Someone should really investigate what happened to the 15-year Iran nuclear agreement that set limits on stockpile size and enrichment levels, and allowed international inspector verification.
I remember the fate of Iraq's WMD (chemical) -- they denied inspectors, blatantly lied on the reports for many years. It was all way too suspicious, but their biggest trick was that when UN approved a military intervention, no WMDs were actually found. That put US in a very bad position because they couldn't prove WMDs existense. Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs (or just hidden well).
However, unlike chemical substances, radiation is easily detectable even in minuscule quantities. Just transporting radioactive materials leave a detectable trace, so I bet they won't be lost for long. The only way to actually hide them is to contaminate the whole area with the same materials.
Indeed it is not, however it's quite difficult to scrub anything sufficiently to hide them from IAEA environmental sampling (most of which is chemical based, primarily micro scale spectroscopy). Enriching uranium is a nasty, dirty process at all steps that leaves a lot of sticky, messy, and hard to get rid of traces, and IAEA has access to some of the most sophisticated analytical laboratories on the planet and a lot of practice.
If the inspectors are given sufficient access to do their inspections.
We're so back. Another quagmire war in the middle east. Exactly what we needed.
For whatever you feel about WMDs or the justification for the Iraq war, the facts are we spent almost two decades in the first go round, found no WMDs, killed a dictator we installed, blew up a shit ton of infrastructure, rebuild a shit ton of it, killed probably millions of innocent people, absolutely blew up the Taliban and later ISIS's recruitment numbers, made ourselves look fucking stupid on the global stage, then pulled out, leaving billions in military materiel to be claimed by the people we were ostensibly there to stop.
An utter fucking farce, and we have learned absolutely nothing. Time to send more young men to die.
The actions on the US-Israel side so far (deeply cutting non-defense discretionary spending, decoupling from international trade, assassinating secular leaders who can be replaced, bombing three locations which can be rebuilt) only make sense as the near-term prelude to a major ground invasion. If the invasion doesn't happen the US will be left with a self-inflicted economic growth wound and no way to explain it, and Israel will be left with an adversary that believes itself to be facing an existential risk, that is able to enrich uranium, and that would not trust any treaty negotiations.
The self-inflicted economic wound is nothing more than Trumpnomics. If the numbers look bad he will just say they are fake or solved by GDP growth or tariff revenue.
Iran already knows that Israel can decapitate them at will, but not occupy them. Nothing has changed with these strikes.
Bombing nuclear facilities and killing scientists kicks the can down the road and that has worked for decades. But the US/Israel coalition is also trying to negotiate or orchestrate regime change, which could provide a more lasting impact.
The population of Israel is 1/9 the population of Iran. The population of the US in 2003 was 10x the population of Iraq. Huge difference in what it takes to actually attempt to occupy a foreign country with a hostile populace.
Did you believe Trump and his people when they campaigned on not attacking Iran while claiming repeatedly that Harris would if elected. If so did can you admit you were wrong and need to adjust your priors?
While I am first to admit that my basic assumptions have been severely tested by the last news cycle, I do think it is very naive to think this is the end of hostilities.
Both the US and Israel currently have leaders that have to be seen as "wartime leaders" to extend their rule beyond what their respective country's laws usually permit, because otherwise they both very likely will end up in prison.
This is not true of Bibi. No law limits how much he can serve. The only legal block for him remaining in power is that he's undergoing various criminal trials, which may or may not end with him being found guilty.
There is, of course, a lot of pressure for him to resign or for various other things to happen that he is currently managing to put on hold due to the war, but that's legal, and doesn't require wartime.
> they denied inspectors, blatantly lied on the reports for many years.
For many years the IAEA vacillated between praising and and admonishing the Iraqi's for their cooperation or lack thereof.
> It was all way too suspicious
Yea, for _both_ sides. There was clearly more politics being played in these deals than anyone let be known.
> Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs
There really were no WMDs. They have a shelf life. They expire. There was some evidence they did exist but were likely long gone. Hans Blix was pretty clear on this. This angered the CIA so greatly they made him a target to undermine him. It didn't work.
This is recent history and how quickly it is forgotten.
" Iran has denied that it has intentionally enriched uranium to a purity of 84 percent ...
US-based financial news agency Bloomberg reported on Sunday that inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had found uranium enriched to a purity of 84 percent — just below the 90 percent required for a bomb — and are trying to determine if it was produced intentionally."
Peaceful energy requires well under 10%. Enriching any noticeable amount (i.e. >> research/medical quantities) beyond that level has only one purpose - weapons (and you can make a weapon even with slightly sub-90%, and 84% does sound there, it is just a bit more technically complex and yield may be less, yet who measures ...)
So, if 3.67% was enough for them (like for anybody else doing peaceful nuclear energy), why they have produced so much of 60%?
Edit: judging by the answers the word "why" happened to be misunderstood in my question. I'll restate it - what purpose Iran has been enriching uranium to 60% for?
So far the only plausible answer has been - weapons.
So, Iran:
- claimed intention of destruction of Israel and US,
- started the actual, not by proxy, war with Israel by missile attack on October 2024,
- and made all the practical steps toward obtaining nuclear weapons (and does have ballistic missiles to carry them)
I.e. Iran presented credible existential threat to Israel and US, and thus is getting bombed in response.
this is a misunderstanding of the full context. The US abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 under Trump's order to withdraw from the agreement (which was, IMO, strictly part of his package to ruin the legacy of Obama, who he despises deeply). This essentially killed the primary reason Iran agreed in the first place, which was relief from sanctions. However the agreement remains in force to this day and is still monitored by the IAEA. So it's not very surprising that Iran resumed their enrichment activities [1] and Trump's actions in 2018 has led to vastly higher tensions between the US/Iran/Israel.
It is well established by the IAEA itself that Iran fully honored the terms of the JCPOA up until Trump intentionally ruined the agreement by pulling the US out of it.
That's quite something to read again with the perspective of hindsight. It's highly ironic that the European Commission called the US sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program illegal (and took actions against them); those same ballistic missiles are being used against Europe today, in Ukraine.
That was in 2018; the EU ended up themselves sanctioning Iran for ballistic missiles in 2024,
> "In a statement dated 13 September 2024, the EU strongly condemned the recent transfer of Iranian-made ballistic missiles to Russia, considered as a direct threat to European security [sic!] and as a substantive material escalation from the provision of Iranian UAVs and ammunition, which Russia had used in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. The High Representative stated that the EU would respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant restrictive measures against Iran."
> "The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on Iran’s deputy defense minister, senior members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and three airlines over allegations that they supplied drones, missiles and other equipment to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine."
I really thought Iran was breaking the deal too. Just did a google search and found articles from politico and AP fact checking and it seemed that Iran was complying with the deal.
Do you have any links or relevant sources to show that they weren't?
The upshot is that the US terminated the deal in 2019 and then the Iranians started "racing" for a bomb.
Before you think the nuclear deal was good, I have to ask: Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"?
It seems a bit like holding the world hostage. There are other ways to stop the bomb program, as we have now seen. The diplomatic solution grants Iran permission to destabilize the region by funding Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.
I'm pretty ok bombing hostile religious fanatics trying to develop nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
> Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"
Lots of nations are "bad actors" in lots of ways. And sanctions come in many different shapes and sizes.
So yes, it is absolutely OK to sanction a country more because they are building a nuclear bomb, and then remove those extra sanctions if they stop.
Sanctions aren't all-or-nothing. The whole idea is that the more you go along with international norms, the less you're sanctioned. Otherwise they wouldn't work to change behavior, because change is always a matter of degrees. Iran isn't going to become Switzerland overnight. That's not how countries work.
I personally think that it's not ok that Iran has sewed so much discord in the Middle East by arming Hez, Hamas and the Houthis.
I'm very happy the US got involved and destroyed their enrichment sites. I'm also happy Israel didn't wait around for Iran to destroy them, which they've actively been trying to do in this war.
>Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"?
As Morpheus said, "Welcome to the real world."
I'm pretty okay bribing nations to verifiably not build nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
According to these absolute la-la-land real politickers, states are supposed to just not build nuclear weapons — tools that are empirically required to have a seat at the international table since 1945 — because you ask politely.
Obviously you have to fucking bribe them! Bribing is infinitely better than bombing, where each marginal bombing increases the imperative for every other state to develop their own nukes by reaffirming they are permanently at the mercy of nuclear states!
> tools that are empirically required to have a seat at the international table since 1945 — because you ask politely.
Umm, what? There are plenty of countries that "have a seat at the table" without nuclear weapons. Depending on what you mean by "seat at the table", of course, but I'm not sure there's any way to define it that excludes 95% of countries.
Given the thoroughness of Israel's intelligence on Iran I doubt it would have been moved without detection. Even if they did manage to move it, the moment enrichment starts back up it will just be bombed again. If it looks like a new facility is being built even deeper underground then that will just be bombed before it starts up. Without air defenses Iran doesn't have a lot of options and Gaza has shown putting an enrichment facility in the basement of a school/hospital isn't going to stop a bombing either. I'm not a military strategist but to me it seems like Iran's first priority before anything else is regaining control of their own skies.
