Officials concede they don't know the fate of Iran's uranium stockpile
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Do you have any links or relevant sources to show that they weren't?
https://chatgpt.com/share/6859c708-e53c-8002-bbdb-14150cb4d0...
The upshot is that the US terminated the deal in 2019 and then the Iranians started "racing" for a bomb.
Before you think the nuclear deal was good, I have to ask: Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"?
It seems a bit like holding the world hostage. There are other ways to stop the bomb program, as we have now seen. The diplomatic solution grants Iran permission to destabilize the region by funding Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.
I'm pretty ok bombing hostile religious fanatics trying to develop nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
Lots of nations are "bad actors" in lots of ways. And sanctions come in many different shapes and sizes.
So yes, it is absolutely OK to sanction a country more because they are building a nuclear bomb, and then remove those extra sanctions if they stop.
Sanctions aren't all-or-nothing. The whole idea is that the more you go along with international norms, the less you're sanctioned. Otherwise they wouldn't work to change behavior, because change is always a matter of degrees. Iran isn't going to become Switzerland overnight. That's not how countries work.
As Morpheus said, "Welcome to the real world."
I'm pretty okay bribing nations to verifiably not build nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
Obviously you have to fucking bribe them! Bribing is infinitely better than bombing, where each marginal bombing increases the imperative for every other state to develop their own nukes by reaffirming they are permanently at the mercy of nuclear states!
Umm, what? There are plenty of countries that "have a seat at the table" without nuclear weapons. Depending on what you mean by "seat at the table", of course, but I'm not sure there's any way to define it that excludes 95% of countries.
I'm very happy the US got involved and destroyed their enrichment sites. I'm also happy Israel didn't wait around for Iran to destroy them, which they've actively been trying to do in this war.
Have you seen Israeli leaders plans for 'Greater Israel'?
> I'm very happy the US got involved and destroyed their enrichment sites.
A - Did they though?
B - Cheering on huge breaches of international law, spurring nations to develop their own nuclear weapons and ignore peace talks, seems rather short-sighted.
> I'm also happy Israel didn't wait around for Iran to destroy them, which they've actively been trying to do in this war.
... That's quite the cherry on a remarkably ahistorical cake. Countries generally respond to people genociding and invading their neighbours, assassinating their negotiators and scientists, etc.
However, unlike chemical substances, radiation is easily detectable even in minuscule quantities. Just transporting radioactive materials leave a detectable trace, so I bet they won't be lost for long. The only way to actually hide them is to contaminate the whole area with the same materials.
For whatever you feel about WMDs or the justification for the Iraq war, the facts are we spent almost two decades in the first go round, found no WMDs, killed a dictator we installed, blew up a shit ton of infrastructure, rebuild a shit ton of it, killed probably millions of innocent people, absolutely blew up the Taliban and later ISIS's recruitment numbers, made ourselves look fucking stupid on the global stage, then pulled out, leaving billions in military materiel to be claimed by the people we were ostensibly there to stop.
An utter fucking farce, and we have learned absolutely nothing. Time to send more young men to die.
This isn't even to say they are individually imperialists, but every last one, as soon as they take the oath of office, immediately begins getting their hands soaked, drenched in blood. They can't not. That's what the system does and that's all it can do. And the few candidates who ran on the idea that that should be changed were roundly rejected by their associated party, and an independent has received, at most, 5% of the vote?
Nah. Trump was never going to see anything, even for his particularly egregious offenses. I knew it in 2018 and I still know it. If he ever faces the most meager iota of consequences I'll eat my favorite hat, and post video here.
"War crimes" and "crimes against humanity" sound a lot like offenses to so-called international law (cough, treaties).
What does that matter when getting elected was apparently all he needed to dodge the entire thing? There's no evidence at all that said prosecution will resume when (if?) he leaves the White House, he's had free reign to demolish the case against him while in power, and again, all of this hinges on the Justice system actually holding a president accountable for crimes, international or otherwise, which has yet to be done, ever.
Even NIXON didn't actually get prosecuted for anything and (at least before Trump) he was the most crooked president ever, and his crooked actions in office persist to this day in the form of the war on drugs. When you're president, apparently, crime is just legal. It was for Nixon, and it has thus far for Trump.
