back off once he realizes the real political and military consequences.
If not, tactical nukes look like the next option. I take Aurelien’s point (above) as well but we don’t seem to be dealing with competent leaders here.
Ritter also said that DT was a “madman”. Larry Wilkerson called DT, ignorant, utterly devoid of any concept of history and an idiot. Wilkerson also emphasized the danger of a mentally-deranged POTUS. This is strong language from those two, but I believe well-warranted.
The added danger of an emperor who has lost his marbles is not very comforting. Just today DT lied and said the Iranians “reached out” and want to negotiate. This looks like yet another lie from a man who simply makes sht up as he goes.
This may sound paranoid, but what happens if the emperor completely loses his mind?
Sorry but you are way over your speculation skis. What you are saying is that Trump will use a nuclear weapon for the first time since WW2 to destroy a bomb that doesn’t exist (according to his own intelligence chief!) and a nuclear facility that Iran can simply reproduce elsewhere.
Meanwhile they can obtain a nuke from Pakistan or NK and, with the genie out of the bottle, use it on Israel or the US. And all of this simply to salve Trump’s ego with an “I told you so”?
Here’s suggesting Trump isn’t going to do anything other than world wrestling trash talk. He let Israel have their shot. Now the question is whether he is going to take himself and his family and his legacy down with them. Trump may be acting crazy but some of us don’t think he is actually crazy–yet.
All the nuke talk in the media is very irresponsible and immature. IMO.
I believe that I wrote three different ways that Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon. But Donald Trump is saying that he believes that Iran does possess nuclear weapons.
Here (link below) are Dan Davis and Doug MacGregor, both retired military, and both of whom voted for Donald Trump, laying out several different scenarios related to the facts as laid out in the piece of how this goes nuclear.
Stick with the link because they go into quite a bit of detail to support the thesis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaJNDEbspKI
My assertion is not based on a military analysis–which I think is irrelevant–but on who I think Donald Trump is. He is a bully and a coward whose entire career is based on “brand” which is why he likes to put his name in giant letters on everything. When it comes to actually starting wars he has been very timid and indecisive because that kind of brand risk is not what he is comfortable with. Whereas if Israel wants to play the butcher he can pretend his hands were tied.
This attack was supposed to over in one day according to the fairy tale Bibi sold to Trump. Whereas even if he uses a nuke and turns the world against America thereby it would just as likely make this war go on forever. It has already been lost. The reality simply needs to sink in.
Dude won’t listen to his intelligence brief, he dismissed Gabbard’s assessment out of hand and lied again. He makes up his “own” intelligence and repeats what his good friend Bibi tells him. After all, his son-in-law’s family and the Netanyahu’s go way back. HIs daugher even converted to Judaism in order to marry Jared.
I one hundred percent agree with your article and analysis, the US is Manufacturing Consent for the use of nuclear weapons.
Trump has clearly made the decision to be Netanyahu’s poodle, why is he delaying announcing it?
Why did Tulsi Gabbard put out a video about Hiroshima?
Why did Mike Huckabee call Trump “Truman”? (Truman, not Roosevelt, made the decision to use nukes on Hiroshima/Nagasaki)
News people are parroting what they are being fed by the US government, “conventional weapons cannot penetrate” “deep underground” etc, reporters know less about munitions than they do about aeronautics, yet here they are pontificating for hours a day about the “lift capacity” of B-2 bombers.
The delay is precisely analogous to year 2002 (Dennis Kucinich said after Netanyahu testified September 12, 2002, he followed him into the hallway and said “Mr Netanyahu why don’t you attack Iraq?” and the response was “no we don’t do that”) – except instead of two UN Security Council resolutions, and a Congression Authorization for the Use of Military Force, in addition to “public opinion”, now it’s all happening much faster, without the paperwork.
I can hope it doesn’t happen, but I suspect Trump doesn’t want to made fun of, so he is waiting for M0ssad to plant some kind of evidence so he doesn’t get mocked like W for “where are the WMDs?” … as long as there is some sliver of evidence, no matter how small or how planted, as soon as anything shows up, that will be the Manufactured Consent for the use of nuclear weapons.
I think Rob Urie is correct, the scenarios of deep bunkers played in war games is:
– first conventional bunker buster bombs (more than one) for the penetration,
– then a nuke for the final detonation.
