AMZN could have for example bought a "Gepard" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flakpanzer_Gepard) - easily shoots down cruise missiles and drones. Just a couple millions would have saved billions.
One> An executive has to care about a cost center, then proceeds to invest in prevention instead of looking like a hero after, instead of putting off a fire an getting a promotion or bonus. Which is nigh impossible.
Two> Our tech overlords try to push for our cyberpunk present to at least look kinda cool. Which they also refuse todo.
Radars and bases along the path of travel from Iran to Israel have been progressively degraded. Various interceptor types also have low stockpiles at present. I'm absolutely not an expert keeping well-informed, but my understanding is that Jordan's recent losses mean much of the path is now relatively clear of air defenses, and Israel would have to mount most/all defenses from their own territory for the first time. But Israel is at-present not engaging in the war, preferring to let US do the work, as a minister recently stated. Regardless, it may be attacked, depending on IDF actions in Lebanon.
Iran also isn't hitting Israel because they know Israel will go after Tehran and the regime more directly. They were the ones to target the Basij police, industrial and steel plants, government buildings etc. America is mostly constraining itself to bombing the coast and military assets, with a focus on the strait.
That plus most of Iran's attacks on Israel didn't do anything and likely still won't. Which is why Iran focused on the weaker gulf states even when Israel was involved.
> Which is why Iran focused on the weaker gulf states even when Israel was involved.
Also, Israel will not abandon (or be abandoned) by the US, but the others might want to cut their losses if supporting the US becomes costlier than being neutral.
The game being played is extremely interesting, with high stakes and no margin for error. Too bad people die.
Both Kuwait and Bahrain did airstrikes in Iran today with intelligence and air support from UAE. The gulf states being low risk targets will likely be a short term thing for Iran in the long run as well. https://x.com/WSJ/status/2080693251682795705
The US will not be able to sustain a military presence in the Middle East for much longer. Dedollarisation is happening and when it hits a tipping point, they won’t be able to sustain their current debt financing and interest on treasury bonds will rise sharply to compensate for that.
Won’t be pretty, as no empire has ever fallen peacefully.
Iran has recently demonstrated the ability to execute accurate strikes in Jordan. If it can do so in Jordan, it can do so in Israel once Israeli air defences are similarly degraded. Doubly so because many missiles meant for Israel were intercepted by Jordan.
Iran knows Israel won't stop itself from attacking for too long. So they are going to wait until that point and they are likely going to try the same targeting methodology to paralyze Israeli airbases. If they manage to do so, they will be able to significantly reduce the US/Israeli strike tempo and to be more successful using drones, not even missiles.
This assumes Iran is maintaining consistent stockpiles and still has the capability of large attacks, including their fancier missiles which can avoid SAM systems. It's been well reported the number of drones/missiles Iran fired has consistently decreased. Israel and the US destroyed most of their missile factories so Iran is going to be conservative with how they use them.
At the peak Iran fired 650 missiles at Israel and only killed 28 people, mostly from hitting a single residential building. These days Iran is only firing small salvos into gulf states and only 20-30 drones at a time. I'd be surprised if they could pull off 2025 numbers when they fired a hundred at Israel.
> It's been well reported the number of drones/missiles Iran fired has consistently decreased.
One way of interpreting that statistic is that they are running out of munitions. Another way is to consider that stockpiles are not running low, but the initial response was a collection of high-burn, uncoordinated, decentralized tactical actions after an attempted decapitation-strike disrupted top-down C&C. Now that the fog of war has cleared, and communication has been restored, a more strategic regime is now in effect.
Iran has been getting consistent impacts on US bases in Jordan essentially every day for the past few weeks, and they are well defended.
At the end of the day Iran has more missiles than the US has interceptors. So when you get to the point when you're talking about running out, they just don't need to launch big salvos anymore.
The political party I am a member off wanted a total arms embargo on Israël including anti air defense. (It didn't go anywhere ofcourse. But that a mainstream party is fed up with Israël is quite revolutionary).
Although what has changed is that Israël is no longer getting guns for free they need to pay for it same as everyone else. Progress!
Yes this is essentially what I was thinking. And there have been repeated estimates about Iranian stockpiles that have proven completely wrong. I think they have been able to manufacture throughout the war.
The north of israel also wasn't evacuated for the recent Iran campaign. That was in 2024 and they didn't evacuate for the recent ground invasion they did in Southern Lebanon.
You seem to be woefully uninformed on this subject. Far northern Israel was evacuated in 2023 and has long since moved on to reconstruction. No significant damage in the area was directly from Iran, it was all from Hezbollah (their proxy militia in Lebanon).
The Israelis are the only ones that can, and want, to strike back. Besides no one weeps for missiles falling on Israeli cities, so that doesn’t serve the Iranians at all. Lots of much softer targets for Iranian missiles which can’t do anything to Iran.
