US Attacks Iran

Astyanax · 2025-06-22T00:44:35+00:00

So much for 2 weeks. Looks like he’s done mullah-ing it over about the mullahs in Iran. https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/21/politics/trump-iran-air-strikes POTUS will address the nation at 10 PM. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-address-nation-after-attacking-iran-nuclear-sites-2088874

Dks01

With respect to OPSEC, one of two specialized WC-135R CONSTANT PHOENIX nuclear “sniffer” aircraft was deployed five days ago. It was tracked in the clear. Any role in Middle East tension was downplayed. Right. You don’t bring out your tools unless you think they might be needed.

https://interestingengineering.com/military/us-nuclear-sniffer-jet-flight

https://www.jfeed.com/news/us-nuclear-sniffer-plane-israeli-iran-strikes

Astyanax

px_eliezer_ No one seriously thinks that Iran had no program…

The real question to ask is when did they stop having it: Was it two days or two decades ago?

Or do they still have it? Until someone other than the Iranians get to the sites the answer to that question apparently varies directly with how much one hates Israel and Netanyahu going by the posts in this thread.

Hydraglass

Not that the NYPost is my first source for reliable news, but other outlets are reporting the same thing -
https://nypost.com/2025/06/22/world-news/kremlin-warns-that-other-nations-ready-to-give-iran-nukes-dangerous-escalation-has-begun/

Basically, “We’re just going to give our nukes to Iran to protect themselves since you won’t let them make them on their own” - coming from Russia and China.

Yup that’s the outcome we were looking for… not.

px_eliezer_

Astyanax Or do they still have it? Until someone other than the Iranians get to the sites the answer to that question apparently varies directly with how much one hates Israel and Netanyahu going by the posts in this thread.

Newsmax story:

Uncertainty Grows Over Iran Uranium After US Strikes

In May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed Iran possessed 408.6 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60% — well beyond the threshold needed for a nuclear bomb. According to IAEA data, only 42 kilograms of uranium at that enrichment level is required to produce a weapon.

“These could be easily transported anywhere, in pick-up trucks, as they are stored in sealed metal containers,” said Col. (res.) Dr. Uri Nissim Levy, a lecturer at Afeka College of Engineering in Tel Aviv and chair of the World Nuclear Forum 193, according to The Media Line. “There is enough material there for a bomb.”

https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/iran-uranium-jd-vance/2025/06/22/id/1216023/

Vice President Vance expressed similar cautions yesterday in his ABC News interview.

telcodad

Hydraglass Not that the NYPost is my first source for reliable news, but other outlets are reporting the same thing -
![](https://nypost.com/wp-content/themes/nypost/static/images/favicons/favicon.ico) Kremlin warns that other nations ready to give Iran nukes: ‘Dangerous escalation has begun’

Russia’s former president says countries are lining up to give Iran their nukes. Analysts are calling his bluff.
Nuclear analysts told BI that Medvedev’s claim was logistically and politically ridiculous.
By Matthew Loh, Business Insider - June 23, 2025
https://www.businessinsider.com/dmitry-medvedev-iran-nuclear-weapons-bunker-buster-directly-supply-2025-6

Analysts are casting doubt on Russia’s former president’s claim that “a number of countries” were considering supplying nuclear warheads to Iran after the Pentagon’s salvo of bunker-buster strikes there. Medvedev wrote that the strikes had “entangled” the US in a new conflict. “A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,” he added.

Nuclear weapons analysts speaking to Business Insider said they doubted that Medvedev’s statement on such transfers was credible.

“It’s impossible in practice because nuclear weapons are not like a bomb or just something you can carry in a suitcase,” said Pavel Podvig, a senior researcher in the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research’s weapons of mass destruction program. Nuclear warheads come as an entire system, with people who need to be trained to keep and service them safely, as well as maintenance facilities and equipment. Even tactical nukes, which are more portable and produce a smaller blast, need high-level storage, Podvig added.

“Unless you create a nuclear program or almost a nuclear program in the country, there is no way to just give your nuclear weapons to them,” he said. Simply giving such a warhead to another country would break the first article of the UN’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Russia and China have signed. ….

px_eliezer_

Astyanax When you have the second largest natural gas reserves in the world why would you even bother considering nuclear power?

As has been discussed here before, Iran does export electricity to several nearby countries, nuclear energy of course is commonly used for electricity generation.

Far from the whole picture, but is one part of it.

Dks01

Astyanax The real question to ask is when did they stop having it: Was it two days or two decades ago?

Or do they still have it?

The question is nonsensical.

Tulsi Gabbard says Iran could produce nuclear weapons “within weeks”, months after she testified before Congress that the country was not building them.