Well it is relevant to your statement that neither party wants to see a president get convicted. And understanding there is some wiggle room in your exact phrasing, the dems presumably wouldn't have permitted or endorsed the prosecution if they didn't want a conviction.
> getting elected was all he needed
I mean, getting elected president of the United States is probably one of the hardest things to do. I don't like that he has immunity while holding office but the voters used their authority over the justice system to excuse him. It sucks, but it means the DOJ and Atlanta DA office didn't get their day in court. Well, DA Willis kinda shot herself in the foot, but that's beside the point.
> There's no evidence at all that said prosecution will resume
That doesn't change the fact that he was being prosecuted and in all likelihood would have been convicted of numerous felonies. None of the facts will change in four years except that Trump will either be dead or pardon himself.
> Even NIXON didn't actually get prosecuted for anything
He wasn't convicted because he was pardoned. This is a good example to your earlier point of the US not wanting to suffer the disgrace of a president being convicted. But that has limits that we witnessed with Trump. It's unfair to say the justice system won't hold presidents accountable when it doesn't actually get the opportunity due to a pardon from the executive or, in Trump's case, the will of the electorate.
If my suspicion is right, that was one of the more spectacular political miscalculations in American history. If I'm wrong... well, maybe the DOJ was investigating and stuff, but from the outside it looks like they wasted a year that they really could have used.
That said, the Jan 6 prosecutions followed the traditional, deliberate bottom-up approach. The classified documents case was derailed by a maverick Trump judge but would eventually see a jury. The Georgia state charges were hamstrung by their chosen RICO path and Willis's ill-advised romantic entanglement. It could be that Biden and the DNC stayed out of it in a deliberate attempt to take the high road and/or avoid handing Trump a political defense.
On January 7 everyone thought Trump's political career was over and that he could only delay justice. Alas, he set up a very large inflation time bomb in 2020 and the rest is history.
It's true that he wasn't going to be imprisoned, but he wasn't going to "dodge the entire thing". I don't know whether he would have been prosecuted or not; Ford pardoned him before we got a chance to find out.
There is, of course, a lot of pressure for him to resign or for various other things to happen that he is currently managing to put on hold due to the war, but that's legal, and doesn't require wartime.
Absent all that, he faces elections in 2026.
Iran already knows that Israel can decapitate them at will, but not occupy them. Nothing has changed with these strikes.
Bombing nuclear facilities and killing scientists kicks the can down the road and that has worked for decades. But the US/Israel coalition is also trying to negotiate or orchestrate regime change, which could provide a more lasting impact.
Every respected strategist said the exact same fucking thing about Iraq before we killed 17 years there. Didn't stop us from trying and failing.
Well, the hand and the head are different body parts, but one controls the other
citation needed
Are there any credible signs of this?
Considering how far Israel has gone in Gaza, I wouldn't rule out them pursuing maximized goals in Iran.
I can't give you a prediction with timing either, because Israel would have to claim that Iran had rebuilt its facilities for the US to get pulled back in again, and an outsider has no way of telling when they would choose to do that.
I feel about Iran war the same way: yes it's going to happen whether we want it or not, there's nothing we can do. If you persuade everyone to not interfere, Iran would just drop nukes on other countries, so there will be nothing to interfere into later.
Saudi Arabia always declared that if Iran gets nuclear, they will do too, and they have unlimited money to do that.
For many years the IAEA vacillated between praising and and admonishing the Iraqi's for their cooperation or lack thereof.
> It was all way too suspicious
Yea, for _both_ sides. There was clearly more politics being played in these deals than anyone let be known.
> Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs
There really were no WMDs. They have a shelf life. They expire. There was some evidence they did exist but were likely long gone. Hans Blix was pretty clear on this. This angered the CIA so greatly they made him a target to undermine him. It didn't work.
This is recent history and how quickly it is forgotten.
This is quite untrue. Uranium is only marginally radioactive.
If the inspectors are given sufficient access to do their inspections.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/20/iran-denies-enrichi...
