They don't have to worry about sanctions from the USA led coalition. The don't have to worry about Russian reinforcement of Iran. So they pretty much have a free hand at this point to completely demolish Iran's military and nuclear capability.
It's amazing how many factors lead to situations like this. The current geopolitical climate is total chaos.
now all those pieces are mostly out of the game and the major factor that led to this is October 7th attack on Israel.
Sounds like every time Israel enemies attack it they end up losing more ground, and yet they never stop to try another way. They handed Israel the perfect pretext for devastating blows.
It's state secrets all the way down. None of us plebs know what is happening deep in Fordo. Similar strategy was employed when the US went after Saddam, and it will work again whether they are arguing the evidence is one way or the other.
edit: Here we go: https://i.imgur.com/3vIr5dE.png (I have not verified the accuracy tho)
Now when I see what happened to Ukraine, Libya/Irak and what might happen to Iran, and compare it with NK/Pakistan, my position on nukes is: get nukes. Especially if a western country say you have nukes: get them.
My point was that preventing countries from getting nukes used to be an acceptable, if not a majority opinion, and a lot of countries more or less accepted it. From now on, I feel that that opinion will become a minority opinion, even on the anti-nuke/hippie left. And if the hiipies start agreeing with the tankies on a point, you can be sure it's the majority opinion in the non-west world.
So maybe we shouldn't treat the US intel community as a monolith, or uniform in its competence.
Meanwhile people in this comment section are talking about "They are always 2 years away" as if Israel hasn't been striking them and assassinating nuclear engineers that whole time. Usually that sets your project back a bit.
They have multiple tons of sufficiently enriched Uranium. My understanding was that they were basically sitting "3 months" away from a bomb as a bargaining chip; They could clearly present they didn't have a bomb, but if they were attacked they could rush build a bomb as deterrence.
We shall see I guess.
Even adversary nations were straight up unprepared with the breakdown of American norms with this presidency though. I don't think Iran expected this situation.
Gabbard: Putin wants me to say they don't.
The easy control question to this news is this - did Iran had multiple uranium enrichment centrifuges or not? If yes, then Iran was obviously actively developing A-bomb and was close to it by any possible metric. If no, then Israel with its famed intelligence agency has now started an open war for nothing and bombed empty (no centrifuges, remember) bunkers and facilities.
To me it is pretty clear who is lying and who is right.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/iaea-report-says-iran-had-1059147...
vdupras•7mo ago