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Comment by dj_gitmo | Hacker News Reader

If they thought Iran had nukes they wouldn’t be attacking them. Nobody thinks Iran had a nuclear weapon, or that they are even trying that hard to get one.

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I don't understand this argument; why would you have a large, acknowledged, underground nuclear purification unit if it wasn't for bombs? Why wouldn't you cooperate with their regular IAEA inspection if it wasn't for bombs?

They might be making the bombs, but once they are made (and the delivery mechanism exists), then they wouldn’t be attacked for fear of nuclear retaliation.

The past two-ish decades has made it clear that nuclear weapons are the only defense against an aggressive power arbitrarily invading.

This was my thinking as well. Iran sending a nuke at anyone effectively is the end of Iran (and many of its people). Something something…mutually assured destruction (e.g., North Korea has nukes, makes threats, doesn’t use them)

So the reason to make an exception to the Non-Proliferation Treaty just for the giant tyrannical fundamentalist state is, what, because otherwise they might get insecure and anxious?

OK, they never signed up to it, but still.

We made an exception for Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.

North Korea left the NPT, Israel never signed it.

Are you referring to Israel here, who stole the recipe from their closest 'ally' and has made not one or two but hundreds of nukes outside of the NPT?

Allegedly.

AFAIK the recipe was given to them by the French.

The prior government did sign it and there’s very good reason to hold successor states to the treaties signed before they existed.

What about the agreement to protect Ukraine if they gave up the nuclear weapons?

Trusting the US or any agreement with it would be foolish.

the NPT is a joke. the only "authorized" nukes are the ones you can keep

The problem is that these people are religiously unhinged. They are executing Gods will with God on their side.

Unlike the American evangelicals and the Israeli?

In the past 24 hours alone, all 3 parties in this conflict have attributed their success to God. You genuinely, honestly have to be more specific in your comment because not a single involved participant is a fully secular country.

So, with that being said - which nuclear-obsessive theocracy do you support?

To be fair it's the same god.

Ted Cruz is explicitly advocating that Christians are biblically commanded to defend the modern day state of Israel, and that this alone justifies our attack on Iran.

Or just because they tried to assassinate Trump.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/08/donald-trump-iran-a...

Ted Cruz can blather whatever he wants (and he also footnoted it to say it was only HIS belief), but only Iran has holy-text justification for the destruction of all Jews, mentioned numerous times in authenticated Hadiths (just search them for "The last hour will not come")

Are you referring to Iran or Israel?

one of the scariest parts of the current US administration is that there is a fairly strong evangelical Christian belief that a massive (possibly nuclear) war in Israel is a necessary precursor to the 2nd coming.

That's from Islam. Infact the entire point of ISIS was to manifest this prophecy

Evangelical Christianity shares the same belief. That’s why the red heifer breeding program [0] is supported by US Christian orgs [1].

[0] https://www.timesofisrael.com/red-heifer-temple-institute/

[1] https://cbn.com/news/israel/first-time-after-2000-years-isra...

this describes both jihadis and the chosen people. the whole region is operating on pre enlightenment notions of diplomacy

Unfortunately MAD in the classic sense doesn't apply here. Yes if Iran launched a nuke at Israel, or vice versa, and the other had nuclear capabilities, they would destroy each other, but the MAD scenario between the USSR and the United States doesn't really play out here.

The biggest global risk in this case would be that tactical nukes would be back on the menu which would immediately change the face of modern warfare.

I feel like it's been demonstrated that if Israel orders the United States to destroy the world on its behalf, the United States will do it.

So Iran is a special case compared to every other country getting them?

> then they wouldn’t be attacked for fear of nuclear retaliation

Even supposing Iran developed a nuclear weapon, their ability to engage in nuclear retaliation depends on (a) the number of warheads, (b) the available delivery mechanisms

An Iran which had only a handful of warheads, and rather limited delivery mechanisms (few or no ICBMs, no SLBMs, no long-range bomber capability) might find its ability to engage in nuclear retaliation against the US extremely limited

Even attempting to use nuclear weapons against Israel or regional US allies, there would be a massive attempt by Israel/US/allies to intercept any nuclear armed missile before it reached its destination

People argued missile defence (as in Reagan's "Star Wars") would never work against the Soviets because they could always just overwhelm it given the superabundance of warheads and delivery systems they had. The same logic does not apply to Iran, because even if it did build a nuke, initially it would only have a handful. Only if they were allowed to build out their nuclear arsenal and delivery systems without intervention, over an extended period, might that eventually come true.