So it turns out dismantling an entire nation's nuclear infrastructure just requires a bit of coordination with foreign intelligence and a couple of well placed airstrikes. Who knew it was that simple?
No protracted negotiations, no international coalitions, no drawn-out sanctions, just precision and decisiveness. A button pressed here, a few planes there, and the problem vanishes. Permanently, of course.
And now, with Iran's nuclear ambitions supposedly neutralized in a single blow, we can all relax. The threat is gone. No strategic aftershocks, no long term consequences, no unintended escalation. Just peace, stability, and a region completely satisfied with the outcome.
One wonders what the last 15 years were for. Bureaucratic inertia? A lack of imagination?
Progress, it seems, is just a matter of revisiting the old playbook with a bit more confidence.
> And now, with Iran's nuclear ambitions supposedly neutralized in a single blow, we can all relax. The threat is gone. No strategic aftershocks, no long term consequences, no unintended escalation. Just peace, stability, and a region completely satisfied with the outcome.
Israel needed the US involved more than it needs to destroy any particular equipment. Even if their intelligence indicated it moved, they'd absolutely still tell Trump that he needed to bring the B-2s down on Fordo.
Give the guy a finish line to carry the baton over, even if you already know it's not actually the finish line.
Our intelligence didn't know that Iran was trying to build a Nuclear Bomb, so we had to do this attack, but now our intelligence definetly knows:
'They are claiming that they moved some material," Mullin said, referring to Israel and Iran, respectively. "Our intelligence report says they didn't," the Oklahoma Republican said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Or 80 liters in the form of UF₆ (which it probably is). About half of an oil barrel. You wouldn't put it all in a single barrel of course: that would explode.
Isn’t the American Congress responsible for declaring war on other countries? This brings up the uncomfortable discussion of how to correct CEO overreach and insure accountability. Where does the buck stop when it’s passed around like a hot potato?
Every president you've lived under has sent Americans to kill and die in other countries, either with or without congressional oversight. Usually without. For reference, neither Korea nor Vietnam were ever declared wars by congress. For Vietnam Congress authorized LBJ to take "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States". Korea was never a war, and instead was undertaken solely at POTUS's discretion as a "police action" in response to a UN resolution and while Congress did support the effort to procure money and blood to spend in Korea, they never formally authorized any sort of aggression in Korea.
The president has broad authority to take military action without the requisite congressional authorization for up to 60 days (plus another 30 to allow for withdrawal of troops). It's been this way since the War Powers Act of 1973.
And this was formally updated post 9/11 with the AUMF (Acceptable Use of Military Force) which gave the president quite sweeping powers without direct congressional approval. The caveat is that the AUMF is only for 9/11 responsible countries or affiliates. Given 9/11 was Al Qaeda and they are Sunni, and that Iran is Shia, they are not actually related since they want to also kill each other. Still, these powers are being bastardizes to limit the authority of congress.
The AUMF was an addition to WP so Iran's lack of support for AQ doesn't limit normal WP operations. Additionally sectarian concerns are more malleable than presented. As an example review Iran's long-standing support for Hamas which is Sunni-affiliated.
—Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress
declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory
authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers
Resolution.
Congress has largely abdicated a lot of its powers to the President and (to a lesser extent) the Supreme Court.
Working together to solve problems makes you a target to primary voters back at home (i.e., the most hardcore people in your party), so the incentive to to do nothing and enjoy the perks as long as you can.
I assumed Vietnam and Korea were officially declared but after looking it up I see they weren't.
It's kind of crazy they even managed to draft people without congress approving it. The world wars really did kill the old American system of government.
That's true but misleading. Congress has consistently authorized military action in almost¹ all of the extended wars and conflicts the US has been involved in after 1942. It's not like those presidents have ignored Congress and not sought congressional approval.
¹ Weasel word: I'm sure I've missed some but the big one I can think of is Libya during the Obama years, which didn't have congressional approval and wasn't a declaration of war either.
War is impossible for Congress to disapprove. You cannot pretend that option is even on the table when a Potus has expanded power to push the country into a war; how can congress disapprove an ongoing conflict in a country that prides itself on using military force?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, but I think most Americans are weary of war and don't want to get involved in another – even if we're proud of our military forces. I would expect my senators to vote against approving extended involvement in an Iran conflict or war past 60 days. Furthermore, I don't think it's impossible for Congress to disapprove anymore with how polarized our politics are. Certainly any kind of boots-on-the-ground action is going to be anathema to both parties as well.
I guess my larger point is how can Congress vote down a war that started 60 days ago and has a goal of lasting longer than 60 days? Even entertaining the idea they vote to pull troops out after a conflict, does an authoritarian, overpowered, executive branch comply?
I get what you're trying to argue but the point above was in the opposite direction - that congress has continually approved military action for what are (obviously) wars in all but name many times since 1942.
Congress is not-really-declaring-war even more than prior centuries, independent from how the presidents (particularly the latest in this case) also totally-aren't-declaring-war more without congress often than ever before.
Article II of the constititution grants the president broad authority to direct military operations, deploy troops, conduct military strikes and respond to threats to national security.
Carter deployed troops to Iran without congressional approval, Reagan deployed troops or air strikes to Grenada, Libya and Lebanon without congressional approval. George HW Bush deployed troops to Panama and Somalia without congressional authorization using executive authority and broad interpretations of the 2001 AUMF. Clinton intervened in Haiti, bombed Bosnia and Kosovo, and performed air stikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. George W Bush conducted strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen without congressional approval. Obama used troops or Airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and notably sent US troops into Pakistan to apprehend Osama, a sovereing country without congressional authorization. Trump hit Syria and conducted strikes in Iraq against Iran without authorization. Biden conducted strikes in Syria and Iraq and assisted Ukraine in many ways although supposedly not through direct military involvement without congressional authorization.
I’m not sure why there is a sudden argument over whether Trump should be hamstrung, delay opportunities and eliminate surprise completely by having a congressional debate over acts of war that are not declarations of war that have been performed by virtually every president in modern history. It’s just not how the US Government works and Trumps actions in this case are completely in alignment with our norms.
In theory. In practice every president since before I can remember (maybe Carter?) has sent the military out for something like this. Trumps' supporters pointed that fact out often in his campaign. Too bad it didn't last.
“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance said. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
Maybe it's a legal loophole where the President can unilaterally wage war on specific concepts, people, and physical locations, as long as they keep saying it's not a war against a foreign nation.
The unfortunate asterisk is that enriching from 60% to 90% takes comparatively little time and equipment. We're not absolutely certain there isn't another small, yet-undiscovered, secret enrichment plant.
> "Let's say Iran decides to rush a bomb. Iran can install ~1.5 cascades a week. In six weeks, it could have 9 cascades of IR-6 machines. It would take those machines about 60 days to enrich all 400 kg to WGU. Altogether that's about five months although IMMV."
Remember when the Bush administration burned 2 trillion dollars and more than 100 000 lives because Iraq had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that they never had?
Yep, we're back at it again. Latin Americans have a name for it: "Imperialismo Americano".
Israel is the tip of the lance of the American Imperialism projecting power throughout the Middle East with the American backing. The regular American isn’t the beneficiary in any way, quite on the contrary, its their taxes that are backing it.
Yep, but people look at it in different ways. It feels different, depending on how it affects you.
In English, "America imperialism" is a phrase for political propaganda, like "woke", "freedom", etc. You can argue if it makes sense or not. You can disagree if it exists. It is an opinion.
In Latin America it is a fact of life, like rain and sunshine. It is there, everyone knows. No one denies it.
It's honestly incredible how we've learned absolutely nothing. I thought for sure that universally-agreed-upon catastrophe of Iraq would cause the lesson to stick, but no, we're running through the same playbook word-for-word. Including the goose-stepping support of the media: go to the homepage of "liberal" publications like The Atlantic right now and you can see full-throated support of the war and them discovering how much they love Trump now.
Sure, if you must engage in discussions about politics here, criticize a country's government and its policies and practices. But don't use these kinds of insinuations and slurs.
Please have a read of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
In October, my family in texas was raving about how trump was going to end the Ukraine war overnight. They stopped talking about it the day trump retook office. And the other day they stopped talking about peace entirely and started raving about how Iran has had it coming and a little bit of war is good for the economy. They did the exact same thing in 2002.
Because they never seen war comes to their mainland. They think it just game to kill millions of people and torture and rape others while they're sleeping in their houses in peace.
Why end it? Ukraine is the most successful proxy war in the history of war. Ukraine has destroyed much of Russian ground forces and armor, and eliminated the only advantage that Russia did have, which was artillery. Now artillery accounts for only 20% of casualties on the battlefield. Even if the war ended today, Russia will not receive any of their funds frozen in Europe for decades, if ever. Russia has no military or technology advantage, and no way to rebuild it. Europe is safer than it ever has been.