" Iran has denied that it has intentionally enriched uranium to a purity of 84 percent ...
US-based financial news agency Bloomberg reported on Sunday that inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had found uranium enriched to a purity of 84 percent — just below the 90 percent required for a bomb — and are trying to determine if it was produced intentionally."
Peaceful energy requires well under 10%. Enriching any noticeable amount (i.e. >> research/medical quantities) beyond that level has only one purpose - weapons (and you can make a weapon even with slightly sub-90%, and 84% does sound there, it is just a bit more technically complex and yield may be less, yet who measures ...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
Edit: judging by the answers the word "why" happened to be misunderstood in my question. I'll restate it - what purpose Iran has been enriching uranium to 60% for?
So far the only plausible answer has been - weapons.
So, Iran:
- claimed intention of destruction of Israel and US,
- started the actual, not by proxy, war with Israel by missile attack on October 2024,
- and made all the practical steps toward obtaining nuclear weapons (and does have ballistic missiles to carry them)
It is well established by the IAEA itself that Iran fully honored the terms of the JCPOA up until Trump intentionally ruined the agreement by pulling the US out of it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
That was in 2018; the EU ended up themselves sanctioning Iran for ballistic missiles in 2024,
> "In a statement dated 13 September 2024, the EU strongly condemned the recent transfer of Iranian-made ballistic missiles to Russia, considered as a direct threat to European security [sic!] and as a substantive material escalation from the provision of Iranian UAVs and ammunition, which Russia had used in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. The High Representative stated that the EU would respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant restrictive measures against Iran."
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024...
> "The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on Iran’s deputy defense minister, senior members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and three airlines over allegations that they supplied drones, missiles and other equipment to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine."
https://apnews.com/article/eu-russia-drones-missiles-iran-sa...
https://theconversation.com/trumps-first-term-lies-at-the-he...
It's entirely in keeping with nature the man that he now claims to be the worlds peace maker.
but netanyahu wanted oct 7 to happen pretty badly as it's kept him out of jail for a couple of years now
While Trump took the first step down that lead to this path of destruction, but we would not have gotten to where we are now without the enthusiastic help of a cast of cretinous politicians just like him. A pox on all their houses.
The US (specifically Trump at the behest of Netanyahu) broke the agreement, no one else.
Give the guy a finish line to carry the baton over, even if you already know it's not actually the finish line.
No protracted negotiations, no international coalitions, no drawn-out sanctions, just precision and decisiveness. A button pressed here, a few planes there, and the problem vanishes. Permanently, of course.
And now, with Iran's nuclear ambitions supposedly neutralized in a single blow, we can all relax. The threat is gone. No strategic aftershocks, no long term consequences, no unintended escalation. Just peace, stability, and a region completely satisfied with the outcome.
One wonders what the last 15 years were for. Bureaucratic inertia? A lack of imagination?
Progress, it seems, is just a matter of revisiting the old playbook with a bit more confidence.
> And now, with Iran's nuclear ambitions supposedly neutralized in a single blow, we can all relax. The threat is gone. No strategic aftershocks, no long term consequences, no unintended escalation. Just peace, stability, and a region completely satisfied with the outcome.
Sounds like sarcasm to me.
The threat is obviously not "gone". Just substantially reduced. And we can't relax, we need to be vigilant to make sure they don't rebuild. But this certainly does seem to have been a relatively simple solution to the problem of Iranian nuclear armament.
Diplomacy is of course still a better long-term solution. But even diplomacy is a lot easier when you get to start the negotiations from a position of "No, you can't have nukes, period, regardless of whether you agree to any sort of deal or not."
This has unambiguously increased the imperative for Iran (and every other country) to acquire its own nuclear deterrent.
Truest thing ever said by a Trump spokesmodel!
'They are claiming that they moved some material," Mullin said, referring to Israel and Iran, respectively. "Our intelligence report says they didn't," the Oklahoma Republican said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
No, our intelligence services said they were not trying to build a nuclear bomb.
What you need is someone who understands politics.
We have forgotten the advice of the great Theodore Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”. There is no stick bigger than the US military and it’s been shoved up our own ass by our politicians.