My understanding is that the prospect of nuclear retaliation against hawkish US allies can contribute greatly to peace in the region.

This is what I’d expect Iran to do instead of ICBM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suitcase_nuclear_device

But they do have ballistic missiles and can hit US allies

if israel and america actually believed iran was as close to nukes as bibi said it was, then the variance on the prediction, and the chance of iran already having nukes and already being able to deliver them via ballistic/hamas means would be too large to risk something like this

north korea and pakistan actually have nukes. we can be sure of that because of the bullshit they get up to with full impunity from the US. iran doesnt have shit (and it might even have been working in good faith with the nato initiatives, although probably not 100%) thats why it got bombed. and they are gonna learn a fool me once lesson from this. they're gonna go even harder on the anti US pole with china, with the people begrudgingly backing the regime that could have toppled soviet style if the US was patient.

this whole thing was shortsighted from israel and trump should have kept to his "america first" promise

They just hit population centers in Israel with high explosives this week. Clearly if they had a nuke they would be able to deliver it.

This is the pattern of constantly moving the goalposts:

- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past nuclear-reactor grade. What's that? They're enriching past 5%?

- There's no evidence Iran is enriching uranium past medical purposes grade. What's that? They're enriching past 20%?

- There's no evidence Iran has enough to build bombs. What's that? They have enough to build 10 bomb?

- There's no evidence they have a way to deliver bombs <-- you are here

If Israel doesn't continuously try to stop Iran, they might even have a 10 Megaton ICBM and you'll be saying "there's no evidence Iran has ever said it want's to destroy Israel".

Add to that, its "deterrence" arsenal of intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) are credible militarily only as nuclear delivery systems. For example, the "Khaybar Breaker" rocket (English meaning), referring to a destruction of an historic Jewish stronghold, leaving little to imagination, when equiped with conventional warheads are simply an expensive way to ruin hospital wings. But, when you merge heavy rockets with diligent production of precursors of nuclear weapons, not only is that work toward military use of a nuclear weapon-- it creates a powerful inertia toward actually completing that work, from two directions, lest your very expensive work prove pointless. The current war is vividly demonstrating that IRBM's are not deterrent unless (a) impossibly numerous or (b) unconventionally armed. A threshold IRBM threat makes it more, not less, likely to provoke a first strike against it, as has occurred.

for people who don't follow news. last year Iran strikes on Israel with IRBM (two times, 150 missiles each time) weren't particularly effective (either intercepted or falling in empty fields). On the other side Israel attempt on taking our Iranian AD was success.

It led Iran to make 2 decisions

- Accelerate production of IRBM in order to have 10000 in stock and to build 1000 launchers in order to execute massive launches that will not possible to defend against

- Apparently the did decide to mate their IRBM with nukes as recently there was meeting between whoever managed iranian missiles problem and heads of nuclear project (there is economist article about it).

This comes against backdrop of hamas and hezbollah been wiped. especially hezbollah which was supposed to be strike force against israel with estimated 100k-200k missiles and rockets.

PS. to those who write that jordan/usa intercepted most/a lot. they (together with saudi arabia, uk and france intercepted drones and cruise missiles. out of all IRBM only 6 were intercepted with SM3 missiles from USA ship)

Hamas has not "been wiped"; they have more members than before October 7th.

I hope their new members are midwit western university students not capable of speaking fluent Arabic while extinguishing your consciousness.

Do they have much in the way of military capability right now? They could have a full two million committed members, and that might be a serious long term strategic issue for Israel, but the actual immediate threat might be nominal.

some yes. left over weapon. they can booby trap buildings, attach explosives to apc/tanks. maybe some rpg. Occasional rocket info Israel. A bunch of undiscovered tunnels

but now after their command was wiped out and they can't sell aid, they have serious financial problems (they need to pay their fighters. it's very transactional).

but in case idf will leave gaza, they will have enough power to dominate the strip.

> Hamas [has] more members than before October 7th

I'm skeptical of this; any source?