If we anti war types had been wrong about Iraq, we would not be having this discussion, but in year 2002 we all foresaw where that went very clearly.
Of course I could be wrong, discussion is encouraged. But I am genuinely terrified at this moment.
<"If it intends to bust Iranian bunkers, nuclear weapons are what the West has."
From what I can find, the only nuclear weapon in the inventory with "bunker buster" capability is the B61-11, a reported 400 kt weapon. Not sure it is realistic to assume it would be used.
0.3 to 340 kt “dial a yield”.
With apologies for not being more specific, Scott Ritter has named the US nuclear bunker buster missile that is in inventory and that is available to be used. I remember ideas, not names.
This would be in recent interviews that Ritter has done on either Dialogue Works or Judge Napolitano. He said this a number of times, so it shouldn’t be hard to find.
Trump-Bibi mind meld going nuclear is as immoral and illogical as the decapitation attempt last week. Actually much more!
There is sound logic to a “no first use” doctrine!
If Trump – Bibi open that box it will give others the idea!
Suppose Kim Jung Un decides B-2 at Anderson in Guam, or F-22 on Okinawa are like fictitious Iranian nukes…..?
That said in 1990 I served in a logistics headquarters while US executed “on the fly” deployment plans to go “liberate” Kuwait.
A lot of busy staff people and a lot of packing and palletizing….. ordering ships and aircraft to carry things and people.
Computers are much faster today, if the info is good.
Once you use a bunker buster, you remove the mystique and reduce future options.
If said bunker buster doesn’t bust that bunker, or deep underground lair, then what next?
The threat and ominous music only go so far.
The bunker busters do not bust bunkers by themselves. You need to fly big planes over the target, and then back.
I’m helplessly hoping for TACO.
China or Russia are not going to be silent observers of attacks on Iran. $10/gal. gas for the car kills the US economy in weeks. There aren’t enough federalized agents to suppress dissent/dissatisfaction across all of (U)SA.
In my opinion, we hit the ‘Jackpot’ when go-juice is $7.77 a gallon on a nationwide basis, which makes it more around $10 in Cali.
Great article and discussion here, as usual. Just an observation to add:
“…That Miriam Adelson paid Donald Trump $100 million to attack Iran, and that Mr. Trump is dutifully doing so, illuminates a brave new way-of-doing-business for the US…”
Not really new, but more brazen perhaps, Her late hubbie, Sheldon gave the DT and “superpacs” perhaps hundreds of millions previously. “…According to federal records, from 2010 through 2020, Adelson and his wife donated more than $500 million to Republican Party campaigns and super PACs.[122]…”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson
This is all perfectly “legal”. We have seen the institutionalization of corruption with unlimited political bribery. (Citizens United SCOTUS decision). We have members of SCOTUS accepting bribes, flagrant conflicts of interests, not only SCOTUS but Congress. And there is so much corruption in the exec branch now, I’m sure books will be written about it.
A question for those more knowledgeable than I:
Would it be possible for a country to use a tactical nuclear weapon while achieving plausible deniability about its use?
Suppose the US were to drop a tactical nuke on an Iranian nuclear facility and claim it’s a bunker buster. Sure there would be readings of radioactive activity, but this could be explained by the fact that the U.S. had bombed a nuclear facility, not that it had itself used a nuke to do so. Is this feasible, or not?
Highly unlikely, as (at a minimum) there are specific radionuclide signatures that accompanies nuclear explosions that wouldn’t be able to be explained away as anything BUT a nuclear reaction. Just how the physics work. Not to mention other pretty sophisticated monitoring that would detect it via a network of over 300 monitoring stations worldwide, set up via the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
The international organization that does the monitoring has a website on the verification regime: CTBTO Verification Regime
Fissile material does have identifying features that can indicate source. However, how one obtains that material is a completely different question. I doubt that it matters as no matter what it’ll get blamed Russia.
I believe the seismic signature of a nuke is pretty distinctive as well. We would never know, as no one would be allowed to report it, but the Russians and Chinese would have proof.
I don’t believe there is a “tactical nuke” with deep earth penetration capability.
