patrick.net

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=253479

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I speak of where do we, or any other nation, get the right to tell a sovereign nation what weapons they can possess -- and if they disagree we have the right to preemptively bomb them?

Incidentally while we're on this subject exactly how is it that Israel has the right to nukes but Iran (or any other nation) does not? Are we now imposing a religious litmus test on nuclear bomb possession by sovereign nations? May I ask, if we are, if both India and Pakistan pass that test? Don't give me any baloney about "deemocracy!" either; Israel is a theocratic republic by design and has every right to be -- but you cannot claim to be democratic when your Constitution protects a given religion and its representation in your government. Such a nation is a Theocratic Republic -- period.

And spare me the "oh they'll nuke someone" nonsense if they get one. Has North Korea nuked anyone yet? Remember we sanctioned the crap out of them trying to prevent them from getting a bomb. They not only got one they tested that and then a thermonuclear one. So much for that idea, never mind that everyone knows what happens if you do use one against someone else. Yes, the United States has, and we can argue whether it was a correct decision or not given the circumstances of the war we were engaged in at the time.

May I remind you (since people seem to forget) that making something that will go "boom" is very easy. Now doing it without killing yourself requires quite a lot of money and such but the only hard part of actually making a fission weapon is getting the fissile material; the rest is easy -- particularly if the person(s) making it are willing to die and thus all the precautions so you don't wind up with alpha-emitting things in your body are either not taken or less-than-perfect because you either are sloppy or just don't have the resources.

Note that I didn't say "an efficient fission weapon" but when it comes to fission bombs I'm not sure the person who gets nuked cares if you were efficient when it comes how much of the material underwent fission or not. They still got nuked.

Unlike the last time when Iran got into a dust-up over this and blasted Iran's nuclear facilities they now have actual missiles. There's a difference between a missile and a rocket. One has guidance and the other does not, never mind that once you have a guidance system you can design (and Iran has, and has demonstrated they have them) ballistic weapons (a cruise missile is a missile because it is guided, but it is not really a ballistic weapon.) Ballistic weapons are very hard to intercept and while you'll get some of them with modern interceptor technology you won't get them all, as has been amply demonstrated.

When it comes to international relations might often makes right, like it or not. Indeed virtually every piece of dirt on this mostly-blue ball has been contested via force of arms at some point in history. But let's not kid ourselves about how all this insanity took place in the so-called "modern era" with respect to Iran in the first place. Do recall that the United States deposed the sitting government of Iran back in the day because the nation expropriated the private company assets of a British firm -- BP. The insult wasn't to the United States, it was to Britain and yet we quite-literally ejected the sitting government of that country -- in 1953. Our claim at the time was that Iran was at risk of falling victim to Soviet influence and yeah, communism is bad. Well, maybe that threat was real and maybe it was not. We can debate that but we have that debate; we instead fomented a coup.

And we might have patted ourselves on the back at the time but what followed is hardly a shining beacon of success for democracy or anything else good and civil; we reinstalled the Shah who had lost his seat at the helm of the country. This, and what followed, is arguably what led to the Iranian Revolution including the taking of our people hostage and an awful lot of religious extremism in the decades since. Who did all that?

We did it.

So now here we are -- and like it or not if Iran wants a nuclear weapon -- or six -- they will have them. They likely already have a few. Crude, probably, but they'll still go "boom." Never mind that a "dirty" bomb has been within their capacity since they started using nuclear energy -- spent fuel is far nastier (not a little, a lot!) than an actual weapon in that its dangerous for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years.

That in a warhead or shell with entirely-conventional explosives would be extraordinarily nasty and there's exactly nothing anyone can do to prevent someone (including the Iranians) from packaging that crap around conventional explosives and shooting it at something. Well, other than being "hot" in that regard if you get anywhere near it you will die, of course.

We have no business being involved in this and kneeling before another nation who believes they do is not only unseemly its impeachable, for real if it gets us attacked with an Iranian nuclear device (whether an exploding one or a dirty bomb), and it might, its cause for much worse than mere impeachment as the Iranian nation has not attacked us.

Yes, I believe their leadership is crazy. Is this unique? It most-certainly is not and I would apply that label to the leadership of many nations.... perhaps including ours.
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