So what can we expect:
* a ground invasion is pretty much out of the question considering the geography or Iran and its neighboring countries.
* Iran destroys every oil production and transport sites in the region (say good by to your election, Republican Party)
* they could fast produce the bomb and test it underground as a final warning
* OR they fail and resort to more desperate measure like a dirty bomb
* OR they fail and there is some sort of regime change
* Or there is some kind of extended war of attrition and it makes the refugee crisis from the past 20 years seem like it was a mere tourist wave.
In any case, this will accentuate the Qaddafi effect and more nations will follow the North Korea option of nuclear "unauthorized" nuclear dissuasion, which is also the case for Israel by the way. Talking of which, Israel will become politically radioactive in the world. Its support is already negative in nearly all countries and has dropped significantly in the US such as the evangelicals.
You mean they changed their mind and want to postpone the Armageddon now?
That statement is ignorant.
Do you believe all evangelicals believe the same thing, and that we want the end of the world to come immediately? Where would you get such a strange idea? I can assure you it is an ignorant thought.
I would expect Israel to win the political battle as well. The world likes winners and Israel is going to be a winner here. It winning will also enable it to address some of the issues that are a concern. Without Iran backing up Palestinian militants it is going to be easier for Israel to make some concessions that it couldn't otherwise.
You can already see a change of tone in Europe. Especially that Iran is aligned with Russia against Ukraine.
I do not think Iran has any military options. Because it is not liked the Iranian regime does not have any political options either. So I have no idea what will happen-which makes the current situation so interesting to watch.
I am confused. So it is impotent or the greatest threat in the middle east?
All this talk of Iran getting a nuke to hit Israel... doesn't the Iranian government know that it would instantly be destroyed the moment they used a nuclear weapon of any kind?
None of this makes sense.
YES. They Absolutely know this. The point of an Iranian nuke is deterrence, and the reason Israel finds that intolerable is that Israeli policy is to maintain the ability to unilaterally raise the stakes of a conflict past any of its neighbors.
"That was Hezbollah, not us!"
You might say using a proxy would be a hopelessly transparent ploy, but Hezbollah has been firing other Iranian supplied weapons at Israel for years and yet many people swear up and down that Iran has "never attacked Israel". So apparently the proxy ploy does work on a lot of people.
One of Iran's strengths, for example, has always been lots of cheap missiles. People often point out how few of the missiles actually hit their targets in Israel, but that's missing the point: every intercepted missile costs orders of magnitude more to intercept than it does to create and launch. The Iron Dome is very effective, but is both incredibly expensive to run and, most importantly, loses efficacy over time as it's resources are depleted.
Nobody knows exactly how close Iran is to a nuclear weapon, but most analysts that I've read that the time to actually being able to launch a weapon is in terms of weeks. So part of Iran's strategy will always been draw attacks until it is ready to potentially retaliate.
On top of that, this is not a video game. Iran does not want to use a nuclear missile, nobody really does since it like ends, at least regionally, in everyone losing. Part of the balance of the conflict in the middle East in Iran is precisely not putting them in a potion where the use of nuclear weapons suddenly becomes rational. This is exactly why we in America have been nervous about open aggression towards Iran. Not because we might not win, but because it backs them into a corner where nuclear options suddenly become more rational.
> Because it is not liked the Iranian regime does not have any political options either.
Just one tiny example of how this is false: because of US sanctions China gets a enormous (estimated at around 15%) amount of their oil, very cheaply, from Iran. A serious threat to Iran then becomes a serious threat to Chinese oil supplies.
The issue is extremely complicated and nuanced, so any takes that are binary are missing a lot of information. By striking Iran we are pushing this this issue into places we haven't really explored yet, with consequences nobody truly knows.
One of the main reasons for the Israeli attack was the mounting stockpile of missiles. Even the small fraction of conventional missiles that hit Israel created a great deal of damage. They were on route to create enough missiles and launchpads that would make Israels air defense irrelevant. The equivalent of two nuclear bombs.
One country already did.
Also if they "were just about to have the bomb" then they could develop it and use it after. So there is the conflicting position that they are both insane to use it and but both sane to not escalate the conflict. This is where most pro-war arguments fail the basic logic test in the nuclear bomb era.
that's a fancy retelling of history you got there. MILLIONs died in those wars and less than 100K US troops died. Out of those wars, iraq 1 led to iraq defeat and withdrawal from kuwait. iraq 2 had saddam dragged through the streets and a regime change within 3 weeks, yemen was counterterrorism - there's no regime to topple, in afghanistan the taliban regime was removed for 20 years and only once the troops were withdrawn were they able to crawl back.
the current Iranian regime is over.
One of the key reasons behind why Iraq fell so quickly is that Saddam made all the wrong moves leading up the invasion.
By that point, he had alienated every single potential ally (including Iran) - and virtually all states in the region were supportive of the invasion, regardless of their positions in public.
Not to mention that the invasion of Iraq was ultimately a failure anyways..
Do you think sitting by and doing nothing will not pose an existential threat to the government by way of constituent discontent?
