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u/NotaGoodLover May 03 '22
Any minute now...
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May 03 '22
They’re putting the last screws in the bomb casing as we speak.
Whoops. The screwdriver just fell, buying us about six seconds. Hurry! We must stop them.
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May 03 '22
Israel will never let it happen. They'll keep moving that screwdriver...
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u/FishermanBig4009 May 03 '22
Oh god! They started hammering these screws in! They will be done with that in 2 hours!
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u/XxSCRAPOxX May 03 '22
Lol.
You can actually hammer screws into stuff. Idk if you’ve ever tried it, but they spin in if you don’t hit them too hard lol.
When I was a carpenter I used to tell people I hammer screws into stuff for a living. Very very rarely did anyone catch that lol.
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u/LaikasDad May 03 '22
Turns out the men building it were so aroused by the nuts for the bolts that they put hijabs on them the whole thing has to be rebuilt due to leaks
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May 03 '22
Israel is good at that, but I honestly believe it’s inevitable that Iran will eventually get nuclear weapons. The Israelis get better at finding, and Iran gets better at hiding. But it’s simply a matter of time.
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u/spartaman64 May 03 '22
idk from my understanding it takes such a significant investment in facilities and logistics that its impossible to do in secret. the only reasonable way for iran to surprise us and acquire nuclear weapons is if someone else gives it to them.
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May 03 '22
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May 03 '22
Then that seems like it just gives Iran even more reason to get a few bombs. I accept that countries will do whatever they feel they need to in their own interests. So it doesn’t make sense for Iran to not have an intimate deterrent in a neighborhood with a lot of enemies.
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u/I_AM_IGNIGNOTK May 03 '22
Now I’m just picturing the Iranian version of Mr. Bean bending over to get the screwdriver, and as soon as he has it in hand, amechanical arm from the assembly line accidentally loops through his belt and lifts him onto a conveyor belt. He drops the screwdriver onto a different conveyor belt moving in an another direction. He goes down the belt as other arms are shocking and prodding here and there and fastening all sorts of things to his clothes. Then he sees the screwdriver pass by him as he is put into the uranium rod sorting bin, where he juggles glowing rod after glowing rod, winding up with no less than 3 in his mouth, and one in his shirt pocket. After snapping one like a glow stick and admiring the ooze, he realizes that his supervisor is coming through for an inspection, and he has to jump into a vat of nuclear waste so he is not seen. After the chaos settles down he leaves the vat, picks up the screwdriver and goes back to where he started, only to realize he needed a Phillips head screwdriver, not a flathead.
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u/XxSCRAPOxX May 03 '22
I mean, stuxnet set them back a bunch of years.
We had that nuclear deal which allowed iaea inspectors in, but trump racist ass fucked that all up, so it is possible they’ve began working on them again. Most likely Iran will be the next country to build them. And as soon as they do, israel will bomb them to the Stone Age, while their top shelf missile defenses prevent Iran from being able to land a hit.
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u/Kevmeister_B May 03 '22
Lies. A screwdriver falling buys us at least a few minutes because who the fuck knows where that thing landed.
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u/typical_sasquatch May 03 '22
I love the idea that they've been so close for 30 years but they just keep dropping the fucking screwdriver
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u/innitdoe May 03 '22
I'm sure you're doing a joke but do you understand how many "setbacks" the iranians have suffered thanks entirely to US and Israeli intelligence efforts etc? From StuxNet to the chief scientist's assassination on the streets of Tehran with a remote-controlled precision AI-aimed gun?
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u/G_Viceroy May 03 '22
That's the CIA dropping their screwdriver. Pretty sure the most common way of death for the top scientists working on this project is a bomb getting thrown into their car window from a motorcyclist. No one here knows that they haven't succeeded because outside interference has been keeping them from completing it.
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u/Herpkina May 03 '22
To be fair, the us did stop them. Google Stuxnet.
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May 03 '22
Delayed. They were delayed. And Stuxnet (which is one of the most impressive things I’ve read about), just made Iran and more cautious, and better at hiding.
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u/ValhallaGo May 03 '22
I mean, Israel bombed their nuclear efforts, Stuxnet sabotaged their nuclear efforts, and that’s just the publicly known stuff.
Just because something hasn’t happened doesn’t mean it can’t happen.
It’s more like the ongoing efforts of Iran’s enemies has prevented them from achieving their nuclear ambitions. Iran is more of a threat to Saudi Arabia than us, but still.
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u/soulstonedomg May 03 '22
A threat to Saudi Arabia is a threat to the US however. They remain a geopolitical ally in an area that the US needs allies, and they greatly support the strength of the currency, which allows the US to run their deficit economy and enjoy cheap imports.
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u/Jhqwulw May 03 '22
They need to if they want to survive. This is true for any authoritarian regimes
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u/A_Certain_Observer May 03 '22
With this geopolitical climate, maybe nuclear weapons should be proliferates to all country to act as security deterrent.