Americans are minimizing the number of dead Ukrainians because a large number of casualties would be seen as a sign of defeat. It's not just that they are another nation, its that they want that number to be low.
Yeah? It's easy to tell other people to just let their country get overrun, too.
Ukrainians do not want to be owned by Russia. Ukraine is being invaded by Russia. Why end it, if "ending it" means Ukraine gets taken over by Russia, and the people of Ukraine do not want that?
You have severely misinterpreted that comment. They're saying that we should actually help Ukraine and end the war as soon as possible, instead of prolonging it and causing untold suffering for symbolic victories over Russia.
We have not established a no-fly-zone, we have under delivered on promises, we abandoned them even after the mineral deal, and we have repeated lied and slandered their country while parroting Kremlin propaganda.
They're on your side that we should be doing those things to protect Ukraine. Like we promised all those decades ago.
There was never any promise or obligation to establish a no-fly zone to protect Ukraine. If you're referring to the Budapest Memorandum, it was not a mutual defense treaty and the USA has already abided by 100% of the terms. I support giving Ukraine military aid, but putting our military personnel in direct conflict with Russia is a step way too far.
It is profoundly clear that Ukraine sought protection in exchange for their actual protection. And regardless of the actual "required" protections, we have clearly violated the spirit of the agreement and proven to the whole world that the US is not to be trusted as a policing force for real conflicts - only those it chooses to start for financial or political gain - and that non-prolifération is a failure of a policy that only leads to becoming a victim of a lopsided war.
Now, Iran acts as the finalizing example that any nation without nukes is a nation without true sovereignty. Even North Korea is treated with more respect.
> Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Mineral deal protection racket.
> Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Russia has threatened Ukraine with nuclear retaliation, even if they have not done it.
Have you ever even read the Budapest Memorandum? It contains no promise of protection, or even a vague implication thereof. It merely requires the USA to raise any violations with the UN Security Council, which was done.
I absolutely oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine and think that we (and other allies) should continue giving them the means to resist. But at the same time Ukraine shouldn't have left themselves so vulnerable by letting their military collapse prior to 2014 through a combination of corruption and apathy. In an anarchic world order you can't depend on anyone else to keep you safe.
The Ukrainians can do whatever they want. My problem is, the person I was responding to, basically implied that the lives of Ukrainians is a sacrifice he is willing to make for the safety of the rest of Europe. I don't like that sort of reasoning.
I think he was actually arguing against the conservative talking point that the war is detrimental to US interests. Not that he wants the war to continue but rather that isolationists have no leg to stand on when they wring their hands about Ukraine defending themselves.
It is indeed the way it is. This explains why the world is not going full steam ahead in supporting Ukraine such that they would win the war. It is a game of exhausting the enemy over a prolonged time, such that they are not capable of anything else but continuing to _try_ to take 'only' Ukraine.
The harsh truth is that Ukrainians are giving their lives for the freedom of Europeans and probably a chunk of the rest of the world population. Once one of the sides fully wins, Europe will get less safe, since the next step would be WMD.
I was in a new world order survival cult as a kid, and it destroyed any semblance of connection I felt with others. Why connect when they're going to the camps?
Everything I've seen for the last ten years or so feels familiar. That very cult got a little watered down and has consumed the politics of the nation.
"Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled," Trump told a National Guard Conference. "I’ll get it settled very fast. I don’t want you guys going over there."
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, it's Marx. But mostly its Marx sorta responding to Mikhail Bakunin, the father of anarchism [0].
The question to these early socialists was: Why the fuck are these French peasants supporting Louis Napoleon III for president? It makes zero fucking sense. They were tearing their hair out trying to understand it.
Marx takes Bakunin to task in the novella above, and it's worth the full read if you still can't figure out why MAGA loves Donny. But, to me, Bakunin is still right and Marx was still wrong.
TLDR: Those French peasants really hated the bourgeois. So much so that they elected Napoleon III to president, knowing he would eventually take over in a coup and kill their nascent democracy, just because his election would piss off the effete bourgeois in the cities. The peasants know their life sucks and then they die. But the damn know-it-all bourgeois just need their faces rubbed in it, goddamnit. They know they are in a class war and they aren't winning it. The bourgeois don't, they think that they might make it out of the war, but the peasants know better and need to teach them a lesson. I'm heavily paraphrasing Bakunin here.
As for Donny, look, I think Bakunin's take on the French in 1850-ish is the right one here. The MAGA types know that Donny is a monster. But they really hate the DEI stuff and the liberal urban elites, more so than they hate Donny. They want these bourgeois liberals to feel the pain. It really does come down to 'liberal tears'.
Now, unfortunately, the proletariat here in 2025 are looking down the barrel of another 30 years in the middle east, literally. And the GWOT was already hard enough on them the last time. They do not like the idea of another war that they will be fighting and that the bourgeois will largely forget is occurring at all. Iran will decidedly not be 'liberal tears', but more concern trolling out of the Grey Lady, which MAGA really hates.
Once boys start coming back in body bags, yeah, sure, more patriotism, of course. And the proles and bourgeois will be at odds again, with sympathy coming from the bourgeois and not 'liberal tears'. Driving home that message of how MAGA is on the loosing side of the class war again.
But, and this I think is critical, they aren't going to be looking at Donny the same way. The 'fun' will have been had, and the reality of living on the loosing side will sink in again. It's pretty much what happened to Napoleon's congress in the 1870s after the Prussian war. Well that and Emperor Napoleon was captured in battle.
Anyway, Donny is in real danger, per Marx and Bakunin's take in 1850, of loosing his coalition with Iran. And, just like with Louis, I don't think Donny really knows that.
[0] no, not pitchforks and molotovs anarchism, but an-archy, without rulers old school anarchism.
man, I wonder if putting the dumbest, laziest and most selfish fucking people in America in charge of America might have any negative consequences for anyone.
Do you think anyone is buying larger volumes of metal than usual right now and sheltering it, or that maybe individuals and organizations that would need to are still seeking existing supplies of low-background steel?
their stockpile of enriched uranium is ~400kg, they had plenty of time to move it (400kg of uranium is 28 cubic cm or a half of an airline carry-on luggage bag)
When you have total dominance over an opponent, you don’t need the rules of war.
What you need is someone who understands politics.
We have forgotten the advice of the great Theodore Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”. There is no stick bigger than the US military and it’s been shoved up our own ass by our politicians.
The world of warfare sun tzu planned for is pretty different. Now the real war for western nations is maintaining public support for the war, not actually winning the war. Dropping fliers and tweets that you are about to bomb the area before you drop the bombs is pretty common
This was the most telegraphed attack in history of warfare. Trump was tweeting about it, we were moving troops and planes, even specifics of the attack plan were discussed ahead of time. There are satellite photographs of them lining up trucks. I wouldn't be surprised if they cut up and moved the centrifuges. 1000% they moved the uranium.
That could have been part of the plan, if they thought the site was impenetrable then warning about an attack would encourage Iran to move the material somewhere more accessible to American weapons.
He literally used the phrase in the same way the gun nuts still say "thoughts and prayers" after school shootings.
It's super weird to go through life watching people's context window (I hate myself for using this term) get smaller as they get older, while I'm over here like "Haven't we been here before?"
Pretty sure that many governments around the world have pretty advanced monitoring equipment capable of tracking the movements of nuclear material. Just sayin’.
I’m sure they aren’t telegraphing capabilities, but aren’t monitoring devices trained on iran nuclear sites that have been in place for decades.
The intelligence value alone of knowing where materials are going would be so valuable that this has to be in place.
What kind of monitoring are you thinking? Uranium is primarily an alpha emitter, and as such very easy to shield. I don't think it could be tracked from a distance.
> It appeared Iran intended to remove the bulk of the cameras and other monitoring gear installed as part of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers, according to Grossi. Without cameras in place, Iran could divert centrifuges used for uranium enrichment to other unknown locations, he said.
Those are for detecting nuclear reactor antineutrinos, to monitor plutonium-producing reactors associated with weapons programs. Not a pile of uranium sitting around doing nothing.
I don't think you understand how small 400 kilos of U235 is. It's a cube about 11 inches on each side. That would be very difficult to track, specially in a shielded container.
I'm honestly surprised Israel hasn't used its nukes yet. Against non-nuclear nation, there isn't really much threat of retaliation. Given how much Iran has already suffered, they'd be stupid to not try & get nukes. If even North Korea can get them, it can't be that hard.
Also, I wonder if Iran really has that much uranium or if it's another Iraq WMD situation again considering the lack of radiation leakage and all
Because it would have catastrophic consequences on the world order. Normalizing nuking your opponent will invite Russia to nuke Ukraine, China Taiwan, and North Korea South Korea. The USA will not let Israel nuke anybody.
For important context, Pakistan is Iran's neighbor. Can you not see why nukes in Iran is a concern?
