Welcome again to everybody. Make yourself at home. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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I think it’s also important to mention that Iran is trying to liberate Palestine. Dropping a nuke on the occupied territories would poison the land for decades or even a century. In this way, Iran’s possession of a nuclear deterrent is a paper tiger. I believe this is why they’ve committed themselves to building up their military capacity with conventional weapons instead.
I think the power of nukes comes from not having an opportunity of using them. It does not mean that the country will be free from wars or other means of conquest, but acts as a deterrence to other nuclear attacks and prevents escalation of war. Let’s remember that when Israel was being smoked by a coordinated attack from Syria, Egypt and Jordan, during the Yom Kippur war, the threat of nuclear escalation made the US to broker an agreement with Israel’s neighboring states. However, nuclear deterrence does not prevent other forms of war, like assassination, sabotage, precision strikes or proxy wars.
Iran is very close to having the ability of manufacturing nukes, though. It has advanced missiles, Uranium enrichment facilities, and abundance of stocks of enriched Uranium. What Iran may lack is technology for miniaturizing the nuclear payload (or not, if they got it from another country or if they stole the tech through espionage).
They also lack an ICBM capable of striking the USA. They have the expertise to develop one though. This could deter the ghouls in Washington, but Tel Aviv I’m not so sure.