Iran Catch-All | IRAN WAR

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superrific said:
So let's say a plutonium dirty bomb exploded on Wall Street. I have my doubts that the fallout would extend beyond Canal Street or Houston Street. And people in the Wall Street area could be evacuated without taking too much radiation. Now, Lower Manhattan would have to be shut down for a while while the stuff is cleaned up, so it would be impactful economically, but the death toll would probably be modest.

Which is, ironically, why Iran might try that approach. It's like a big escalation without being a turn-your-country-into-glass level escalation.
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If Iran or its proxies set off any type of nuclear bomb in lower Manhattan it would definitely be a turn your country into glass level of escalation, regardless of the death toll...
 
hedge said:
If Iran or its proxies set off any type of nuclear bomb in lower Manhattan it would definitely be a turn your country into glass level of escalation, regardless of the death toll...
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Well maybe Lower Manhattan wouldn't be the right target. Or maybe I'm just full of shit about this. It seems plausible that the reaction to a dirty bomb would be less than the reaction to a nuke (if for no other reason than to disincentivize nuke production), but plausible isn't the same as true.
 
wmheel1287 said:
So does that mean other countries have the right to attack us for weapons development? Im just trying to figure out the logic here.

Perhaps (and im just spitballing here), the main reason Iran wants a nuke is to prevent being at the whim of Israel and the US who have been the real aggressors in the ME for at least the last 35 years.
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The invasion of Iraq told every country everywhere, get a nuke or die. Following the rules doesn't protect you. Nukes protect you. Iran is getting bombed and nobody dares go near North Korea.
 
My understanding is that the diminution of Iranian air defenses makes success highly probable, but that could be military happy talk.

There has been talk of Israel mounting a commando raid on Fordow, but I don't know how realistic that is, especially now that they wouldn't have the element of surprise/
 
RaiGuy said:
Israel doesn't want to risk it's own soldiers' lives, so they are kind enough to volunteer the US to risk our soldiers' lives.
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Of course. If we get directly involved then we're suckers, plain and simple. Not unlike what the South Vietnamese did during the Vietnam War - we did much of the fighting for them while they hung back. And when we finally left for good in 1973 and North Vietnam and the Viet Cong attacked, the South Vietnamese military, now forced to carry the burden of fighting on their own, mostly folded like a house of cards and the war ended rather quickly. And Israel isn't even like South Vietnam as they've shown that they are fully capable of defending themselves and taking out Iranian assets by themselves. And yet they want us to put our people at risk to try and end a war they started.
 
Afghanistan is a more recent example than South Vietnam.

The only thing on the table that we can do that Israelis can't is to bomb Fordow from the air. I mean, we can do additional things that the Israelis can't, but they shouldn't be under consideration.
 
Huh? said:
Prevailing dogma is that the selling nation would be held responsible by the other nuclear powers for the consequences of that sale. It's MAD with a twist.
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I'm not sure what more the West could do to isolate Russia than they already have since their invasion of Ukraine, at least before Trump took office. Short of actually bombing or invading Russia somehow, that is.
 
superrific said:
For one thing, transportation. It's not as if those trade routes carry the big bales of marijuana so useful for nuke smuggling.
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Nuke bombs don't have to be giant - at least that is what Ben Affleck said in The Sum of All Fears .
Huh? said:
Prevailing dogma is that the selling nation would be held responsible by the other nuclear powers for the consequences of that sale. It's MAD with a twist.
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So honestly if we're talking about terrorists doing terrorism things, not much. If the goal is to prevent Iran from being able to nuke manhattan or drive an explosive boat into the US, we aren't fool-proofing this at all.
 
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