And if Israel could use a nuke without nuclear retaliation in turn, they would proceed to annihilate half a continent. Once you get hit, it's far too late to retaliate.
Pakistan is establishing preemptive MAD in defense of barrier states, because if Israel does this, they're effectively already dead; they'll have nothing to lose. Israel can call it a bluff, but I personally think they're serious.
As a final consideration, if Israel drops nukes on Iran and is retaliated upon, the US is absolutely not going to start a global thermonuclear war and end all of humanity on their behest. Nor would China ever allow the US to get away with an counter invasion of Pakistan, leaving little other option.
Lack of a nuclear response from the target country, if it could even be guaranteed, is not the same thing as lack of retaliation. Even the non-nuclear response from current allies would be devastating for Israel's security.
Layman's impression, but it seems like Iran has been holding onto stockpiles and deliberately not going all the way to weapons grade, probably to navigate around the threat of us invasion or similar in the time between them getting that and credibly weaponizing it. Recent events may push them to rush it though, if they still have the facilities.
I believe you are mistaken. While the title is correct, it is also incomplete. One of the sites bombed was Fordo, the enrichment plant.
> Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators — one of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal — punched deep holes in the rock. The Israeli military’s initial analysis concluded that the site, the target of American and Israeli military planners for more than 26 years, sustained serious damage from the strike but had not been completely destroyed.
The article goes on to discuss how this is only initial analysis and that additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.
> additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.
It's possible, and Iran has done it before (AFAIK, the only country), but this is about as easy as building a new facility from scratch (what they essentially did last time they moved a centrifuge).
It's not exactly portable, like a satellite dish or something.
And even if you transported some of the most complex parts (the centrifuge), they aren't really very useful on their own, without an entire facility.
So the idea that they're going to be up and running and further enriching uranium to bomb grade any time soon is - while theoretically not impossible - highly implausible.
The odds are likely higher that they've just got another facility no one yet knows about (which is low, but non-zero).
Mad requires both sides to 1) be rational, 2) believe the other side is rational. Neither is a safe assumption. It's fundamentally always been messed up. Even Reagan realised that.
>Against non-nuclear nation, there isn't really much threat of retaliation.
There is from the rest of the world. Israel needs the west on its side. Using nukes would guarantee that support would end, which would make them extremely vulnerable.
It's not clear there is anything Israel could do which would elicit more than strong, but carefully chosen, words of condemnation from the west.
Certainly Nuclear strikes against Iran would be a huge overreach. But no other country is going to retaliate with a Nuclear strike on Israel. If for no other reason than it would certainly lead the US deploying its nuclear arsenal. Especially with the current administration, no one would count on them choosing a path of de-escalation.
Other than strong condemnation, there would be zero consequences and no effect on west's support to Israel, if Israel would to use nuclear weapons on Iran.
Zero chance that the USA would abandon them in this scenario. We couldn't even get a Democratic President to even stop funding them during a genocide. We watched the "left" cable news station get rid of their most progressive voice for speaking out against it, in the same way they did back in the Iraq war days.
We're trying to make a point that there's a reason that even pariah states like North Korea have not nuked people since the end of WWII. You don't just casually look at a problem and say "oh, why haven't they thrown a nuclear warhead at it?"
What's the point? Persians are friendly towards Israel, it's the religious loonies that hold the power, and they can't be eliminated even with many nuclear strikes. As an armchair internet analyst like myself, I'm 100% sure Iran has nukes just no good delivery mechanism. The few missiles they bought from NK that could have delivered a nuke, they used to randomly shoot at Israel.
The closest Israel came to using nukes was in `73 when it looked like it was about to be overrun by Arab armies on multiple fronts and also many suggested it should have dropped it on Gaza on Oct 7, but that would be seriously stupid even just for revenge, since you can't repopulate the area later.
Someone should really investigate what happened to the 15-year Iran nuclear agreement that set limits on stockpile size and enrichment levels, and allowed international inspector verification.
I remember the fate of Iraq's WMD (chemical) -- they denied inspectors, blatantly lied on the reports for many years. It was all way too suspicious, but their biggest trick was that when UN approved a military intervention, no WMDs were actually found. That put US in a very bad position because they couldn't prove WMDs existense. Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs (or just hidden well).
However, unlike chemical substances, radiation is easily detectable even in minuscule quantities. Just transporting radioactive materials leave a detectable trace, so I bet they won't be lost for long. The only way to actually hide them is to contaminate the whole area with the same materials.
> "radiation is easily detectable even in minuscule quantities. Just transporting radioactive materials leave a detectable trace"
This is quite untrue. Uranium is only marginally radioactive.
Indeed it is not, however it's quite difficult to scrub anything sufficiently to hide them from IAEA environmental sampling (most of which is chemical based, primarily micro scale spectroscopy). Enriching uranium is a nasty, dirty process at all steps that leaves a lot of sticky, messy, and hard to get rid of traces, and IAEA has access to some of the most sophisticated analytical laboratories on the planet and a lot of practice.
If the inspectors are given sufficient access to do their inspections.
We're so back. Another quagmire war in the middle east. Exactly what we needed.
For whatever you feel about WMDs or the justification for the Iraq war, the facts are we spent almost two decades in the first go round, found no WMDs, killed a dictator we installed, blew up a shit ton of infrastructure, rebuild a shit ton of it, killed probably millions of innocent people, absolutely blew up the Taliban and later ISIS's recruitment numbers, made ourselves look fucking stupid on the global stage, then pulled out, leaving billions in military materiel to be claimed by the people we were ostensibly there to stop.
An utter fucking farce, and we have learned absolutely nothing. Time to send more young men to die.
Why do you assume the US will invade?
The actions on the US-Israel side so far (deeply cutting non-defense discretionary spending, decoupling from international trade, assassinating secular leaders who can be replaced, bombing three locations which can be rebuilt) only make sense as the near-term prelude to a major ground invasion. If the invasion doesn't happen the US will be left with a self-inflicted economic growth wound and no way to explain it, and Israel will be left with an adversary that believes itself to be facing an existential risk, that is able to enrich uranium, and that would not trust any treaty negotiations.
The self-inflicted economic wound is nothing more than Trumpnomics. If the numbers look bad he will just say they are fake or solved by GDP growth or tariff revenue.
Iran already knows that Israel can decapitate them at will, but not occupy them. Nothing has changed with these strikes.
Bombing nuclear facilities and killing scientists kicks the can down the road and that has worked for decades. But the US/Israel coalition is also trying to negotiate or orchestrate regime change, which could provide a more lasting impact.
> But the US/Israel coalition is also trying to negotiate or orchestrate regime change, which could provide a more lasting impact.
Are there any credible signs of this?
I don't think anyone has said so beyond, of course, "UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!"
Considering how far Israel has gone in Gaza, I wouldn't rule out them pursuing maximized goals in Iran.
> Iran already knows that Israel can decapitate them at will, but not occupy them.
Every respected strategist said the exact same fucking thing about Iraq before we killed 17 years there. Didn't stop us from trying and failing.
The population of Israel is 1/9 the population of Iran. The population of the US in 2003 was 10x the population of Iraq. Huge difference in what it takes to actually attempt to occupy a foreign country with a hostile populace.
You realize that Israel and the United States are different countries, yeah?
>You realize that Israel and the United States are different countries, yeah?
Well, the hand and the head are different body parts, but one controls the other
If the ground invasion doesn't happen, will you come here and openly admit "I was wrong and need to adjust my priors"?
Did you believe Trump and his people when they campaigned on not attacking Iran while claiming repeatedly that Harris would if elected. If so did can you admit you were wrong and need to adjust your priors?
Was this really a Trump campaign promise? Can't find it online credible and genuinely curious. Also tried here https://archive.ph/76zVk
I have never believed a word that comes out of Trump's mouth. My priors are holding up just fine.
While I am first to admit that my basic assumptions have been severely tested by the last news cycle, I do think it is very naive to think this is the end of hostilities.
Because we've all been here before. This time we are led in by someone who is just as stupid, but with several times more malicious intent.
We've also bombed places without invading. I share your opinion of Trump, but even a stopped clock...
Both the US and Israel currently have leaders that have to be seen as "wartime leaders" to extend their rule beyond what their respective country's laws usually permit, because otherwise they both very likely will end up in prison.
This is not true of Bibi. No law limits how much he can serve. The only legal block for him remaining in power is that he's undergoing various criminal trials, which may or may not end with him being found guilty.
There is, of course, a lot of pressure for him to resign or for various other things to happen that he is currently managing to put on hold due to the war, but that's legal, and doesn't require wartime.
Absent all that, he faces elections in 2026.
Bibi, yes. Trump is in the clear. The immunity decision means that successfully prosecuting a president will take years.
I genuinely think hell will freeze over before we see an American president face justice.
We would have if he hadn't been reelected or if some of the prosecutions were not so ambitious.
> they denied inspectors, blatantly lied on the reports for many years.
For many years the IAEA vacillated between praising and and admonishing the Iraqi's for their cooperation or lack thereof.