> for people who don't follow news. last year Iran strikes on Israel with IRBM (two times, 150 missiles each time) weren't particularly effective (either intercepted or falling in empty fields).

For clarification, those interception efforts last year required massive assistance from the US and Jordan, and required a hugely disproportionate and unsustainable investment of munitions to pull off. What we've seen in the last week is that Israeli air defenses are much more brittle than they want anyone to believe.

EDIT: For the down-voters, here's Bloomberg citing Israeli media that defending against Operation True Promise cost ~$1 billion USD: https://archive.is/WHDvG

and here is NPR about Jordan's assistance: https://www.npr.org/2024/04/15/1244900560/what-is-known-abou...

and here is the NYT questioning Israel's missile stockpiles: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/world/middleeast/israel-i...

Also note that Iran does have an ICBM of sorts. They have a space launch vehicle, capable of putting maybe 600kg in orbit. Anything that can achieve orbit can also be used as an ICBM. The US tends to operate on the assumption that it can bomb abroad without return fire. That may have just changed. The US has never attacked anybody with significant missile capability before.

The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable. Washington, D.C. has some drone and missile defenses. But the rest of the east coast is not protected much.

Iran could also attack the US with drones launched from a small ship off the US east coast. Roughly the same technique Ukraine just used on Russia, using some small expendable ship instead of a trailer.

>The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable.

This would mean complete suicide for Iran. The US military basically exists to inflict unimaginable hurt on anyone who does this. Not to mention, an attack on the US is an attack on NATO.

There are loads of NATO countries that will not assist the US in this case because NATO is a defensive alliance not a "this country responded my armed aggression, let's strike them" alliance.

If there was such a thing of an european politician that doesn't just do what USA tells them…

How about Denmark?

Donald Trump has made it very clear that the US should be looked upon as an adversary.

Denmark in greenland are as much colonizers as USA would be.

There were no people in Greenland when it was settled by the Norse in the 10th century. The current Inuit population arrived after the Europeans in the 14th century.

The norse didn't "settle", in the sense that they all died off before the current inhabitants.

Article 5 doesn't count since the US very clearly started the war. Even the NATO articles recognize that Iran has the right to defend itself.

The symbolic value of Iran hitting a target in the US, even with only a small conventional warhead, would be considerable

Iran would definitely possess nuclear weapons after doing something like that. The only question is whether they're armed to explode in the air or when they hit the ground.

Everyone in Iran who decided to follow international law and not pursue nuclear weapons including Khamenei look like clowns right now.

Nobody believes that running a secretive bomb-proof underground bunker full of gas centrifuges is "not pursuing nuclear weapons". We're not stupid.

These sites were under IAEA supervision until recently.

They enrich uranium. Supervising the process doesn't change the process.

however, they were supervised to not be enriching to bomb level concentration.

the purpose of the bomb shelter seems obvious - israel is gonna be bombing because israel likes bombing stuff

A more accurate way of describing it would be "still enriching, not at bomb level concentration yet". There is no question that they were in the process of "enriching to bomb level concentration". You want to wait until they're done?

They were putting together advanced parts towards a nuclear weapon and IAEA says they weren't cooperating. Everyone knew what this meant. Even themselves, why did they need JCPOA otherwise? Just explain why you have 60% enriched uranium.

The IAEA said they weren't cooperating as of this month. Before that they were cooperating despite the fact that the US had withdrawn from the nuclear deal.

I wonder if anything started happening recently that would make Iran less interested in cooperating with the IAEA?

In fact, I think all evidence points to them removing assets from inspected sites knowing that those sites would soon be targets.

> Just explain why you have 60% enriched uranium.

For leverage, obviously.

If Israel were Iran's only rival then it would obviously do everything in its power to become nuclear capable because Israel violated international law to become nuclear capable. However, Iran has many rivals and does not want to set off a nuclear arms race in the middle east.

They also hoped to use the nuclear program as a bargaining chip to lift sanctions.

So Iran had reason to set themselves up to be able to get nuclear weapons, without actually getting nuclear weapons.

Now, that whole policy looks foolish and Iran's only real rational option is to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

iaea report saying that they been non-cooperative from 2019 and has been hiding stuff

https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/25/06/gov2025-38.pd...

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