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Comment by jameshilliard

21 hours ago

> it was never about nuclear weapons

The only reason to enrich uranium to 60% like Iran was doing is for nuclear weapons purposes.

24 comments

jameshilliard

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tsimionescu  21 hours ago

That's not the point. The point is that the attacks on Iran are not about the nuclear weapons. Iran entered the JCPOA and complied with it, it had completely suspended any nuclear weapons program. But that didn't matter for Israel and their sycophants in US foreign policy, because for them the nuclear weapons program is at best only one part of the problem. Their real problem is that Iran is an independent state in the region that refuses to accept Israel's occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and parts of Lebanon, and that refuses to comply with US policies more broadly.

Overall the goal is not to stop Iran's nuclear program, though that is part of it. The goal would be to install a government in Iran that is friendly to Israel and the USA, or, failing that, to completely destroy their economy and defense such that they effectively can't act outside their own borders.

Matl  20 hours ago

No, the reason is to have a deterrence so that Iran could say, 'hey, if you attack us we'll develop nukes'.

By the way, I am a lot more worried about Israel and its actual nuclear stockpile that has zero oversight.

  • jameshilliard  11 hours ago

    > By the way, I am a lot more worried about Israel and its actual nuclear stockpile that has zero oversight.

    Iran regularly threatens to destroy Israel, the opposite is not the case.

halflife  21 hours ago

And burying your facilities under a mountain is not suspect at all

  • pydry  21 hours ago

    Not especially. Their other facilities were being bombed routinely by Israel (along with infrastructure).

    • halflife  20 hours ago

      So they have medical grade uranium facility under a mountain? If that’s all they need, wouldn’t it be easier to just purchase it from a third party instead of investing billions of dollars hiding from Israel?

      1 reply →

pseingatl  21 hours ago

True. Medical needs require only a lower percentage. I don't know if Iran was planning any fission reactors.

metalman  21 hours ago

there are many reasons to do nuclear research beyond medicine, for batteries like the ones powering the voyager space craft, nuclear reactors come in a wide variety of configurations, and many of them actualy produce more radioactive elements that then need to be managed. 60% is nothing,80% is nothing, it needs to be 93%++, and LOTS of it to build a bomb, and given the number of bombs already arrayed around Iran, they would need 100's and all the infrastructure to become a credible threat , for which they plainly dont have the money to afford. The wildly unpopular leaders going after Iran need a scapegoat, or rather a continious supply of scapegoats, but have failed to recognise that the world is moving past them.

  • kyboren  13 hours ago

    60% is actually very close to 93%. To go from natural uranium (<1% U235) to 60% represents the vast majority of the effort. From 60% to 93% is actually quite quick; most of the material is already U235. And they already have enough to build maybe a dozen bombs.

    They also have (had?) a very active ballistic missile program, and have conducted implosion experiments.

    The constellation of evidence is quite clear: Iran is a threshold nuclear state with all the pieces necessary to credibly threaten the region (and soon the US homeland) with nuclear weapons.