It may be that the most sensible aim for Iran is regime change…in Israel. Make the punishment hard enough that somebody with the access and the means gets the Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir crowd out of the decision maker seats and puts in a “kinder, gentler” hardliner like Lapid or Bennett or Olmert. Or get a careerist on the outs like Ronen Bar to step in. For Iran’s sake, I hope their own leadership, civil and military, is distributed enough geographically that even a nuke hitting one location would still leave a functioning authority to launch a maximum counterstrike on the aggressors. The US policies leading to this situation have been in place for close to 25 years and no one is allowed to be president who doesn’t agree to go along with the program, so the only thing extreme about “our” support for this over the last 2 years is utter incompetence and mental instability of the chief executives assigned to carry forth the grand plan.
Why do so many people pretend to know the munitions stocks of belligerent powers? How many of them ever apologize when they get it wrong? Where are the ones who claimed, back in ’23, that Ukraine was running out of ammo, and that it would be impossible for their allies to adequately resupply them?
Speaking for myself:
1. Being a man of materialist inclination, I propose that both Israeli and Iranian munition supplies should be finite.
2. I have little idea of the effectiveness of the belligerents’ air defense systems, except to say that their effectiveness must be considered less than 100%.
3. WRT Hezbollah losing its most recent war with Israel, I think that Hezbollah lost too many of its best cadres, during a decade of battles fought in Syria. An army can starve, even when fed upon a diet of victories. Also, the defeat of the Syrian Ba’ath severed an important supply line. Further, one must consider the economic condition of Lebanon: currency crisis, Beirut port explosion, and many years with a heavy refugee burden. Briefly put: war-weariness.
Watch “Col Lawrence Wilkerson Exclusive: US To Weigh In On Israel’s Strikes Or Push For Negotiations?” on YouTube
He cites a stunning statistic (don’t know its provenance): 70% of Republicans oppose US entry into this war, 60% of Americans overall.
Is that great beast, the American public, waking up?
This is all speculation until the events clarify the situation one way or the other, but is it possible that Iranian and Hezbollah inaction and apparent timidity, even in the face of extreme Israeli provocation and wrecking of Syria, is precisely because they anticipated the coming attack on Iran?
Urie misses the point that it is not the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal that counts, but its composition. Israel has between 80 and 500 nuclear weapons, including hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, and artillery bombs. It has 5 or 6 long range nuclear capable German subs, several hundred Jehrico 1, 2 & 3 ballistic missiles capable of reaching beyond Moscow & the U.S. East coast, and nuclear capable planes that can reach Iran.
Israel counts on the existence of this arsenal to coerce nations in the region and also the U.S. to achieve its strategic goals. Perhaps this time the World will call Israels bluff?
This is an interesting point that I considered including in the piece, but concluded that it was irrelevant. There is no question that Israel can end the world with its nuclear weapons. Past that, the argument is by degree, not type.
Most of the existing nukes will likely never be used. Past the first few hundred, there won’t be anyone left to fire more missiles, or to care.
But it is an interesting point.
Since defeat of Iran will materially harm China, set back the Belt & Road, restrict its access to energy, etc., China has two persuasive non-military ways of entering the fray. One is to permanently cut its strategic exports to the US to Zero, including rare earth minerals, critical electronic components, ingredients for pharmaceuticals and . . . toys (let’s see how the American consumer feels about that come Christmas-time). The other option is to dump a significant portion of its US Treasuries – let’s say half. That wouldn’t be a total loss for China – it would recover some of its money, and can recover from the hit overnight. The US might not be so resilient.
It might also be the right time to make a move on Taiwan, while the US is busy elsewhere, has its carrier fleet heading to West Asia, and in any event has depleted stocks of many munitions.
We have seen Gaza. Yes, all rubble. Lots and lots of ordinance.
How many bombs and missiles and drones can Iran sink before crying uncle? North Krean also had their country razed, or the North Vietnamese and Uncle Sam retreated in shame.
Serbians endured an 80 days aerial bombardment.
The assumption here seems to be that the Persians cannot much endure (nothwhitsanding the 8 years attritional war with Iraq, from a weaker position).
Russians couldn’t, at that time help the Serbians, but nowadays, both China and Russia could help Iran.
It is not that I try to stay optimistic, but I am putting the known facts together to establish the prior weights.