> It was all way too suspicious
Yea, for _both_ sides. There was clearly more politics being played in these deals than anyone let be known.
> Who knows, maybe there were really no WMDs
There really were no WMDs. They have a shelf life. They expire. There was some evidence they did exist but were likely long gone. Hans Blix was pretty clear on this. This angered the CIA so greatly they made him a target to undermine him. It didn't work.
This is recent history and how quickly it is forgotten.
even if Iran was honestly complying, it seems that 60% level left them enough wiggle room for "accidental enrichment" Ooopps :
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/20/iran-denies-enrichi...
" Iran has denied that it has intentionally enriched uranium to a purity of 84 percent ...
US-based financial news agency Bloomberg reported on Sunday that inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had found uranium enriched to a purity of 84 percent — just below the 90 percent required for a bomb — and are trying to determine if it was produced intentionally."
Peaceful energy requires well under 10%. Enriching any noticeable amount (i.e. >> research/medical quantities) beyond that level has only one purpose - weapons (and you can make a weapon even with slightly sub-90%, and 84% does sound there, it is just a bit more technically complex and yield may be less, yet who measures ...)
The JCPOA limit was 3.67%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Comprehensive_Plan_of_Ac...
So, if 3.67% was enough for them (like for anybody else doing peaceful nuclear energy), why they have produced so much of 60%?
Edit: judging by the answers the word "why" happened to be misunderstood in my question. I'll restate it - what purpose Iran has been enriching uranium to 60% for?
So far the only plausible answer has been - weapons.
So, Iran:
I.e. Iran presented credible existential threat to Israel and US, and thus is getting bombed in response.This is like asking why your employee stopped showing up for work after you fired them.
No, it's like asking why you spent a billion dollars renovating your house, then claimed you were never planning to live in it.
because the US pulled out of the deal and reinstated the sanctions which were the whole reason Iran joined the JCPOA in the first place.
Iran complied with the <4% limit throughout the entire period that the United States remained party to the JCPOA.
The US (specifically Trump at the behest of Netanyahu) broke the agreement, no one else.
Yes, that happened 5 years after Trump unilaterally destroyed the Iran nuclear weapons ban deal.
this is a misunderstanding of the full context. The US abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 under Trump's order to withdraw from the agreement (which was, IMO, strictly part of his package to ruin the legacy of Obama, who he despises deeply). This essentially killed the primary reason Iran agreed in the first place, which was relief from sanctions. However the agreement remains in force to this day and is still monitored by the IAEA. So it's not very surprising that Iran resumed their enrichment activities [1] and Trump's actions in 2018 has led to vastly higher tensions between the US/Iran/Israel.
It is well established by the IAEA itself that Iran fully honored the terms of the JCPOA up until Trump intentionally ruined the agreement by pulling the US out of it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
That's quite something to read again with the perspective of hindsight. It's highly ironic that the European Commission called the US sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program illegal (and took actions against them); those same ballistic missiles are being used against Europe today, in Ukraine.
That was in 2018; the EU ended up themselves sanctioning Iran for ballistic missiles in 2024,
> "In a statement dated 13 September 2024, the EU strongly condemned the recent transfer of Iranian-made ballistic missiles to Russia, considered as a direct threat to European security [sic!] and as a substantive material escalation from the provision of Iranian UAVs and ammunition, which Russia had used in its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine. The High Representative stated that the EU would respond swiftly and in coordination with international partners, including with new and significant restrictive measures against Iran."
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024...
> "The European Union on Monday imposed sanctions on Iran’s deputy defense minister, senior members of its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and three airlines over allegations that they supplied drones, missiles and other equipment to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine."
https://apnews.com/article/eu-russia-drones-missiles-iran-sa...
You mean the one Iran was constantly breaking and refusing access to inspectors?
I really thought Iran was breaking the deal too. Just did a google search and found articles from politico and AP fact checking and it seemed that Iran was complying with the deal.
Do you have any links or relevant sources to show that they weren't?
Here's a good timeline:
https://chatgpt.com/share/6859c708-e53c-8002-bbdb-14150cb4d0...
The upshot is that the US terminated the deal in 2019 and then the Iranians started "racing" for a bomb.
Before you think the nuclear deal was good, I have to ask: Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"?
It seems a bit like holding the world hostage. There are other ways to stop the bomb program, as we have now seen. The diplomatic solution grants Iran permission to destabilize the region by funding Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.
I'm pretty ok bombing hostile religious fanatics trying to develop nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
> Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"
Lots of nations are "bad actors" in lots of ways. And sanctions come in many different shapes and sizes.
So yes, it is absolutely OK to sanction a country more because they are building a nuclear bomb, and then remove those extra sanctions if they stop.
Sanctions aren't all-or-nothing. The whole idea is that the more you go along with international norms, the less you're sanctioned. Otherwise they wouldn't work to change behavior, because change is always a matter of degrees. Iran isn't going to become Switzerland overnight. That's not how countries work.
I personally think that it's not ok that Iran has sewed so much discord in the Middle East by arming Hez, Hamas and the Houthis.
I'm very happy the US got involved and destroyed their enrichment sites. I'm also happy Israel didn't wait around for Iran to destroy them, which they've actively been trying to do in this war.
>Do you think it's ok for a nation to get sanctions relief, even though they are being a bad actor on the world stage, just in return for "not making a bomb"?
As Morpheus said, "Welcome to the real world."
I'm pretty okay bribing nations to verifiably not build nuclear weapons. It doesn't feel good but sometimes we have to do things that don't feel good.
According to these absolute la-la-land real politickers, states are supposed to just not build nuclear weapons — tools that are empirically required to have a seat at the international table since 1945 — because you ask politely.
Obviously you have to fucking bribe them! Bribing is infinitely better than bombing, where each marginal bombing increases the imperative for every other state to develop their own nukes by reaffirming they are permanently at the mercy of nuclear states!
> tools that are empirically required to have a seat at the international table since 1945 — because you ask politely.
Umm, what? There are plenty of countries that "have a seat at the table" without nuclear weapons. Depending on what you mean by "seat at the table", of course, but I'm not sure there's any way to define it that excludes 95% of countries.
Maybe if defined as "permanent member of the un security council".
only after Trump ruined the agreement by pulling the US out of it in 2018. Before then, Iran was complying.
Given the thoroughness of Israel's intelligence on Iran I doubt it would have been moved without detection. Even if they did manage to move it, the moment enrichment starts back up it will just be bombed again. If it looks like a new facility is being built even deeper underground then that will just be bombed before it starts up. Without air defenses Iran doesn't have a lot of options and Gaza has shown putting an enrichment facility in the basement of a school/hospital isn't going to stop a bombing either. I'm not a military strategist but to me it seems like Iran's first priority before anything else is regaining control of their own skies.
So it turns out dismantling an entire nation's nuclear infrastructure just requires a bit of coordination with foreign intelligence and a couple of well placed airstrikes. Who knew it was that simple?
No protracted negotiations, no international coalitions, no drawn-out sanctions, just precision and decisiveness. A button pressed here, a few planes there, and the problem vanishes. Permanently, of course.
And now, with Iran's nuclear ambitions supposedly neutralized in a single blow, we can all relax. The threat is gone. No strategic aftershocks, no long term consequences, no unintended escalation. Just peace, stability, and a region completely satisfied with the outcome.
One wonders what the last 15 years were for. Bureaucratic inertia? A lack of imagination?
Progress, it seems, is just a matter of revisiting the old playbook with a bit more confidence.
okay I give up! You've aced Poe's test! Is this sarcasm or no?
I think this bit gives it up:
> And now, with Iran's nuclear ambitions supposedly neutralized in a single blow, we can all relax. The threat is gone. No strategic aftershocks, no long term consequences, no unintended escalation. Just peace, stability, and a region completely satisfied with the outcome.
Sounds like sarcasm to me.
Israel needed the US involved more than it needs to destroy any particular equipment. Even if their intelligence indicated it moved, they'd absolutely still tell Trump that he needed to bring the B-2s down on Fordo.
Give the guy a finish line to carry the baton over, even if you already know it's not actually the finish line.
That is why my bet is that no-fly zone is coming. It is already de-facto there, and just needs official announcement and commitment of resources.
Is Israel going to enforce it from the other side of Iraq? Or is the US going to do it from bases in Iran's frenemy territories?
Of course Israel wouldn't be able to it on its own. I think the 3 US aircraft carrier fleets around will do the job.
That would explain the Nimitz heading over there. And answer the question of if there will be additional American involvement.
[dead]
Sounds like the picture is getting clearer now https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/06/23/us-iran-nuclear-fordo-mu...
Moving it would have exposed it as an easy target
"We have the ability to destroy things that people think were undestroyable. And so we think we did a really good job."
Truest thing ever said by a Trump spokesmodel!