The US Director of National Intelligence said her March testimony - in which she said Iran had a stock of materials but was not building these weapons - had been taken out of context by “dishonest media”.

Her change of position came after Donald Trump said she was “wrong” and that intelligence showed Iran had a “tremendous amount of material” and could have a nuclear weapon “within months”.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c056zqn6vvyo

Likely close to reality.

Former IAEA official Tariq Rauf told Al Jazeera that Iran’s short-term nuclear enrichment capacity has been damaged or destroyed, but that the country still has about 9,000kg (19,800 pounds) of enriched uranium – at levels between 2 and 60 percent – that is unaccounted for.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/6/23/un-nuclear-chief-estimates-damage-to-irans-facilities-very-significant

Dks01

px_eliezer_ As has been discussed here before, Iran does export electricity to several nearby countries, nuclear energy of course is commonly used for electricity generation.

Iran does have a nuclear power plant on the Persian Gulf at Bushehr.

https://k1project.columbia.edu/content/atoms-peace-jcpoa-history-iranian-nuclear-development

MacLeech

Somewhat-Reticent power-generation reserves with sufficient half-life?

Except per the IAEA reports, Iran was getting the fuel for its single Russian designed, built, and maintained VVER nuclear power reactor from Russia. Its initial loading was 80+ tons of Uranium fuel at 2-3% enrichment. Spent fuel rods are also returned to Russia. That is all closely monitored by the IAEA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VVER

Fuel is low enriched (ca. 2.4–4.4% 235U) uranium dioxide (UO2) or equivalent pressed into pellets and assembled into fuel rods.

The type and quantity of enriched Uranium Iran had stockpiled was inappropriate for its nuclear reactor.

Hydraglass

I guess the much bigger question here no one wants to touch with a 10 foot pole but really is the relevant question: With a large, capable, oil rich country like Iran who is hellbent and willing to do anything and risk everything to continually attempt to achieve nuclear weapons, and likely regardless of regime change, war, etc, will infinitely continue to try to accomplish that goal, why should we ever think that we could prevent that forever? We couldn’t prevent PRK from getting nukes. China got Nukes. Pakistan got Nukes. Russia got Nukes. What makes us, or anyone in the west, or anyone who isn’t Iran for that matter, think we would have what it takes to keep an educated, wealthy, determined nation of almost 100 million people from eventually managing to get in the club when we couldn’t even prevent the North Koreans who had far less ways and means.

dave

Hydraglass

Obvious observations:

The rhetoric of “we are entitled to nuclear weapons but you are not” is only sustainable if the “we” in question are willing to use whatever brute force it takes for as long as it takes, which pretty much amounts to forever war.

That’s the stick; the “carrot” approach worked only as long as signatories to treaties abide by those treaties., which requires both constancy of policy and trust from both sides. I think the carrots have all rotted.

Meanwhile, “they” see more and more reason for needing a nuclear defence.

telcodad

Hydraglass We couldn’t prevent PRK from getting nukes. China got Nukes. Pakistan got Nukes. Russia got Nukes. What makes us, or anyone in the west, or anyone who isn’t Iran for that matter, think we would have what it takes to keep an educated, wealthy, determined nation of almost 100 million people from eventually managing to get in the club when we couldn’t even prevent the North Koreans who had far less ways and means.

Because North Korea got lots of help. First North Korea got help from the Soviet Union in developing a nuclear energy program, including the construction of their Yongbyon research reactor. Then in the 1990s, a Pakistani nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, provided assistance in building centrifuges for enriching uranium and possibly even provided designs for constructing nuclear bombs.

GrumpyCanadian

dave That’s the key question that I have been asking in family debates every time Netanyahu appeared on the news singing the same song of dread that Iran would imminently have a nuclear weapon, posing an existential threat to his country: who is Israel, or anyone else, to dictate to another country that they “cannot” have a nuclear weapon, while they do?

By the same logic, what would Netanyahu say if the international community ordered him to surrender his stockpile to the IAEA for destruction, commit to never making more, and sign the NPT, and that refusal would result in our sanctioning their economy into the ground? The United States, in its present state, would be unlikely to go along with it, but it would be a difficult slog of an existence, being able to have diplomatic relations and trade with only one country (and maybe a few others, like Hungary; interesting that when it appears to suit his purposes, Binyamin has no qualms about dealing with an avowed anti-Semite). Do you think he’d like that? Who ever said he could have nuclear weapons? Did he bother to ask?

MacLeech

Dks01 With respect to OPSEC, one of two specialized WC-135R CONSTANT PHOENIX nuclear “sniffer” aircraft was deployed five days ago. It was tracked in the clear. Any role in Middle East tension was downplayed. Right. You don’t bring out your tools unless you think they might be needed.