John Helmer has established that for now there are no signs of support from China or Russia or NK for Iran. But there are also no signs of Iran asking anyone for help either.
So let’s wait a month or two, see what happens.
I’m getting tired of everybody using the phrase “regime change” as a euphemism for the real goal: societal destruction.
Even if the US piles on and manages to kill or destroy every scientist and centrifuge in Iran, that would only reset the ‘clock’ on their ability to join the Nukes Club by, what, a dozen years? And even if they (we?) actually manage to put the ‘Lost Dauphin’ of the Pahlavi Dynasty on a reconstituted throne (such a cute plan!), how long would that last?
Israel requires a somewhat more, ah, /permanent/ solution: complete collapse of Iranian society, industry, and academia. This is exactly what has been done to Iraq, Libya, and Syria: for at least another generation, none of those “countries” will be able to produce any weapons more complex than what I could buy at my local Walmart. This was done not merely by changing leaders, and not even by changing the system of government, but by destroying all aspects of societal cohesion.
I completely agree, this will be the same rubble as Gaza.
Maybe in year 2002 some of the Wolfowitz Perle Kagan Kagan Kagan Nuland BillKristol Armitage Rumsfeld Cheney cabal genuinely thought Iraq would be a country, but now, the viciousness of Iz-real’s assassinations, and rubble in Gaza, make me think the plan is G-cide and Society-cide. And whoever the current neocons pulling the levers of power are, I don’t think they are even up to the low standards of that group.
The irony is, just like in 1953, and like Iraq in the 1970s, Iran today seems like a modern, cosmopolitan place. I wouldn’t want to live there, like I wouldn’t want to live in Russia or China or …, but I can respect other people with a different way of life.
I don’t think many people in Iz-real respect other ways of life, and hopefully soon the world shows that the rest of us do respect other peope … I hope … but in Gaza a hundred people a day are shot standing in line for food (I don’t think I even need to say “allegedly” at this point), so … uh … I am pessimistic.
I actually heard a talking head on a tv news channel (Senator Tammy Duckworth) say “not until they tell us the Day 2 plan”, so maybe I can find optimism somewhere.
One more: I note you put “academia” as one of the targets, which certainly has been the target in the US since campus protests last year.
And you get many laugh points for “The Lost Daupin”!
Not everybody is using the phrase “regime change”. Those that are, are self-identifying as the baddies. It’s just like with “Russian unprovoked war of aggression”, and “Slava Ukraini”, and other popular propaganda terms.
So much alarm with Iran having one or even a few A-Bombs (the Supreme Leader issued a Fatwa against such in 2003, and it still stands) when Israel has 90 Thermos. Crikey!
This is all a distraction from the Genocide and starving Gazans.
Loose talk about nukes might lead to loose use.
The likelihood that loose talk will be a problem relative to the launch of an unprovoked, aggressive, war seems misplaced.
Keeping quiet doesn’t seem to have served us very well to date.
The “Iran is running out of missiles” idea also overlooks how easily Russia or China can replenish them if absolutely necessary. Both have good rail and road logistics through friendly territory. Missiles can be fired with a small number of already trained Russian or Chinese crews, and do not have the long training time and logistics overhang of other weapons systems.
It’s in the interest of Iran and its allies to use indigenous missiles for now (and perhaps they’ll want to anonymize any use of their missiles to avoid broadening the conflict), but the idea that Iran would just run out of sufficient missiles to continue to maintain deterrence seems as nutty as the “kill a few dozen IRGC commanders and they’ll welcome us in with flowers” idea.
Also, it looks like the roll out of Pahlavi was a total bust because now they’re trying the same with the leader of the Western backed MEK terrorist group, which is even more unpopular than the Shah since their terrorism killed thousands of Iranians over the years. The Kurds are doing their usual American backed thing. Sheesh. These people are so lazy and never update their scripts.
I don’t have anything important to add, I’d just like to thank Rob for a most interesting piece, and helpful comments as well!
What if Iran already has a nuke? and if Israel or America use a tactile nuke against them, and the whole world finds out the hard way? Israel did get Iran’s missile prowess wrong so far it seems( and by extension so did America). I would not be surprised if they missed Iran’s nukes also. Strike, counter srike and everyone retreats ?