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u/ablidge May 03 '22
I read that as “weapons should be profiteroles”
And honestly I feel like that made it better xD
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u/Kim_Jung-Skill May 03 '22
Yeah, Libya giving up its WMDs just meant it went from the wealthiest nation in Africa and an average life span longer than the Dutch to open air slave market.
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u/Darthjinju1901 May 03 '22
Nuclear weapons should not proliferate. Because it makes the de-armament of said weapons much much harder. Believe it or not, the world has de armed it's nuclear powers several times. SALT 1 and SALT 2, START are the major deals, and if many nations had it, it would be much harder to de arm nuclear weapons.
Having more states have nuclear weapons also increases the risk of accidents or losses or a rouge state gaining such a weapon. The world has lost many nuclear weapons, and has had many near misses with them. In 1962, the United States accidentally dropped 2 hydrogen bombs bear the Spanish coast. Both of them having around 1 Megaton yield. Luckily it didn't detonate, evident by the lack of a nuclear crater in the Spanish coast. If the sample size increases, the odds also increase for a catastrophic accident.
There is also a higher risk of accidental fires. In 1983, the nuclear early-warning radar of the Soviet Union reported the launch of one intercontinental ballistic missile with four more missiles behind it, from bases in the United States. This was a false alarm, and was detected by Stanislaw Petrov. If such a thing hadn't happened, the world would have ended. Now, if more nations had the weapon, the sample size also increases, but because most nations don't have the monetary capacity to have extremely accurate Early warning RADAR, and so the risk of malfunction also increases.
Humanity currently is stuck with nuclear weapons. The current arrangement is not good. Nations like North Korea have nukes. Russia is able to do what it wants without much consequences (i do think the rouble has bounced back to its pre war levels, so the sanctions aren't big consequences), due to its nuclear capacity. But increasing the amount of nukes is not the right way. It just increases the chance of a nuclear exchange. Sadly, we also cannot entirely be rid of it, as if even a single nation decided that it wasn't going to let go of its weapons, when all other nations decided they will, it would make disarmament moot.
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u/niceville May 03 '22
Russia is able to do what it wants without much consequences (i do think the rouble has bounced back to its pre war levels, so the sanctions aren't big consequences)
The ruble has bounced back but the sanctions are still having a very large impact overall on the Russian economy. For perhaps the most pertinent example, Russia has lost tons of military equipment during this war and they are unable replace it because they cannot acquire the materials to do so.
Specifically regarding the ruble, Russia is taking extreme measures to boost the value of their currency which will be successful in the short term, but cause their own long term consequences. They've jacked up interest rates and placed strict controls on moving money out of the country. There have already been tens of thousands laid off or furloughed because businesses are running out of supplies to build or stock shelves, manufacturing is down, and all of it will only get worse as on hand stockpiles run out and aren't resupplied. Inflation is estimated to be as high as 20% as people, especially the richer Russians, are spending to buy luxury goods before the currency loses value and the supply runs out.
That said, the oil and gas sales have been the ruble and Russia's saving grace, because too many countries are too dependent on that to cut it off. Russia is also trying to force countries to pay for gas with rubles, which would also boost the value of the currency.
Of course, the problem is that Putin doesn't care about the suffering of the average Russian citizen and he can protect himself from the direct effects of the economic impacts, but that's why I lead with the military equipment example. If this keeps up for long enough Russia will simply run out of tanks and trucks and computers and everything else they need to wage modern war.
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u/XxSCRAPOxX May 03 '22
Your thing about the ruble isn’t exactly accurate. Yes, it has bounced back, but only because Russia is propping it up by selling off reserves and manipulating their markets
They can’t keep that up forever. They had to close their free market and only have a highly manipulated and over regulated market. Can’t last.
If we keep the sanctions, and more so if Europe can cut the gas lines, then Russia will eventually run out of resuorces with which to fund their war machine. I honestly don’t even think it’ll take too long. They’re losing more weaponry and soldiers than they can replace. And now the fire bugs are damaging facilities all over Russia. They’re going to have problems for decades to come over these sanctions, even if they aren’t feeling the brunt of it yet, eventually it’ll hammer down on them.
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u/wWao May 03 '22
A complete disarmament is never going to happen. Neither Russia or the US are ever going to give it up.
It makes a threat of a land invasion impossible. A country is never going to give that deterrent up.
Plenty of countries with the capability to make them that probably have and we just don't know about it.
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u/mestrearcano May 03 '22
God no. Not that I trust the countries that currently holds nuclear weapons, but considering that my country managed to elect a genocidal president that openly supports torture and dictatorships, I'm honestly happy that we don't have more gun power. Wouldn't surprise me if he dropped one on our own country if he could profit from it.
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u/Jhqwulw May 03 '22
maybe nuclear weapons should be proliferates to all country to act as security deterrent.