Our intelligence didn't know that Iran was trying to build a Nuclear Bomb, so we had to do this attack, but now our intelligence definetly knows:
'They are claiming that they moved some material," Mullin said, referring to Israel and Iran, respectively. "Our intelligence report says they didn't," the Oklahoma Republican said in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
> Our intelligence didn't know that Iran was trying to build a Nuclear Bomb
No, our intelligence services said they were not trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Correct, I was alluding to the inconsistency in the administrative's messaging.
For reference, 400 kg of Uranium amounts to 21 liters, or a little over 5 gallons
Or 80 liters in the form of UF₆ (which it probably is). About half of an oil barrel. You wouldn't put it all in a single barrel of course: that would explode.
If it's in a solid metallic form.
Officials Concede They Don't Know The Unknowable
Oh it's certainly knowable. It's a known unknown.
You could imagine all sorts of ways we could find out, from detectors to informants.
Like traveling inside the plasma of a sun is knowable but difficult.
Difficult is exactly the right term here. Neutrinos do it all the time, we just need to catch them. First done in 1998 according to light googling.
Isn’t the American Congress responsible for declaring war on other countries? This brings up the uncomfortable discussion of how to correct CEO overreach and insure accountability. Where does the buck stop when it’s passed around like a hot potato?
Every president you've lived under has sent Americans to kill and die in other countries, either with or without congressional oversight. Usually without. For reference, neither Korea nor Vietnam were ever declared wars by congress. For Vietnam Congress authorized LBJ to take "all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States". Korea was never a war, and instead was undertaken solely at POTUS's discretion as a "police action" in response to a UN resolution and while Congress did support the effort to procure money and blood to spend in Korea, they never formally authorized any sort of aggression in Korea.
The president has broad authority to take military action without the requisite congressional authorization for up to 60 days (plus another 30 to allow for withdrawal of troops). It's been this way since the War Powers Act of 1973.
And this was formally updated post 9/11 with the AUMF (Acceptable Use of Military Force) which gave the president quite sweeping powers without direct congressional approval. The caveat is that the AUMF is only for 9/11 responsible countries or affiliates. Given 9/11 was Al Qaeda and they are Sunni, and that Iran is Shia, they are not actually related since they want to also kill each other. Still, these powers are being bastardizes to limit the authority of congress.
https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ40/PLAW-107publ40.pdf
The AUMF was an addition to WP so Iran's lack of support for AQ doesn't limit normal WP operations. Additionally sectarian concerns are more malleable than presented. As an example review Iran's long-standing support for Hamas which is Sunni-affiliated.
Congress has largely abdicated a lot of its powers to the President and (to a lesser extent) the Supreme Court.
Working together to solve problems makes you a target to primary voters back at home (i.e., the most hardcore people in your party), so the incentive to to do nothing and enjoy the perks as long as you can.
USA hasn't formally declared war since 1942. The Executive just continues to expand its power.
I assumed Vietnam and Korea were officially declared but after looking it up I see they weren't.
It's kind of crazy they even managed to draft people without congress approving it. The world wars really did kill the old American system of government.
Congress did approve the draft with the Military Selective Service Act of 1967.
> USA hasn't formally declared war since 1942.
That's true but misleading. Congress has consistently authorized military action in almost¹ all of the extended wars and conflicts the US has been involved in after 1942. It's not like those presidents have ignored Congress and not sought congressional approval.
¹ Weasel word: I'm sure I've missed some but the big one I can think of is Libya during the Obama years, which didn't have congressional approval and wasn't a declaration of war either.
That is certainly true, but often *after* the President has acted has Congress authorized action.
It’s not misleading.
War is impossible for Congress to disapprove. You cannot pretend that option is even on the table when a Potus has expanded power to push the country into a war; how can congress disapprove an ongoing conflict in a country that prides itself on using military force?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding your question, but I think most Americans are weary of war and don't want to get involved in another – even if we're proud of our military forces. I would expect my senators to vote against approving extended involvement in an Iran conflict or war past 60 days. Furthermore, I don't think it's impossible for Congress to disapprove anymore with how polarized our politics are. Certainly any kind of boots-on-the-ground action is going to be anathema to both parties as well.
I guess my larger point is how can Congress vote down a war that started 60 days ago and has a goal of lasting longer than 60 days? Even entertaining the idea they vote to pull troops out after a conflict, does an authoritarian, overpowered, executive branch comply?
I get what you're trying to argue but the point above was in the opposite direction - that congress has continually approved military action for what are (obviously) wars in all but name many times since 1942.
Congress is not-really-declaring-war even more than prior centuries, independent from how the presidents (particularly the latest in this case) also totally-aren't-declaring-war more without congress often than ever before.
> how can congress disapprove an ongoing conflict
by voting. It's that simple.
Of course, it is far from clear what would happen if they did so vote.
Wasn’t the Gulf War approved by Congress abd formally declared?
Article II of the constititution grants the president broad authority to direct military operations, deploy troops, conduct military strikes and respond to threats to national security.
Carter deployed troops to Iran without congressional approval, Reagan deployed troops or air strikes to Grenada, Libya and Lebanon without congressional approval. George HW Bush deployed troops to Panama and Somalia without congressional authorization using executive authority and broad interpretations of the 2001 AUMF. Clinton intervened in Haiti, bombed Bosnia and Kosovo, and performed air stikes in Sudan and Afghanistan. George W Bush conducted strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen without congressional approval. Obama used troops or Airstrikes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and notably sent US troops into Pakistan to apprehend Osama, a sovereing country without congressional authorization. Trump hit Syria and conducted strikes in Iraq against Iran without authorization. Biden conducted strikes in Syria and Iraq and assisted Ukraine in many ways although supposedly not through direct military involvement without congressional authorization.
I’m not sure why there is a sudden argument over whether Trump should be hamstrung, delay opportunities and eliminate surprise completely by having a congressional debate over acts of war that are not declarations of war that have been performed by virtually every president in modern history. It’s just not how the US Government works and Trumps actions in this case are completely in alignment with our norms.
I’m not sure why there is a sudden argument over whether Trump should be hamstrung
Agreed, if I see a three-year old about to stick a butter knife into a 110V outlet, I will certainly stop him. Who could argue against that?
But the argument would be that it's a bad idea.
Not that he should get congressional approval on where to stick the knife.
Maybe it's not a war, it's a special operation.
Isn't that almost exactly what Putin has been calling his little quagmire?
In theory. In practice every president since before I can remember (maybe Carter?) has sent the military out for something like this. Trumps' supporters pointed that fact out often in his campaign. Too bad it didn't last.
> for something like this.
for something like what, precisely ?
Using the military to attack some other country without getting congress approval first.
“We’re not at war with Iran,” Vance said. “We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program.”
Maybe it's a legal loophole where the President can unilaterally wage war on specific concepts, people, and physical locations, as long as they keep saying it's not a war against a foreign nation.
That's just messaging. The president is completely allowed to conduct operations such as these.
Imagine if the Japanese said "It's not a war with the USA, its a war with a military installation in the Pacific thats uncomfortably close to us"
Similar to the asset forfeiture laws: we're not accusing you of a crime, we're accusing the thing for a crime (thus we can take it from you).
As long as its only 60% enriched, it probably doesn't matter much as long as the enrichment facility was taken out so they can't process it further.
The unfortunate asterisk is that enriching from 60% to 90% takes comparatively little time and equipment. We're not absolutely certain there isn't another small, yet-undiscovered, secret enrichment plant.
Here's highly-cited nuclear weapons expert Jeffrey Lewis:
> "Let's say Iran decides to rush a bomb. Iran can install ~1.5 cascades a week. In six weeks, it could have 9 cascades of IR-6 machines. It would take those machines about 60 days to enrich all 400 kg to WGU. Altogether that's about five months although IMMV."
https://bsky.app/profile/armscontrolwonk.bsky.social/post/3l...
At least we think the facility was taken out. We still don't really know.
Remember when the Bush administration burned 2 trillion dollars and more than 100 000 lives because Iraq had "Weapons of Mass Destruction" that they never had?
Yep, we're back at it again. Latin Americans have a name for it: "Imperialismo Americano".
> "Imperialismo Americano".
And how did America benefit? They didnt. But you know who did? Israel.
Israel is the tip of the lance of the American Imperialism projecting power throughout the Middle East with the American backing. The regular American isn’t the beneficiary in any way, quite on the contrary, its their taxes that are backing it.
And how is America benefiting from "projecting power" throughout the middle east?
Doesn't that just mean American imperialism?
Yeso, Exactlyo :D
Yep, but people look at it in different ways. It feels different, depending on how it affects you.
In English, "America imperialism" is a phrase for political propaganda, like "woke", "freedom", etc. You can argue if it makes sense or not. You can disagree if it exists. It is an opinion.
In Latin America it is a fact of life, like rain and sunshine. It is there, everyone knows. No one denies it.
It's honestly incredible how we've learned absolutely nothing. I thought for sure that universally-agreed-upon catastrophe of Iraq would cause the lesson to stick, but no, we're running through the same playbook word-for-word. Including the goose-stepping support of the media: go to the homepage of "liberal" publications like The Atlantic right now and you can see full-throated support of the war and them discovering how much they love Trump now.
