Someone should really investigate what happened to the 15-year Iran nuclear agreement that set limits on stockpile size and enrichment levels, and allowed international inspector verification.
I remember the fate of Iraq's WMD (chemical) -- they denied inspectors, blatantly lied on the reports for many years. It was all way too suspicious, but their biggest trick was that when UN approved a military intervention, no WMDs were actually found. That put US in a very bad position because they couldn't prove WMDs existense. Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs (or just hidden well).
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.
We're so back. Another quagmire war in the middle east. Exactly what we needed.
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.
> they denied inspectors, blatantly lied on the reports for many years.
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.
" 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 ...)
this is a misunderstanding of the full context. The US abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 under Trump's order to withdraw from the agreement (which was, IMO, strictly part of his package to ruin the legacy of Obama, who he despises deeply). This essentially killed the primary reason Iran agreed in the first place, which was relief from sanctions. However the agreement remains in force to this day and is still monitored by the IAEA. So it's not very surprising that Iran resumed their enrichment activities [1] and Trump's actions in 2018 has led to vastly higher tensions between the US/Iran/Israel.
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.
I really thought Iran was breaking the deal too. Just did a google search and found articles from politico and AP fact checking and it seemed that Iran was complying with the deal.
Do you have any links or relevant sources to show that they weren't?
Given the thoroughness of Israel's intelligence on Iran I doubt it would have been moved without detection. Even if they did manage to move it, the moment enrichment starts back up it will just be bombed again. If it looks like a new facility is being built even deeper underground then that will just be bombed before it starts up. Without air defenses Iran doesn't have a lot of options and Gaza has shown putting an enrichment facility in the basement of a school/hospital isn't going to stop a bombing either. I'm not a military strategist but to me it seems like Iran's first priority before anything else is regaining control of their own skies.
So it turns out dismantling an entire nation's nuclear infrastructure just requires a bit of coordination with foreign intelligence and a couple of well placed airstrikes. Who knew it was that simple?
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.
Israel needed the US involved more than it needs to destroy any particular equipment. Even if their intelligence indicated it moved, they'd absolutely still tell Trump that he needed to bring the B-2s down on Fordo.
Give the guy a finish line to carry the baton over, even if you already know it's not actually the finish line.
Our intelligence didn't know that Iran was trying to build a Nuclear Bomb, so we had to do this attack, but now our intelligence definetly knows:
'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."
Or 80 liters in the form of UF₆ (which it probably is). About half of an oil barrel. You wouldn't put it all in a single barrel of course: that would explode.
When you have total dominance over an opponent, you don’t need the rules of war.
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.
The world of warfare sun tzu planned for is pretty different. Now the real war for western nations is maintaining public support for the war, not actually winning the war. Dropping fliers and tweets that you are about to bomb the area before you drop the bombs is pretty common
The unfortunate asterisk is that enriching from 60% to 90% takes comparatively little time and equipment. We're not absolutely certain there isn't another small, yet-undiscovered, secret enrichment plant.
> "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."
Remember when the Bush administration burned 2 trillion dollars and more than 100 000 lives because Iraq had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that they never had?
Yep, we're back at it again. Latin Americans have a name for it: "Imperialismo Americano".
Yep, but people look at it in different ways. It feels different, depending on how it affects you.
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.
Israel is the tip of the lance of the American Imperialism projecting power throughout the Middle East with the American backing. The regular American isn’t the beneficiary in any way, quite on the contrary, its their taxes that are backing it.
It's honestly incredible how we've learned absolutely nothing. I thought for sure that universally-agreed-upon catastrophe of Iraq would cause the lesson to stick, but no, we're running through the same playbook word-for-word. Including the goose-stepping support of the media: go to the homepage of "liberal" publications like The Atlantic right now and you can see full-throated support of the war and them discovering how much they love Trump now.
Readit News
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 is quite untrue. Uranium is only marginally radioactive.
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.
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...
The US (specifically Trump at the behest of Netanyahu) broke the agreement, no one else.
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_...
Do you have any links or relevant sources to show that they weren't?
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.
Give the guy a finish line to carry the baton over, even if you already know it's not actually the finish line.
Dead Comment
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
Dead Comment