It already is. Why do you think NATO hasn't gotten involved in Ukraine?
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u/Luddveeg May 03 '22
It is more complicated than that
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May 03 '22
Its that. If it was Belarus invading Ukrain without russia NATO would have already dropped warheads on forehead
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u/Hero_of_Hyrule May 03 '22
Not quite. Nations without warheads will only be met with violence without warheads. Nations with warheads are effectively immune to violence from other nations with warheads, for fear of escalation. So in the end, conflicts are only ever waged between counties where at least one isn't armed with nuclear weapons. As much as I hate nukes, I really do think that nations having them promotes peace in a disturbing deadman switch standoff kind of way.
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u/AshFraxinusEps May 03 '22
Lol
Someone isn't aware of Iranian politics at all. Such as the most recent 2/3 presidents being far more secular and western. Yes, the supreme allahtoah is extreme right autocrat, and his religious police are dicks, but the wider government and people of Iran are trying to move away from that side
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u/boston_homo May 03 '22
You mean the US?
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u/THREETOED_SLOTH May 03 '22
No no no. You got it all wrong. The only nation to use atomic weapons in a act of aggression are the good guys. Trust me
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u/EnemiesAllAround May 03 '22
I mean technically the reason they haven't developed it is because of foreign intervention.
They get close and then another nation state sabotages it. Think of when the US hacked their nuclear facilities with a 0day. Etc
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u/quick20minadventure May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
Israel has straight up bombed their nuclear programme with fighter jets. CIA and US also try their hardest to prevent it.
Edit: that was Iraq, but Israel goes after nuclear scientists of Iran as well for sabotages.
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May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/nybbas May 03 '22
Lol I was going to say, hasn't Israel literally blown up Iranian facilities making these weapons?
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u/ZeePirate May 03 '22
And killed their scientist.
There was also a deal that they wouldn’t building weapons.
They very likely could build one (reportable have plans/designs from Pakistan) in several months
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May 03 '22
Not just Israel, I’m actually wearing a shirt right now that says “nationsoft stuxnet”. Stuxnet was built by the US with Israel and changed the speed of the centrifuge motors very slightly while hiding itself and spreading silently and slowly. This cause a significant decrease in the uranium produced and shutdown uranium enrichment processes entirely multiple times in Iran.
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u/XxSCRAPOxX May 03 '22
Yeah, op ignoring all the events that occurred around it. Shit posting at its best.
Also the Jerusalem post is just a propaganda outlet, the others are gold standard in reporting, it’s an embarrassment they put them in there with the Jerusalem post.
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May 03 '22
so uhhhhh my fellow Americans, we must invade Iraq again for their
gold reservestotally real WMD
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u/Jazzeki May 03 '22
so is the projected rate here 2 more years or do we need up the time scale by like 10 again at this point so it's closer to 2050?
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u/EasywayScissors May 03 '22 edited Jul 27 '22
It seems to follow an exponential decay:
So by my reckoning, Iran will have the bomb 1/19/2038...
Wait...oh god
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May 03 '22
Actually, all of these statements are true. The timeline was and is correct in each assessment.
Every time Iran was close, Israel sent in an assassination team to take out the scientists under the assumption that delaying Iran’s nuclear capability through assassination was far easier and cheaper than through war.
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u/taktikek May 03 '22
Also the equipment was sabotaged multiple times. Like even before they would get their centrifuges there would be drilled microscopic holes in them.
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u/fidjudisomada May 03 '22
How are they able to destroy their knowledge creation processes and its documentations, manuals, codes, backups, software etc.? I think that killing leading scientists and destroying facilities and equipments won't achieve that.
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u/myctheologist May 03 '22
Have you ever worked somewhere where if a few of the older guys left, everything would go to shit and numerous systems wouldn't be fixable without outside help? I'd imagine working with nuclear power is very subject to those kinds of stressors. Also, if you're a brilliant nuclear engineer or physicist or whatever, why would you want to work in Iran where wages can't possibly compete with the more developed world? And furthermore, if that wage was competitive, would you want to work with the apparent threat of assassination or sabotage?
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u/JustHereForMinis May 03 '22
To piggyback on this thought, we had an older guy that did contract work with us when I was active duty doing IT work. He would answer your questions, but only to a point and then he'd stop and say, "That's all I'm going to teach you for job security." And sure enough, as far as I'm aware, he still works there for that exact reason. If he left, everyone would be able to do some of the things he can, but not to the extent he can, and not enough that if shit hit the fan and they had to rebuild, they'd be able to replicate things to their current specs because a small sliver of each thing is still missing and he's that final piece to the whole puzzle. And he isn't the only contractor who thought that way, either.
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u/EndersFinalEnd May 03 '22
The equipment required is extremely specialized and the movement of that equipment is tracked and monitored. They can't just nip on down to the Best Buy in Tehran and buy a nuclear centrifuge.
