Comment by flyinglizard
21 hours ago
The concept of nuclear brinkmanship is part of accepted WMD doctrine. A country can maintain a fixed short interval away from weaponization for decades. It is widely accepted that Iran does have a military nuclear program; the amount of material enriched, the enrichment level achieved and the hardening of the involved facilities are an open testament to that (there are many other intelligence signals that we are not privy to).
I think you're missing the point: a constant justification for bombing Iran is that they are one month, one week, or a couple months from building a nuclear bomb.
If that was true, obviously they would have built one buy now. Being one year away from building would be non-urgency inducing.
The constant lying about timelines does not imply Iran does not enrich uranium, but, as you remember, after the last bombing the leaders of the USA and Israel said they had completely obliterated Iran's nuclear program. Except, apparently After six months they are one week away from a nuke again.
This seems to indicate the USA should be bombing Iran every few weeks, forever, just in case they get a bit faster next time.
Except, when we don't have any scandal or other crisis going on, then Iran does not seem to be getting a nuke quickly. I wonder why.
> If that was true, obviously they would have built one buy now. Being one year away from building would be non-urgency inducing.
Reread your parent comment, the concept of a threshold nuclear state is that they are constantly a month away, for years. That's the entire point, being effectively a nuclear state without holding a nuclear weapon
Yeah, it's a form of nuclear deterrence, one that does not need an actual nuclear weapon to sort of, kinda work.
The problem I have with this doctrine is that if it's supposed to deter an opponent who already has a nuclear deterrent, they may decide their deterrent is not so deterring anymore and actively go and use it against you.
The whole idea of nuclear deterrence relies on all parties being rational and sensible about nuclear weapons use, but I don't see a lot of rationality in the current eventuality.
I mean, we all understand this. We also all understand that "Iran is one week away from a nuclear weapon" is a so-stupid-its-amazing-it-works wordgame that is intended to fool the general public into thinking "wow! Well we better go in NOW!", because without qualifiers, it sounds like "they are literally going to have a bomb in one week if we DON'T go in now". If, however, the talking heads on CNN explained this ("Iran has stopped one week short of obtaining a nuclear weapon, they are holding there as a form of nuclear deterrence"), then the public would (rightly) realize that this is not really any different from what the USA does. The USA has this whole convoluted "defcon" system where we go from "20 minutes away from a nuclear weapon" to "the nuclear weapon is headed for you now". Hmm, sounds like the same strategy, with different steps.