Yes with titles like "American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran".
If no ground invasion starts in the next few months, will you reconsider your position?
You'd be surprised how many people view it as a success.
[flagged]
This is not an acceptable comment on Hacker News. Further, this comment from a week ago is particularly bad:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44293075
Sure, if you must engage in discussions about politics here, criticize a country's government and its policies and practices. But don't use these kinds of insinuations and slurs.
Please have a read of the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I wonder if they use comsol to model destroying mountains.
We should ask the Iranian government, they might know.
In October, my family in texas was raving about how trump was going to end the Ukraine war overnight. They stopped talking about it the day trump retook office. And the other day they stopped talking about peace entirely and started raving about how Iran has had it coming and a little bit of war is good for the economy. They did the exact same thing in 2002.
Because they never seen war comes to their mainland. They think it just game to kill millions of people and torture and rape others while they're sleeping in their houses in peace.
Why end it? Ukraine is the most successful proxy war in the history of war. Ukraine has destroyed much of Russian ground forces and armor, and eliminated the only advantage that Russia did have, which was artillery. Now artillery accounts for only 20% of casualties on the battlefield. Even if the war ended today, Russia will not receive any of their funds frozen in Europe for decades, if ever. Russia has no military or technology advantage, and no way to rebuild it. Europe is safer than it ever has been.
> Why end it?
Because it is resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians?
It is easy to tell other people to go die for you.
Americans are minimizing the number of dead Ukrainians because a large number of casualties would be seen as a sign of defeat. It's not just that they are another nation, its that they want that number to be low.
>Because it is resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands Ukrainians?
Genuine question: Why do you think politicians in US and EU would care about that?
Yeah? It's easy to tell other people to just let their country get overrun, too.
Ukrainians do not want to be owned by Russia. Ukraine is being invaded by Russia. Why end it, if "ending it" means Ukraine gets taken over by Russia, and the people of Ukraine do not want that?
You have severely misinterpreted that comment. They're saying that we should actually help Ukraine and end the war as soon as possible, instead of prolonging it and causing untold suffering for symbolic victories over Russia.
We have not established a no-fly-zone, we have under delivered on promises, we abandoned them even after the mineral deal, and we have repeated lied and slandered their country while parroting Kremlin propaganda.
They're on your side that we should be doing those things to protect Ukraine. Like we promised all those decades ago.
There was never any promise or obligation to establish a no-fly zone to protect Ukraine. If you're referring to the Budapest Memorandum, it was not a mutual defense treaty and the USA has already abided by 100% of the terms. I support giving Ukraine military aid, but putting our military personnel in direct conflict with Russia is a step way too far.
Oh, come on, are we into legal weaseling now?
It is profoundly clear that Ukraine sought protection in exchange for their actual protection. And regardless of the actual "required" protections, we have clearly violated the spirit of the agreement and proven to the whole world that the US is not to be trusted as a policing force for real conflicts - only those it chooses to start for financial or political gain - and that non-prolifération is a failure of a policy that only leads to becoming a victim of a lopsided war.
Now, Iran acts as the finalizing example that any nation without nukes is a nation without true sovereignty. Even North Korea is treated with more respect.
> Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
Mineral deal protection racket.
> Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Russia has threatened Ukraine with nuclear retaliation, even if they have not done it.
Have you ever even read the Budapest Memorandum? It contains no promise of protection, or even a vague implication thereof. It merely requires the USA to raise any violations with the UN Security Council, which was done.
I absolutely oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine and think that we (and other allies) should continue giving them the means to resist. But at the same time Ukraine shouldn't have left themselves so vulnerable by letting their military collapse prior to 2014 through a combination of corruption and apathy. In an anarchic world order you can't depend on anyone else to keep you safe.
The Ukrainians can do whatever they want. My problem is, the person I was responding to, basically implied that the lives of Ukrainians is a sacrifice he is willing to make for the safety of the rest of Europe. I don't like that sort of reasoning.
I think he was actually arguing against the conservative talking point that the war is detrimental to US interests. Not that he wants the war to continue but rather that isolationists have no leg to stand on when they wring their hands about Ukraine defending themselves.
> I don't like that sort of reasoning.
You don't have to like it, but that's the way it is.
It is indeed the way it is. This explains why the world is not going full steam ahead in supporting Ukraine such that they would win the war. It is a game of exhausting the enemy over a prolonged time, such that they are not capable of anything else but continuing to _try_ to take 'only' Ukraine.
The harsh truth is that Ukrainians are giving their lives for the freedom of Europeans and probably a chunk of the rest of the world population. Once one of the sides fully wins, Europe will get less safe, since the next step would be WMD.
It always hurts when people close to you get caught up in cults.
I was in a new world order survival cult as a kid, and it destroyed any semblance of connection I felt with others. Why connect when they're going to the camps?
Everything I've seen for the last ten years or so feels familiar. That very cult got a little watered down and has consumed the politics of the nation.
Yeah. My dad was actually moving past some of his weird social-conservative hangups. Then came orange-man.
"Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after I win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled," Trump told a National Guard Conference. "I’ll get it settled very fast. I don’t want you guys going over there."
The best piece that I have found on Donny and his voting assembly is from 1852.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumai...
Perhaps, unsurprisingly, it's Marx. But mostly its Marx sorta responding to Mikhail Bakunin, the father of anarchism [0].
The question to these early socialists was: Why the fuck are these French peasants supporting Louis Napoleon III for president? It makes zero fucking sense. They were tearing their hair out trying to understand it.
Marx takes Bakunin to task in the novella above, and it's worth the full read if you still can't figure out why MAGA loves Donny. But, to me, Bakunin is still right and Marx was still wrong.
TLDR: Those French peasants really hated the bourgeois. So much so that they elected Napoleon III to president, knowing he would eventually take over in a coup and kill their nascent democracy, just because his election would piss off the effete bourgeois in the cities. The peasants know their life sucks and then they die. But the damn know-it-all bourgeois just need their faces rubbed in it, goddamnit. They know they are in a class war and they aren't winning it. The bourgeois don't, they think that they might make it out of the war, but the peasants know better and need to teach them a lesson. I'm heavily paraphrasing Bakunin here.
As for Donny, look, I think Bakunin's take on the French in 1850-ish is the right one here. The MAGA types know that Donny is a monster. But they really hate the DEI stuff and the liberal urban elites, more so than they hate Donny. They want these bourgeois liberals to feel the pain. It really does come down to 'liberal tears'.
Now, unfortunately, the proletariat here in 2025 are looking down the barrel of another 30 years in the middle east, literally. And the GWOT was already hard enough on them the last time. They do not like the idea of another war that they will be fighting and that the bourgeois will largely forget is occurring at all. Iran will decidedly not be 'liberal tears', but more concern trolling out of the Grey Lady, which MAGA really hates.
Once boys start coming back in body bags, yeah, sure, more patriotism, of course. And the proles and bourgeois will be at odds again, with sympathy coming from the bourgeois and not 'liberal tears'. Driving home that message of how MAGA is on the loosing side of the class war again.
But, and this I think is critical, they aren't going to be looking at Donny the same way. The 'fun' will have been had, and the reality of living on the loosing side will sink in again. It's pretty much what happened to Napoleon's congress in the 1870s after the Prussian war. Well that and Emperor Napoleon was captured in battle.
Anyway, Donny is in real danger, per Marx and Bakunin's take in 1850, of loosing his coalition with Iran. And, just like with Louis, I don't think Donny really knows that.
[0] no, not pitchforks and molotovs anarchism, but an-archy, without rulers old school anarchism.
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man, I wonder if putting the dumbest, laziest and most selfish fucking people in America in charge of America might have any negative consequences for anyone.
But they didn't cc a journalist before the strike!
Do you think anyone is buying larger volumes of metal than usual right now and sheltering it, or that maybe individuals and organizations that would need to are still seeking existing supplies of low-background steel?
What do you even get from destroying it?
Can you stop them from rebuilding?
It seems like all Trump does is to burn the cards that the US spent decades collection.
If they stopped it once why do you think they can't stop it again? And it should be easier if you do it earlier in the rebuilding phase.
What you get is that you destroy their existing stockpile. They can rebuild, but it takes them longer after they rebuild.
their stockpile of enriched uranium is ~400kg, they had plenty of time to move it (400kg of uranium is 28 cubic cm or a half of an airline carry-on luggage bag)
upd: corrected the weight from 100 to 400kg
Difficulty: if you put 400 kg of 60% U-235 in an airline flight bag, the rest of your day is going to go downhill in a hurry.
I'd imagine you'd need at least a few trucks to move that stuff from point A to point B.
It's 400 kg.
first page of Sun Tzu, "Don't Tweet To The World that You're About to Attack"
When you have total dominance over an opponent, you don’t need the rules of war.
What you need is someone who understands politics.