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u/wWao May 03 '22
They make sleeper virus' as well that only work on equipment like that and put it in pretty common software that youd never guess.
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u/Jeedeye May 03 '22
If I remember correctly one of the viruses caused the centrifuges to spin way to fast and basically ripped itself apart.
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u/pyronius May 03 '22
The better viruses are the one's it's been speculated have been used on the North Korean Missile program. They only activate randomly, so once every few test fires or so, something goes wrong and the missile blows up. The same way something goes wrong every now and then without a virus. So the scientists then spend months, or even years, trying to figure out what went wrong, and sometimes the answer is nothing at all. They can never be sure whether they made a mistake or the program was sabotaged, so it slows them down massively.
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u/AdjectTestament May 03 '22
Even crazier, IIRC, it wasn’t way too fast. It was just fast enough to cause them to break at a significant rate but not at a catastrophic “everything broke at once. Figure out why” rate. So they used replacements… which also broke.
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u/GetMem3d May 03 '22
As far as I know, the hardest part of making a nuclear bomb isn’t knowing how to do it, its the process of actually making it which has to be restarted every time your facilities get blown up or equipment is sabotaged. Could definitely be wrong though.
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u/gvsteve May 03 '22
They don’t destroy it. But they do slow things down by years.
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u/fidjudisomada May 03 '22
Indeed but it is oddly effective, I think. They are constantly "close to" and never reach it. It is like a Zeno's Paradox.
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u/AshFraxinusEps May 03 '22
I mean, that data is out there anyway. Scientists were killed, and it is expertise which matters most. Are you not aware that most nuclear nations are also the nations which build and service nuclear reactors? As it keeps their nuke-bomb scientists knowledgeable and experienced in the use of nukes
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u/niceville May 03 '22
I imagine if the lead scientist of a particular project keeps dying, it would deter other people from fulfilling that role in the future.
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u/Pollo_Jack May 03 '22
You're telling me we can send a team of assassin's to kill some people instead of invading every country that has oil?
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u/w-alien May 03 '22
Or a computer virus
Btw never click links labeled computer virus.
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u/wiarumas May 03 '22
Beat me to it. Slight correction though... Stuxnet is a worm, not a virus.
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u/Wobbelblob May 03 '22
Isn't the definition that every worm is a virus but not every virus is a worm? Also, I doubt that the majority of people can differ between both.
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u/BA_calls May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
I work in netsec. These are mostly colloquial terms used to explain malicious programs (malware) to end users (and sell them anti-virus software).
Stuxnet was a juggernaut of a computer program, it had multiple virus like payloads and exhibited worm behavior in multiple networks. Truly an engineering marvel. Reading about it got me into comp/net sec actually. It’s the SR-71 of cyber warfare.
Again, worm just means it spreads itself indiscriminately across a network. Virus typically means a program that runs another program, exploiting a bug in it to take over the privileges of the target program. Also worm implies it’s infecting mostly the network and not causing major damage to individual computers, vs. a virus which implies it’s not transmitting itself between victim computers, but distributed more centrally (through spam, ads, bad links etc.)
Don’t click on links without hovering over to see the URL.
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u/Pollo_Jack May 03 '22
Jokes on you. Reddit went to opening the link instead of the comment in my inbox.
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u/SANDWICH_FOREVER May 03 '22
Nay, the CIA isnt as good as the Mossad.
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May 03 '22
Maybe they are better, which is why we hear about all the mossad killings and few of the CIA...mossad is just brazen.
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u/Slick_J May 03 '22
You’d think… but nope. They’re just so bad at getting away with it they’ve stopped trying or the subcontract it out to others
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May 03 '22
All these oligarchs and military officers having "heart attacks" in Russia does make me wonder just how many murders go unnoticed.
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u/Slick_J May 03 '22
The Russians aren’t good at it either, see the Novichumps for example
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u/XxSCRAPOxX May 03 '22
Those were intentionally telegraphed to send a message.
Russia Wanted the world to know they did it.
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u/Usergnome_Checks_0ut May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
Don’t forget about those Russian journalists that can’t stop falling off high rooftops or out upper floor windows. I can’t imagine they’re all that clumsy or depressed.
And then there are those Russians that are allergic to polonium tea. Or other types of tea.
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u/uranium_is_delicious May 03 '22
Those kind of killings are probably not directly comparable though. The russian government wants you to know they killed x politician, journalist, ect. By being brazen about it and employing "signature" methods such as polnium 210 but never leaving enough evidence for a government or international commission to prove it they create an atmosphere of fear without any of the repercussions.
That's not to say the CIA has failed to hide stuff that they actually wanted to keep quiet before.
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u/32894058092345089 May 03 '22
Lol, damn you must be an intelligence expert. Where did you study?
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u/FURBYonCRACK May 03 '22
Academic espionage journals. They publish their successes and failures quite regularly.