Here's highly-cited nuclear weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis:
> "Let's say Iran decides to rush a bomb. Iran can install ~1.5 cascades a week. In six weeks, it could have 9 cascades of IR-6 machines. It would take those machines about 60 days to enrich all 400 kg to WGU. Altogether that's about five months although IMMV."
https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3l...
You could imagine all sorts of ways we could find out, from detectors to informants.
Yep, we're back at it again. Latin Americans have a name for it: "Imperialismo Americano".
In English, "America imperialism" is a phrase for political propaganda, like "woke", "freedom", etc. You can argue if it makes sense or not. You can disagree if it exists. It is an opinion.
In Latin America it is a fact of life, like rain and sunshine. It is there, everyone knows. No one denies it.
And how did America benefit? They didnt. But you know who did? Israel.
The fundies, who actually believe they're paving the way for the Second Coming.
American oil interests, for whom the Middle East is their primary competitor.
And, naively, there are people who didn't benefit, but believed the US' (oligarchs') interests would be furthered.
It's kind of crazy they even managed to draft people without congress approving it. The world wars really did kill the old American system of government.
Presidential powers are certainly too broad and too deep, but I don't think a country can function in 2025 with the system the founders envisioned - shit just moves too fast these days.
It all seems fine to me.
That's true but misleading. Congress has consistently authorized military action in almost¹ all of the extended wars and conflicts the US has been involved in after 1942. It's not like those presidents have ignored Congress and not sought congressional approval.
¹ Weasel word: I'm sure I've missed some but the big one I can think of is Libya during the Obama years, which didn't have congressional approval and wasn't a declaration of war either.
War is impossible for Congress to disapprove. You cannot pretend that option is even on the table when a Potus has expanded power to push the country into a war; how can congress disapprove an ongoing conflict in a country that prides itself on using military force?
Congress is not-really-declaring-war even more than prior centuries, independent from how the presidents (particularly the latest in this case) also totally-aren't-declaring-war more without congress often than ever before.
That would be a Constitutional crisis.
In Bob Woodward's books Rage, Peril, and War, he reported that General Mark Milley, Trump's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during his first presidency, made what he called an "oath" with the other service chiefs to prevent Trump from starting a war with Iran during his final days in office, after January 6th, 2021. Technically, the CJCS and officers are advisors only and have no actual control of the military, but Milley's plan was to exploit gaps between what's legal and what happens in reality. He knew that any major military actions had to come through him, and if he said "no," it would gum up the works even if it's not legal.
The CJCS and their officers all take an oath to the Constitution, not the president; the same is true for all officers and enlisted personnel in the military. We can only hope they'd honor that oath.
by voting. It's that simple.
Of course, it is far from clear what would happen if they did so vote.
https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf
—Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress
declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory
authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers
Resolution.Working together to solve problems makes you a target to primary voters back at home (i.e., the most hardcore people in your party), so the incentive to to do nothing and enjoy the perks as long as you can.
for something like what, precisely ?
Carter deployed troops to Iran without congressional approval, Reagan deployed troops or air strikes to Grenada, Libya and Lebanon without congressional approval. George HW Bush deployed troops to Panama and Somalia without congressional authorization using executive authority and broad interpretations of the 2001 AUMF. Clinton intervened in Haiti, bombed Bosnia and Kosovo, and performed air stikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. George W Bush conducted strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen without congressional approval. Obama used troops or Airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and notably sent US troops into Pakistan to apprehend Osama, a sovereing country without congressional authorization. Trump hit Syria and conducted strikes in Iraq against Iran without authorization. Biden conducted strikes in Syria and Iraq and assisted Ukraine in many ways although supposedly not through direct military involvement without congressional authorization.
I’m not sure why there is a sudden argument over whether Trump should be hamstrung, delay opportunities and eliminate surprise completely by having a congressional debate over acts of war that are not declarations of war that have been performed by virtually every president in modern history. It’s just not how the US Government works and Trumps actions in this case are completely in alignment with our norms.