We have forgotten the advice of the great Theodore Roosevelt: “Speak softly and carry a big stick”. There is no stick bigger than the US military and it’s been shoved up our own ass by our politicians.
That's only in the Kindle edition.
The world of warfare sun tzu planned for is pretty different. Now the real war for western nations is maintaining public support for the war, not actually winning the war. Dropping fliers and tweets that you are about to bomb the area before you drop the bombs is pretty common
This was the most telegraphed attack in history of warfare. Trump was tweeting about it, we were moving troops and planes, even specifics of the attack plan were discussed ahead of time. There are satellite photographs of them lining up trucks. I wouldn't be surprised if they cut up and moved the centrifuges. 1000% they moved the uranium.
>the most telegraphed attack in history of warfare
Strictly speaking I think it was Signal'd. It may also have been WhatsApp'd if that wasn't banned yet.
That could have been part of the plan, if they thought the site was impenetrable then warning about an attack would encourage Iran to move the material somewhere more accessible to American weapons.
Hahaha, "the plan". As if they had one, beyond bumping tomorrow's poll numbers.
Is this the Trump version of „Mission accomplished“?
He literally used the phrase in the same way the gun nuts still say "thoughts and prayers" after school shootings.
It's super weird to go through life watching people's context window (I hate myself for using this term) get smaller as they get older, while I'm over here like "Haven't we been here before?"
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Pretty sure that many governments around the world have pretty advanced monitoring equipment capable of tracking the movements of nuclear material. Just sayin’.
I’m sure they aren’t telegraphing capabilities, but aren’t monitoring devices trained on iran nuclear sites that have been in place for decades.
The intelligence value alone of knowing where materials are going would be so valuable that this has to be in place.
What kind of monitoring are you thinking? Uranium is primarily an alpha emitter, and as such very easy to shield. I don't think it could be tracked from a distance.
We had cameras and other devices installed under the old nuclear deal.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/iran-remo...
> It appeared Iran intended to remove the bulk of the cameras and other monitoring gear installed as part of the 2015 nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers, according to Grossi. Without cameras in place, Iran could divert centrifuges used for uranium enrichment to other unknown locations, he said.
Maybe antineutrinos. There has been a fair bit of work on detectors in the past couple of decades.
Those are for detecting nuclear reactor antineutrinos, to monitor plutonium-producing reactors associated with weapons programs. Not a pile of uranium sitting around doing nothing.
e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11434-z
Trump canceled the deal that included monitoring. The Iranians, as you’d expect, disabled those in response.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_withdrawal_from_...
Surveillance UAVs exist, loiter indefinitely, and Israel has declared air superiority from the beginning.
I don't think you understand how small 400 kilos of U235 is. It's a cube about 11 inches on each side. That would be very difficult to track, specially in a shielded container.
https://archive.is/20250623152635/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
I'm honestly surprised Israel hasn't used its nukes yet. Against non-nuclear nation, there isn't really much threat of retaliation. Given how much Iran has already suffered, they'd be stupid to not try & get nukes. If even North Korea can get them, it can't be that hard.
Also, I wonder if Iran really has that much uranium or if it's another Iraq WMD situation again considering the lack of radiation leakage and all
Why would they escalate to nukes when they can already fly over Tehran and bomb things at will?
Because it would have catastrophic consequences on the world order. Normalizing nuking your opponent will invite Russia to nuke Ukraine, China Taiwan, and North Korea South Korea. The USA will not let Israel nuke anybody.
So far the USA hasn't stopped Israel from doing anything.
How would we know if they did?
I think we are past Israel really caring about catastrophic consequences.
That assumes a sane, well ordered USA. This particular attack falsified that hypothesis.
Iranian general said,
> Pakistan has assured Iran that if Israel uses nuclear weapons, Pakistan will retaliate with nuclear strikes as well.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/pakist...
But who knows if that's true or not.
Any country that drops nukes on Israel is going to become the US’s next target. I can’t see Pakistan wanting that.
For important context, Pakistan is Iran's neighbor. Can you not see why nukes in Iran is a concern?
And if Israel could use a nuke without nuclear retaliation in turn, they would proceed to annihilate half a continent. Once you get hit, it's far too late to retaliate.
Pakistan is establishing preemptive MAD in defense of barrier states, because if Israel does this, they're effectively already dead; they'll have nothing to lose. Israel can call it a bluff, but I personally think they're serious.
As a final consideration, if Israel drops nukes on Iran and is retaliated upon, the US is absolutely not going to start a global thermonuclear war and end all of humanity on their behest. Nor would China ever allow the US to get away with an counter invasion of Pakistan, leaving little other option.
Lack of a nuclear response from the target country, if it could even be guaranteed, is not the same thing as lack of retaliation. Even the non-nuclear response from current allies would be devastating for Israel's security.
Layman's impression, but it seems like Iran has been holding onto stockpiles and deliberately not going all the way to weapons grade, probably to navigate around the threat of us invasion or similar in the time between them getting that and credibly weaponizing it. Recent events may push them to rush it though, if they still have the facilities.
> if they still have the facilities.
Wasn't the entire point of this that now they don't have the facilities?
As per the story we're commenting on, whether they were successful in this mission or not is currently unknown.
The story is about the fate of the stockpile, not the processing equipment.
That's even in the title of this thread.
I believe you are mistaken. While the title is correct, it is also incomplete. One of the sites bombed was Fordo, the enrichment plant.
> Satellite photographs of the primary target, the Fordo uranium enrichment plant that Iran built under a mountain, showed several holes where a dozen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators — one of the largest conventional bombs in the U.S. arsenal — punched deep holes in the rock. The Israeli military’s initial analysis concluded that the site, the target of American and Israeli military planners for more than 26 years, sustained serious damage from the strike but had not been completely destroyed.
The article goes on to discuss how this is only initial analysis and that additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.
> additionally equipment may have been moved prior to bombing.
It's possible, and Iran has done it before (AFAIK, the only country), but this is about as easy as building a new facility from scratch (what they essentially did last time they moved a centrifuge).
It's not exactly portable, like a satellite dish or something.
And even if you transported some of the most complex parts (the centrifuge), they aren't really very useful on their own, without an entire facility.
So the idea that they're going to be up and running and further enriching uranium to bomb grade any time soon is - while theoretically not impossible - highly implausible.
The odds are likely higher that they've just got another facility no one yet knows about (which is low, but non-zero).
Because MAD works when people care about their life.
Mad requires both sides to 1) be rational, 2) believe the other side is rational. Neither is a safe assumption. It's fundamentally always been messed up. Even Reagan realised that.
>Against non-nuclear nation, there isn't really much threat of retaliation.
There is from the rest of the world. Israel needs the west on its side. Using nukes would guarantee that support would end, which would make them extremely vulnerable.
It's not clear there is anything Israel could do which would elicit more than strong, but carefully chosen, words of condemnation from the west.
Certainly Nuclear strikes against Iran would be a huge overreach. But no other country is going to retaliate with a Nuclear strike on Israel. If for no other reason than it would certainly lead the US deploying its nuclear arsenal. Especially with the current administration, no one would count on them choosing a path of de-escalation.
A nuclear strike on Jerusalem sounds untenable for religious reasons.
Other than strong condemnation, there would be zero consequences and no effect on west's support to Israel, if Israel would to use nuclear weapons on Iran.
This is probably wrong.
Yes, support for Israel is already looking threadbare around most of the world.
Most of the world yes. Most of the world doesn't really matter.
Zero chance that the USA would abandon them in this scenario. We couldn't even get a Democratic President to even stop funding them during a genocide. We watched the "left" cable news station get rid of their most progressive voice for speaking out against it, in the same way they did back in the Iraq war days.
You do understand that there's a reason no one has used nukes in combat since World War II, right?
. . . right??
Are we really trying to make a point that Israel cares about civilian casualties?
We're trying to make a point that there's a reason that even pariah states like North Korea have not nuked people since the end of WWII. You don't just casually look at a problem and say "oh, why haven't they thrown a nuclear warhead at it?"
What's the point? Persians are friendly towards Israel, it's the religious loonies that hold the power, and they can't be eliminated even with many nuclear strikes. As an armchair internet analyst like myself, I'm 100% sure Iran has nukes just no good delivery mechanism. The few missiles they bought from NK that could have delivered a nuke, they used to randomly shoot at Israel.
The closest Israel came to using nukes was in `73 when it looked like it was about to be overrun by Arab armies on multiple fronts and also many suggested it should have dropped it on Gaza on Oct 7, but that would be seriously stupid even just for revenge, since you can't repopulate the area later.
Yeah totally. Have you seen Hiroshima lately? Total wasteland.
You're sick, if you think the only reason to not drop nuke on Gaza would be that Israel would not be able to steal the nuked land later on.
You're also full of it talking about Iran's rocket forces.
Lookup eg. "Deep Dive Defense" on YT.
All this poster would need to do is compare photos of modern day Hiroshima to modern day Pripyat to realize how absurd of a statement that was.