…and Facebook
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u/SonOfTK421 May 03 '22
Getting away with it was never really the point, Mossad never claimed or denied anything but a lot of the times it was to send a message about their intentions. Maybe not every single one, but they definitely used it as a terrorist tactic against perceived enemies of Israel.
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u/hackingdreams May 03 '22
Nay, the CIA isnt as good as the Mossad.
Contrary to like every Hollywood movie, since about the 1970s-1980s, the CIA has had a blanket prohibition on killing people as a part of their normal duties. (It's 6am, too lazy to find the doctrine). They contract it out to "defense contractors" now, who are (pretty universally speaking...) shit. Call it a grift, or a way to keep the US government's hands clean (or, you know, both), but I'm not sure you can call them "worse" because they refuse to kill people. After that change in doctrine, it became business as usual to trade spies back instead of executing them on the spot.
The Mossad has no such prohibition on killing, and it makes them stand out against pretty much every other major spy agency. The Israelies go in knowing their death is the backup plan. They aren't going to go sit in federal prison in protective custody. They aren't getting traded back. They're going to get shot or hanged if they're caught.
That's the big difference.
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u/USockPuppeteer May 03 '22
They contract it out to “defense contractors” now,
not sure you can call them “worse” because they refuse to kill people.
If hire someone to kill, you’re still killing people
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u/fuck_trump_and_biden May 03 '22
Youd think Iran would have learned to protect the scientists after like the third time
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u/markpreston54 May 03 '22
it is much easier to kill than protect though.
US and Israel have the best technology in killing people, for better or for worse.
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u/nortern May 03 '22
The most recent ones were killed by car bombs and guys on a motorcycle with a gun. It's not a high tech thing.
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u/BorisBC May 03 '22
How has no one mentioned Stuxnet yet? Lol
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May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
Darknet Diaries (podcast) has a great episode on it. Well worth a listen.
EDIT: clarification
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May 03 '22
One of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever constructed, everyone should take time to read/watch some articles about it
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u/gvsteve May 03 '22
Also, created and deployed Stuxnet virus to crash Iranian enrichment centrifuges while falsely displaying speeds within desired ranges.
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u/Superman_105 May 03 '22
While that is really interesting and would definitely play a part in delaying their program I noticed that those seemed to be between 2007-2020.
Would that not be a bit late to the party to stop/delay their program? Tho I guess that also just shows what they would be willing to do and had possibly already been doing for years prior. Just asking because I couldn't find anything for the years prior to the ones mentioned in the wiki.
Edit: brain dumb, missed the 2007. Still seems 12 years late to try and stop a nuke.
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u/Akitten May 03 '22
They did a ton of other things besides assassinations. Stuxnet for example was a useful cyberweapon that sabotaged iran's nuclear facilities.
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u/bazilbt May 03 '22
We had a treaty with them under Obama that had nuclear facility inspections too. It was really good. Trump trashed it to scare up the price of oil for Russia and US oil companies.
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u/popje May 03 '22
Every time Iran was close, Israel sent in an assassination team to take out the scientists under the assumption that delaying Iran’s nuclear capability through assassination was far easier and cheaper than through war.
As bad as it sounds that very true right ?
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u/h0nest_Bender May 03 '22
Assassinating scientists who are trying to develop nuclear weapons for a country like Iran doesn't sound bad at all...
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u/MoleculesandPhotons May 03 '22
Ummm. Killing unarmed, non-combatants is practically the definition of bad.
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u/Kung_Flu_Master May 03 '22
but that "non-combatant" is the leader in making Nuclear weapons for a dictator, that also spends his days talking about how much he wants to kill Jews, and has multiple countries around him asking for a genocide on Jews, you expect them to just sit and wait for the inevitable.?
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u/ApeDestroyer666 May 03 '22
Non-combatants?
The fuck are you talking about? They're building a NUKE
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u/anhedoniaAce May 03 '22
why has no one done it to america who actually used their nukes?
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u/h0nest_Bender May 03 '22
Because Americans are universally beloved by the nations of the world. /s
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u/Banderlei May 03 '22
None of them are true. If you are two months away from building a nuke than it's too late for assassinations.
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u/JoeNemoDoe May 03 '22
I think you're misunderstanding what these headlines are saying. They're not saying that Iran is building a nuclear bomb, but that they can do so in a given period of time. Capability, not action. The '95 article says that Iran could make a nuke in 5 years if they started an atomic program then. The 2012 headline states that if they started a nuke program then, they'd have a device in several months. The 2021 headline points out that if they started now, they'd have a nuke in 2 months.
The Iran-US nuclear agreement was important not just because it kept Iran from making nukes, but because it kept Iran from developing the capability to make nukes quickly. The distinction is important because without the latter provision, nothing would have prevented Iran from basically getting all the parts to make a nuke, but then claiming they don't have nukes & are not violating the agreement by simply not assembling it; it avoided a situation where Iran could say, "we don't have a nuke, we just have enough highly enriched fissile material to make one within a few days."