Agreed, if I see a three-year old about to stick a butter knife into a 110V outlet, I will certainly stop him. Who could argue against that?
Not that he should get congressional approval on where to stick the knife.
Maybe it's a legal loophole where the President can unilaterally wage war on specific concepts, people, and physical locations, as long as they keep saying it's not a war against a foreign nation.
Because it is resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians?
It is easy to tell other people to go die for you.
Ukrainians do not want to be owned by Russia. Ukraine is being invaded by Russia. Why end it, if "ending it" means Ukraine gets taken over by Russia, and the people of Ukraine do not want that?
You don't have to like it, but that's the way it is.
The harsh truth is that Ukrainians are giving their lives for the freedom of Europeans and probably a chunk of the rest of the world population. Once one of the sides fully wins, Europe will get less safe, since the next step would be WMD.
We have not established a no-fly-zone, we have under delivered on promises, we abandoned them even after the mineral deal, and we have repeated lied and slandered their country while parroting Kremlin propaganda.
They're on your side that we should be doing those things to protect Ukraine. Like we promised all those decades ago.
It is profoundly clear that Ukraine sought protection in exchange for their actual protection. And regardless of the actual "required" protections, we have clearly violated the spirit of the agreement and proven to the whole world that the US is not to be trusted as a policing force for real conflicts - only those it chooses to start for financial or political gain - and that non-prolifération is a failure of a policy that only leads to becoming a victim of a lopsided war.
Now, Iran acts as the finalizing example that any nation without nukes is a nation without true sovereignty. Even North Korea is treated with more respect.
> Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Mineral deal protection racket.
> Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Russia has threatened Ukraine with nuclear retaliation, even if they have not done it.
I absolutely oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine and think that we (and other allies) should continue giving them the means to resist. But at the same time Ukraine shouldn't have left themselves so vulnerable by letting their military collapse prior to 2014 through a combination of corruption and apathy. In an anarchic world order you can't depend on anyone else to keep you safe.
Genuine question: Why do you think politicians in US and EU would care about that?
Everything I've seen for the last ten years or so feels familiar. That very cult got a little watered down and has consumed the politics of the nation.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumai...
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, it's Marx. But mostly its Marx sorta responding to Mikhail Bakunin, the father of anarchism [0].
The question to these early socialists was: Why the fuck are these French peasants supporting Louis Napoleon III for president? It makes zero fucking sense. They were tearing their hair out trying to understand it.
Marx takes Bakunin to task in the novella above, and it's worth the full read if you still can't figure out why MAGA loves Donny. But, to me, Bakunin is still right and Marx was still wrong.
TLDR: Those French peasants really hated the bourgeois. So much so that they elected Napoleon III to president, knowing he would eventually take over in a coup and kill their nascent democracy, just because his election would piss off the effete bourgeois in the cities. The peasants know their life sucks and then they die. But the damn know-it-all bourgeois just need their faces rubbed in it, goddamnit. They know they are in a class war and they aren't winning it. The bourgeois don't, they think that they might make it out of the war, but the peasants know better and need to teach them a lesson. I'm heavily paraphrasing Bakunin here.
As for Donny, look, I think Bakunin's take on the French in 1850-ish is the right one here. The MAGA types know that Donny is a monster. But they really hate the DEI stuff and the liberal urban elites, more so than they hate Donny. They want these bourgeois liberals to feel the pain. It really does come down to 'liberal tears'.
Now, unfortunately, the proletariat here in 2025 are looking down the barrel of another 30 years in the middle east, literally. And the GWOT was already hard enough on them the last time. They do not like the idea of another war that they will be fighting and that the bourgeois will largely forget is occurring at all. Iran will decidedly not be 'liberal tears', but more concern trolling out of the Grey Lady, which MAGA really hates.
Once boys start coming back in body bags, yeah, sure, more patriotism, of course. And the proles and bourgeois will be at odds again, with sympathy coming from the bourgeois and not 'liberal tears'. Driving home that message of how MAGA is on the loosing side of the class war again.