Israel had already bombed multiple nuclear sites days BEFORE the US did. Multiple parties have been checking for nuclear debris emanating from those sites.

MacLeech

dave The rhetoric of “we are entitled to nuclear weapons but you are not” is only sustainable if the “we” in question are willing to use whatever brute force it takes for as long as it takes, which pretty much amounts to forever war.

That’s been the Israeli position for 50 years now, with the Begin Doctrine.

The Begin Doctrine is the common term for the Israeli government’s preventive strike, counter-proliferation policy regarding their potential enemies’ capability to possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particularly nuclear weapons.

Israel has attacked Iraqi, Syrian, and Iranian nuclear facilities over the last 40 years to enforce it, along with unleashing Stuxnet on Iran’s nuclear development equipment.

It comes down to, every country that surrounds Israel wants to wipe them off the map, so Israel won’t let them develop the weapons that can make that easily possible.

Hydraglass

MacLeech It comes down to, every country that surrounds Israel wants to wipe them off the map, so Israel won’t let them develop the weapons that can make that easily possible.

Eventually they’ll miss something – and the “doctrine” in my opinion is the equivalent of a person standing in the middle of a circle of hungry lions with a torch on a stick. Sure you can keep them back and burn them and scare them - for a while - but eventually your torch on a stick is going to go out, or you’re going to need a nap, or you’re just going to be a little bit slow turning around - and it only takes one second for one of the angry lions to erase you. Would have been far better to throw big juicy steaks to each of the lions every few days and keep them fed and fat and happy and eventually the lions grow old and sleepy and don’t care about you any longer.

MacLeech

Hydraglass Eventually they’ll miss something – and the “doctrine” in my opinion is the equivalent of a person standing in the middle of a circle of hungry lions with a torch on a stick. Sure you can keep them back and burn them and scare them - for a while - but eventually your torch on a stick is going to go out, or you’re going to need a nap, or you’re just going to be a little bit slow turning around - and it only takes one second for one of the angry lions to erase you.

There are others (mostly the US) outside the circle, handing the person more torches as needed.

Hydraglass Would have been far better to throw big juicy steaks to each of the lions every few days and keep them fed and fat and happy and eventually the lions grow old and sleepy and don’t care about you any longer.

The fundamentalist version of Islam followed by their most aggressive neighbors’ leaders won’t allow for that, and they drag the less aggressive neighbors into taking sides through proxy wars. The only “juicy steak” they’ll settle for is Israel gone.

robxr4ti

Astyanax
That’s called lulling them into a false sense of security. Worked quite well.

px_eliezer_

GrumpyCanadian Did he bother to ask?

Israel has never even discussed whether or not they have nukes, pretty much everybody assumes they do.

GrumpyCanadian

urbanriot Actually, it’s a little easier to answer than that. Even under the conditions I mentioned (no more Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi rebels), Israel still wouldn’t get out of Lebanon, Syria or Gaza (and others), nor treat Palestinians fairly or humanely.

Let’s address the Palestinians first. Since long before anyone even knew what a “Hamas” was, and well before they were the fairly and democratically elected leadership in the Gaza Strip, the early immigrants into what would become Israel started mistreating the Indigenous peoples of the land. This has been going on far too long, and we shouldn’t buy the lie that everything would be peaceful, if only Hamas would be gone.

For irrefutable evidence, we need only look to the West Bank. Even after concessions upon concessions, they murdered Arafat (never admitting it), and eventually got the candidate they (and the United States) advanced in there, with the modern incarnation of the Palestinian Authority. Was that enough? Do Palestinians there live in freedom and peace? Emphatically not! Even on territory that everyone knows does not belong to them, Israel remains ever-present, stifling and repressing the Palestinian population and installing their own Apartheid system. Within that territory they do not own, their encroachment continues, with expanding and new settlements, and violence against the people whose territory they continue to occupy. Does that sound like peace or freedom?

Particularly now, Netanyahu needs to be seen as supporting settlements and open-ended action in Gaza, or his coalition will fall apart. He needs conflict and unrest for political and personal purposes.

The situation is similar with their neighbours; at least Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan. In some cases, there are no active conflicts, but if something isn’t done to tug on the reins, it is only a matter of time. There are many hard-liners among them who subscribe to the idea of Greater Israel, which deludes them into believing that they have some divine entitlement to all of pre-1967 Israel, and all of Gaza, the West Bank, parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, at least, and for their use alone. Unchecked, some will continue to agitate and inflame until they get it all or die trying, and they don’t care if they have to commit (more) genocide to do it.

So, then the hypothetical becomes, if they got all of the land to which they claim entitlement, and successfully killed or expelled all of “those Arabs”, would there then be peace and tranquility, or would they find other excuses for disagreements, war, killing and destruction? I have a sinking feeling that I know the answer.

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