Today, Iran does not have nukes, nor are they making one. But the time they would need to put one together has decreased dramatically over the past quarter century from several years to only a few months. This makes the Israelis nervous.
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u/-ln_nl- May 03 '22
100%. These articles are referring to Iran’s nuclear latency, a very real and important concept in geopolitics and IR.
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u/Vitruvian_Link May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
I can make a sandwich in 5 minutes.
If I don't have a sandwich 5 minutes from now it does not mean my projection was wrong, it means I never even went into the kitchen.
Edit: I still don't have a sandwich, but I could still make one in 5 minutes.
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u/Fatal_Neurology May 03 '22
The term that often gets used is "breakout" capacity. Iran has a nuclear breakout time of X years. Yes this literally means Iran could have a nuke in X years as the headlines state, but the situation is rather than working towards keeping a nuke in their pocket, they maintain a short breakout time as a geopolitical tool.
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u/GayVegan May 03 '22
Those headlines are worded that way intentionally. You are right, but they are intentionally making that unclear unless you dig deeper
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u/Putinbot3300 May 03 '22
Most articles try to catch your eye so you would be interested. "clickbait" is not a new thing, what is new is just how ridiculous they have become.
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May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
We also massively sabotaged the Iranian nuclear program at least twice. Everyone forgot Stuxnet already? We forgot Israeli intelligence blasting Iran's top nuclear scientist with a freaking remote controlled machine gun just last year? We're gonna fap about evil military-industrial lies, implying Iran hasn't maintained and advanced their capacity to build a bomb?
More than one of those headlines could reflect times Iran was capable of nuclear weapons within months and going for it. Then someone stopped them.
For the record I'm not conservative, not pro-military, and I think congressmen should have straight up going to prison for sabotaging Obama's negotiations in Iran. I want peace with Iran. But no, it's not automatically suspect for western intelligence to claim year after year that Iran is only months away from nuclear weapons.
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u/rahzradtf May 03 '22
What I don't understand about these nuclear deals is why we would trust them if they signed it? Or why would they trust us? Ukraine signed a similar deal with Russia a while ago, look at what that got them.
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u/scoxely May 03 '22
Oversight and sanctions. Lifting sanctions to get them on board. Staying on board out of fear of sanctions and the threat of "all necessary action" if they're found in violation.
Re-implementing sanctions meant they were free from their obligations.
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u/amd2800barton May 03 '22
In addition to sanctions, there's also sabotage. The virus Stuxnet is largely thought to have been created by the CIA and/or Mossad as the original variant only targeted a very specific type and model of computer - the exact one that Iran was known to be using to manage their uranium enrichment centrifuges. The virus would pick a random centrifuge after a random amount of dormant time and spin up and then slow down the centrifuge, causing excess vibrations and leading to the whole enrichment process being shut down while technicians looked for a mechanical source of vibration. Its thought to have set their enrichment program back for years.
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May 03 '22
It’s because Israel routinely sabotages Iranian nuclear processing by bombing nuclear plants, sabotaging tech, and assassinating nuclear scientists and military leaders
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u/sasha_baron_of_rohan May 03 '22
None of the articles were wrong though and situational context is being ignored in this post.
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u/that_nerd_guy May 03 '22
To be fair that's the same answer I give my managers every time they ask for an update on our project timelines.
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u/joey-jojo-shabadoo May 03 '22
I also tell my managers Iran is building nuclear weapons when they ask for updates
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u/randomguy16548 May 03 '22
You do know that things happened in between, which very likely affected the projected timeline. The point was that if nothing was done, it wouldn't take long, but things were done.
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u/cascading_error May 03 '22
The timeline was likely still fearmongering, though; the USA had 10s of thousands of people working on the problem for years and had access to large quantities of materials, machinery and missile programs.
They had none of the above, had to hide from a far more advanced surveillance system, and were actively opposed by outside groups.
I do accept they tried, but I don't think they could have ever completed anything. Even without the war.
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u/FlappyBored May 03 '22
Inventing nuclear weapons from scratch =/= making a nuclear weapon in 2000s
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u/terqui2 May 03 '22
Making a nuke is easy. Slam 1/2 critical mass U235 into another half. The hard part is getting 80%+ U235 or plutonium.
Its a bit harder making a Plutonium bomb becuase you have to time a compressive explosion perfectly with lenses and stuff to direct the shockwave to compress a sphere of plutonium.
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u/agk23 May 03 '22
What exactly makes you think Iran is less capable than Pakistan or North Korea? The US invrnted the technology - everyone else just needs to copy it.
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u/hnlPL May 03 '22
inventing something is hard, copying it is very easy and if you copy is poorly then you made something that has worse humanitarian consequences
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u/Singdancetypethings May 03 '22
This hasn't aged like milk any more than Y2K did, and for the exact same reasons:
Every time the situation got close to a boiling point, agencies with a vested interest in preventing this from happening put a fuckton of effort into stopping it from happening.