But, and this I think is critical, they aren't going to be looking at Donny the same way. The 'fun' will have been had, and the reality of living on the loosing side will sink in again. It's pretty much what happened to Napoleon's congress in the 1870s after the Prussian war. Well that and Emperor Napoleon was captured in battle.
Anyway, Donny is in real danger, per Marx and Bakunin's take in 1850, of loosing his coalition with Iran. And, just like with Louis, I don't think Donny really knows that.
[0] no, not pitchforks and molotovs anarchism, but an-archy, without rulers old school anarchism.
Strictly speaking I think it was Signal'd. It may also have been WhatsApp'd if that wasn't banned yet.
It's super weird to go through life watching people's context window (I hate myself for using this term) get smaller as they get older, while I'm over here like "Haven't we been here before?"
Can you stop them from rebuilding?
It seems like all Trump does is to burn the cards that the US spent decades collection.
upd: corrected the weight from 100 to 400kg
I'd imagine you'd need at least a few trucks to move that stuff from point A to point B.
I’m sure they aren’t telegraphing capabilities, but aren’t monitoring devices trained on iran nuclear sites that have been in place for decades.
The intelligence value alone of knowing where materials are going would be so valuable that this has to be in place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/iran-remo...
> It appeared Iran intended to remove the bulk of the cameras and other monitoring gear installed as part of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers, according to Grossi. Without cameras in place, Iran could divert centrifuges used for uranium enrichment to other unknown locations, he said.
I'm honestly surprised Israel hasn't used its nukes yet. Against non-nuclear nation, there isn't really much threat of retaliation. Given how much Iran has already suffered, they'd be stupid to not try & get nukes. If even North Korea can get them, it can't be that hard.
Also, I wonder if Iran really has that much uranium or if it's another Iraq WMD situation again considering the lack of radiation leakage and all
There is from the rest of the world. Israel needs the west on its side. Using nukes would guarantee that support would end, which would make them extremely vulnerable.
Certainly Nuclear strikes against Iran would be a huge overreach. But no other country is going to retaliate with a Nuclear strike on Israel. If for no other reason than it would certainly lead the US deploying its nuclear arsenal. Especially with the current administration, no one would count on them choosing a path of de-escalation.
Wasn't the entire point of this that now they don't have the facilities?
That's even in the title of this thread.
> Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators — one of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal — punched deep holes in the rock. The Israeli military’s initial analysis concluded that the site, the target of American and Israeli military planners for more than 26 years, sustained serious damage from the strike but had not been completely destroyed.
The article goes on to discuss how this is only initial analysis and that additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.
It's possible, and Iran has done it before (AFAIK, the only country), but this is about as easy as building a new facility from scratch (what they essentially did last time they moved a centrifuge).
It's not exactly portable, like a satellite dish or something.
And even if you transported some of the most complex parts (the centrifuge), they aren't really very useful on their own, without an entire facility.
So the idea that they're going to be up and running and further enriching uranium to bomb grade any time soon is - while theoretically not impossible - highly implausible.
The odds are likely higher that they've just got another facility no one yet knows about (which is low, but non-zero).
. . . right??
> Pakistan has assured Iran that if Israel uses nuclear weapons, Pakistan will retaliate with nuclear strikes as well.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/pakist...
But who knows if that's true or not.
And if Israel could use a nuke without nuclear retaliation in turn, they would proceed to annihilate half a continent. Once you get hit, it's far too late to retaliate.
Pakistan is establishing preemptive MAD in defense of barrier states, because if Israel does this, they're effectively already dead; they'll have nothing to lose. Israel can call it a bluff, but I personally think they're serious.
As a final consideration, if Israel drops nukes on Iran and is retaliated upon, the US is absolutely not going to start a global thermonuclear war and end all of humanity on their behest. Nor would China ever allow the US to get away with an counter invasion of Pakistan, leaving little other option.
The closest Israel came to using nukes was in `73 when it looked like it was about to be overrun by Arab armies on multiple fronts and also many suggested it should have dropped it on Gaza on Oct 7, but that would be seriously stupid even just for revenge, since you can't repopulate the area later.
You're also full of it talking about Iran's rocket forces.
Lookup eg. "Deep Dive Defense" on YT.