Late to the party here, but this gave me the big thinky and I needed to respond.
If Iran does some type of nuclear test then they WILL no longer be a target of Israel or the US unless they're pushed to an extreme degree.
Full disclosure: my biases (beyond America-first policy), trend against Israel and toward autistic hyperfixation on Persianate language and culture. I'm actually reluctantly agreeing with the US/Israeli rationale.
If this were 2005, Iran would be in a much better position to retaliate if it were Bush dropping the bombs and not Trump. Sadly, this is the end result of 20+ years of increasingly severe sanctions coupled with Ali Khameini and the IRGC squandering what little remains of Iran's resource wealth and international prestige on funding proxy wars against the Saudis. I don't doubt that Iran will try, some way or some how, to acquire nuclear weapons. But certainly not for the foreseeable future (i.e. the next 20 years).
Smuggling nuclear shit ain't a fool's game like hiding bricks of coke in the back of a COSCO shipping container full of actual B2B orders. The impact of regulatory scrutiny combined with digital tracking systems linking back to national or even international databases cannot be understated. You know why the USA actually 420k of bunker buster bombs in Iran after literal
decades of scaremongering by Israel that previously amounted to nothing? It's because, this time, the boy who cried wolf was right and could present tangible proof of material movement and enrichment beyond civilian needs.
TMI here, but this is a core reason for why I'm reluctantly accepting the bombing: the world of (civilian) international logistics is highly digitised,
tariff schedules are programmed into standardised computer systems (i.e. the USA's
Automated Commercial Environment). The customs clearance process, to distill it down to the simplest "how," is basically "I read this invoice, I read this packing list. I key in values into computer system. I talk to customer, get clarification on all the shit I need before I plug in all the values and hit "send." Then I wait X amount of time, I get 1 of two messages: oi you're in the clear *or* oi ya fooked up somewhere, fix it or I'll tell on you! Slow down there bucko, I think we need the FDA, no wait USDA, no wait Fish & Wildlife! No wait, my mistake, you didn't fook up m8. I apologise. Now get yer shit outta there before you rack up more storage fees."
This is all to say that the process is digitised to a point of discerning origin, destination, seller, buyer,
extremely granular commodity codes, total value, the list goes on and on. That granular commodity code is the lynchpin of the system because repair parts for lithography machines is categorised something like "machinery -> manufacturing -> semiconductors -> lithography -> optical etching instrument" Or some variation thereof, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the way HTS works but I digress. The reason why I brought all of that up is that the logistics process for nuclear is
way more regulated and involves far more interaction with supervisory and governing agencies from. Beyond the level of intense scrutiny average civilian business-to-business transactions already face. I don't know the specifics, but intuition leads me to believe that Iran tripped a digitised bell somewhere along the process, in a way that Israel could ostensibly prove several ways to sunshine, and this was the inscrutable proof that the USA needed to actually get off its ass and whack Iran with the big stick... 420,000 times in the most targeted manner possible.
I'm still grappling with this rationalisation because it makes a creepy amount of sense and the ramifications on an international geopolitical level are... well, it's enough to give me pause for thought.
It's like with north korea, the US tried to intimidate them and so they got a nuclear program going and started doing nuclear testing (under the control of China).
Whoa there. You call yourself a socialist, yet you slander Juche and Mao Tse-tung Thought with your fallacious accusations?
a) To be clear, Kim il-sung started the war in the first place. Nevertheless, the USA
slaughtered the North in the Korean War. No exaggeration or hyperbole. There is almost
nothing in the North that wasn't flattened to the ground in carpet bombings. Korean monuments, temples, historical sites, cultural landmarks, all that shit was completely flattened. It's literally impossible for the USA to truly intimidate North Korea because they already endured some of the worst punishment the USA could throw at it. South Korean historiography in the postwar period glosses over this detail because the USA's actively bankrolling the South Korean security apparatus.
b) The armistice agreement laid the framework for no nuclear arms on the peninsula, with the implied obligation on the USA to not park its nukes in South Korea and point them at the North. The USA reneged on this, North Korea objected, and the USA said "tough tits faggot. I'm gonna point the nuclear death gun at your face from across the street until 1991, and there ain't
nothing you can do about it. Bear in mind: the Korean War
is Kim Il-sung's fault, the North was gonna engulf the South, and the solution was to... completely fucking destroy the North to a point where China's scared and they step in because their ass is at risk too? And point nukes at it within proverbial walking distance during a time where they were recovering from the aftermath of total war? There's rubbing your nose in it, and then there's smashing your face into the concrete over and over again until the muscle tissue is gone and all that's left is bone.
c) China never wanted North Korea to have nukes. It's one of the few things the USA and China can agree on. China benefits from North Korea being an impoverished buffer state with the Kims being their client regime to hold the line. If North Korea got nukes, even with Chinese approval, that would immediately invite US attention and potential intervention. That's why Kim Jong-il's missile tests in the 2000s had China joining in on the sanctions. Yeah, yeah: China helps North Korea officially and unofficially anyway and actively evades sanctions until flare-up points like in 2018 where they had to dial it back. Point is: Kim regime has a chip on their shoulder about being China's bitch, and nukes don't just make the USA quiver in their boots.
Pakistan did this preemptively and also because of their own buildup against India.