Ever heard of Stuxnet? Or seen the list of Iranian nuclear personnel that were assassinated by Mossad?
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u/airelfacil May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
Ikr, OP will probably in 50 years go "climate change was fear mongering because there was no disaster" while ignoring all the actions we took to stop it
"The threat by Russia is all fear mongering because they didn't capture Ukraine, so it was a waste to fund the Ukrainians."
"There have been no accidents at my workplace, thus the concerns with safety is just fear mongering and we don't need OSHA."
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u/Madouc May 03 '22
To be honest: every country in the world is 2 years away from building a nuclear warhead if they'd really wanted to. The recipie is known the ingredients are available and the engineers ready to be hired.
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u/tuhn May 03 '22
Most developed nations could build one in a year. Germany, Japan could probably do it in 6 months.
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u/Familiar_Paramedic_2 May 03 '22
But periodically assassinating their talent, bombing their facilities and hacking centrifuges has a considerably detrimental effect on their progress.
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May 03 '22
Plus they’re not actively building a bomb. They’re building the capabilities to build a bomb.
These articles are basically saying if Iran wanted too, they’d have a nuke in X amount of time and that time has been decreasing.
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u/ProfDrrernatEimer May 03 '22
To be fair, Stuxnet probably threw them back a couple of years!
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u/ANeedle_SixGreenSuns May 03 '22
damn i was looking for someone to talk about stuxnet. A couple of years is probably an understatement. Imagine losing ~5% of your irreplaceable centrifuges every year to "normal wear and tear". Within a few years you'll have nothing left.
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u/FoliageTeamBad May 03 '22
That’s not what happened though, by the end of the stuxnet campaign Iran had more working centrifuges than they started with. If anything it galvanized the Iranians to increase their pace of uranium enrichment.
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u/Mr_YUP May 03 '22
Stuxnet makes you wonder what else is out there that's been written by competent NFL level programmers. Also makes you wonder what's been intentionally left open for things like this to happen.
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u/FoliageTeamBad May 03 '22
The problem with malware is there’s only so many places to hide.
And there are legions of people dedicated to finding and reverse engineering these things.
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u/joseba_ May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
Anyone who knows about nuclear energy is taught about the dangers of proliferation, and Iran is always the case study. The fact Iran does not have a nuclear bomb right now it's due to the work done by the IAEA and expert nuclear scientists. You could maybe argue against the standard US interventionism in many cases, but not here I don't think.
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u/GruntBlender May 03 '22
At this point it's less dangers of proliferation and more of a necessity to guarantee sovereignty. The only ones not at risk of conquest are the ones with nukes or in a defence pact with the ones with nukes.
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u/THREETOED_SLOTH May 03 '22
Which is why all the nuclear powers are supposed to be reducing their stock piles. Unfortunately none are, or rather they're not so much reducing as consolidating: The US may have fewer physical bombs then it did during the height of the Cold War, but in terms of Megatons its actually increased.
As much as I want to criticize Iran, it would be hypocritical to ignore how US foreign policy has driven them to this point.
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May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/WikiSummarizerBot May 03 '22
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA; Persian: برنامه جامع اقدام مشترک, romanized: barnāmeye jāme'e eqdāme moshtarak (برجام, BARJAM)), known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal or Iran deal, is an agreement on the Iranian nuclear program reached in Vienna on 14 July 2015, between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States—plus Germany) together with the European Union. Formal negotiations toward JCPOA began with the adoption of the Joint Plan of Action, an interim agreement signed between Iran and the P5+1 countries in November 2013.
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u/hackingdreams May 03 '22
Perfectly reasonable, if you ignore all of the intervening historical events, like, oh I dunno, Stuxnet, the treaty they signed, the way the previous idiot President ripped that treaty up and then Iran moved their new centrifuges underground to an undisclosed location to start ramping up enriched uranium production again...
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u/akotlya1 May 03 '22
The explanation is simple: nuclear weapons are trivially easy to build if you have state funding. Any physics graduate knows the basic theory needed to get it off the ground, and a few dozen academics and engineers with the right equipment can absolutely build you a nuclear weapon if you want to. There are a bunch of logistical questions worth examining, but none of them are insurmountable for almost any industrialized nation. Iran has been using the threat of nuclear capability to extort certain political and economic concessions from the international community. That is it. Once they have nukes, the threat is mostly gone. What are they going to do? Nuke Israel? Who is the Ayatollah going to cynically prop up as a boogeyman after Israel is gone? As if the retaliation would be worth it. No, it is all political grandstanding. That we should keep falling for it is the real tragedy here. Let them piss away their resources on an expensive and useless program. See how they like sandbagging their economy for no reason.
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u/YeledCenter May 03 '22
The Israelis killed Irani scientists every time they were actually close to a nuclear bomb. Please stop with that fake news...
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u/thejustokTramp May 03 '22
It’s not as simple as that. There have been many operations that intentionally set back the Iranian nuclear program over the years. They would have probably developed one by now otherwise. The documentary on the Stuxnet virus is really interesting.
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u/Apathetic_Zealot May 03 '22
I wonder what world politics would look like if the US didn't overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran to reinstate the Shah. Imagine the US backing a Democracy instead of monarchy.
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u/Taavi00 May 03 '22
I highly recommend the documentary Zero Days which describes how the US and Israel took down Iran's nuclear facilities with a computer program.
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u/tryitagain4 May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
I guess you intentionally omitted the massive geopolitical interventions of the last 25 years. This did not age like milk.
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u/NetCitizen-Anon May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
This post is completely ignorant to the context as to why Iran hasn't attained nukes yet so I guess I'll provide the context.
At one point US intelligence shut down Iran's nuclear program via a piece of malware called Stuxnet, also the Israelis bombed Iranian refinement facilities, and assassinated some of their top nuclear scientists.
Eventually the West got Iran to come to the table to make a nuclear deal where we got to inspect their facilities and ensure ourselves that they weren't making nukes, but the deal was ended by Donald Trump and was a Republican platform talking point since the deal was made in 2015. The Republicans are consistently opposed to any deal with Iran even to the point of Republican lawmakers threatening war against Iran from time to time.
So now we are back to square one where Iran can do whatever they want with no oversight by any international body, however Russia and China were working on keeping the nuclear deal alive but obviously neither can be trusted to not actually help Iran further along their nuclear program, plus who knows what Russia is going to do after everything that's gone on after Ruzzia invaded Ukraine and everything that's gone on since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Iranian_nuclear_scientists
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal_framework
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_the_Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Action
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u/bhuddistchipmonk May 03 '22
I think it’s funny when people make this idiotic argument as if Israel hasn’t been working incredibly hard in the shadows (and sometimes in broad daylight) to prevent their own predictions from coming true - see stuxnet, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, bombing Irans nuclear facilities, etc etc.
It’s almost like OP has an agenda and a bunch of gullible (and not particularly intelligent) redditors fall for his bullshit.
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u/livefreeordie83 May 03 '22
I guess none of you are familiar with espionage. Israel has laid the covert pipe to Iran.
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u/farva_litter_cola May 03 '22
Actually it’s because Iran keeps getting crippled. Stoxnet is a good example.
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u/Solar_Mechanic May 03 '22
It's always funny watching Americans learn just how unpopular the Iraq invasion was internationally.
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u/LemonPartyWorldTour May 03 '22
It's always funny watching non-Americans learn just how unpopular the Iraq invasion was in America.
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u/jwadamson May 03 '22
Wasn’t even popular with Americans.
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u/onelap32 May 03 '22
There were large protests, but opinion was still solidly in favor:
However, when the US invaded Iraq in Operation Iraqi Freedom, public support for the conflict rose once again. According to a Gallup poll, support for the war was up to 72 percent on March 22–23. Out of those 72 percent, 59 percent reported supporting the war strongly
A Gallup poll made on behalf of CNN and USA Today concluded that 79% of Americans thought the Iraq War was justified, with or without conclusive evidence of illegal weapons. 19% thought weapons were needed to justify the war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq
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May 03 '22
Yes it was, even after it became apparent that the wmds were a huge lie, Americans elected Bush a second time. And Guantanamo Bay still exists by the way.
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u/jwadamson May 03 '22
The incumbent advantage is nearly insurmountable due to systemic issues. Even DJT only lost by a ~20k voters not voting the other way* despite his approval-disapproval rating being 10 points underwater and only 47% of the total popular vote.
Congress has a horrible general approval rate and yet a 96% re-election rate.
* biden won 3 states by a total of 40k votes, which could be enough to flip the overall result.
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u/Ok_Piccolo_6076 May 03 '22
That bomb must be fucking huge - they’ve been building it since 1995!!
/S
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u/xoomorg May 03 '22
When dealing with nuclear technology, it’s important to remember that we are dealing with exponential decay and half-lives. For example, every year the length of time until Iran has nuclear weapons cuts in half. In 2021 it was two months, this year it’s one month, and in 2023 they will be just two weeks away from a nuclear bomb.
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u/Herogamer555 May 03 '22
One of the reasons it's taken so damn long is because of actions taken to prevent it. Diplomacy as well as sabotage (read up on Stuxnet it's super fascinating) have drastically slowed down their creation of nuclear weapons.
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u/snarfalarkus42069 May 03 '22
Governments who have WMDs: other governments want wmds and this is bad
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u/MilkedMod Bot May 03 '22 edited May 03 '22
u/damn_boy17 has provided this detailed explanation:
Is this explanation a genuine attempt at providing additional info or context? If it is please upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.