Forgive the uninformed question, but doesn't Saudi Arabia also have significant armed forces? Given that Iran has closed the Straights of Hormuz and attacked several other Arab states, and has conducted strikes in Saudia Arabia itself, wouldn't that give Saudia Arabia a solid reason to strike back?
Iran has threatened to attack Saudi oil infrastructure if the Saudis join the Israel-American war on Iran. The Iran War Is Destroying Something More Valuable Than Oil - https://houseofsaud.com/iran-war-refinery-crisis-saudi-aramc... As it has become clear that the US missile defence shield over Saudi Arabia is inadequate (as the US can't provide enough interceptors), the Saudis have decided to be cautious.
From what I have read, their armed forces aren’t very motivated. There are stories about pilot trainings where the pilots were a bunch of rich guys that got into their jet, took off with full afterburner, did some fun loops and landed after using up their fuel.
Saudi has the advantage that they have the US doing the dirty work for them. No need to do much themselves.
Many former army personnel have told me that the militaries of Oman (British-trained and equipped) and UAE (Australian and British-trained, US-equipped) are better in terms of capability and valor than most European countries, including even Germany's. Where they do face issues is in equipment stockpiles and sustaining conflict, which is what we've seen.
The Saudi main army is pretty incompetent, but the Royal Guard is extremely effective. They are separately trained by the West and maintain comms separate from the main army. And now they've teamed up with Pakistan, which has one of the best air forces in the region.
Qatar recently opened up a route for citizenship to foreign veterans who serve in their armed forces. That guarantees them a steady supply of soldiers from the region should the need arise.
The most vulnerable are Bahrain and Kuwait, but both of them have had help with security actions from their more competent neighbors.
Saudi Arabia has carried out airstrikes in Iran - but geography is a good reason not to want to escalate hostilities, despite the generational animus between the countries.
That is similar to pointing to someone on the street and claiming they want to commit suicide because you see no indication that they want to live. Unless there is strong evidence we can safely assume people don't want to be nuked. "I see no indication" is not the standard. The Iranians didn't start this, they don't seem to want to continue it and it is obvious that their planning will involve basic considerations like not doing things that will get them nuked.
Although hitting the AWS data centre in Tel Aviv seems like it would be a great tit-for-tat strike to really annoy the US and Israelis without threatening them in a way that will provoke a nuclear response or doing real damage to civilians. So I don't see why they'd purposefully hold back on that.
Things like the Knesset, attempts to knock out the entire military leadership simultaneously, maybe some sort of attack designed to wipe out a significant % of Israelis although I don't know what that would look like (maybe some sort of hit to take out food distribution or water).
Attacks trying to topple the Israeli state, in essence. Knocking out profitable capital is quite unlikely to do it.
I don't think any of that would provoke a nuclear response. As long as the Iranians stay away from NBC attacks, the Israelis aren't going to nuke them.
I don't know what you classify as existential. But unfortunately it is drop-dead easy to make a fission bomb and even easier to make (multiple) dirty bombs. Iran has the pieces to do these things many times over. Hell, by now they could have deployed dirty bombs abroad in multiple locations and we'd never know.
The only reason the USA doesn't flatten Iran with nukes is that the USA fears Russia will view it as an "all bets are off!" action and will do the same to Ukraine et al. Which is probably true right now.
lol no. Iran hasn't yet been able to enrich uranium to the necessary purity to make a bomb. Yes, making a bomb is easy once you have the materials. Getting the materials is very difficult. If by "dirty bombs" you mean a conventional bomb with radioisotopes mixed in... well, the use of that kind of weapon would probably get Iran invaded, but since it's not a very practical weapon it wouldn't affect the strategic situation.
Nuking Iran was never in the cards. We could have done that in 1979 and any time since. Ukraine has nothing to do with it. The red lines that would provoke a nuclear response from the US are pretty well known -- the US foreign policy establishment hashed out this stuff 75 years ago. Iran could get nuked by the US if it used NBC weapons against the US or our allies. No amount of bad behavior with conventional weapons is going to do it.
People in charge of nuclear armed countries are worried about the end of the so-called "nuclear taboo" which has kept countries from using nukes for 80 years, and they're not going to break it over a third rate power like Iran unless that third rate power actually acquires nukes and makes a credible threat to use them. We didn't use them in Korea or Vietnam. We didn't use them in Afghanistan. We haven't nuked North Korea. All more serious situations than the one in which we find ourselves today.
When somebody finally does break that taboo the world will be a much, much more dangerous place for everyone and planners in places like Washington, Moscow, and Beijing know it. Once a nuclear weapon is used, especially by a country with a large arsenal, every country that could have nukes but doesn't is going to have nukes.
Here's a good video on the topic concentrating on the possible Russian use of nukes in Ukraine:
laughing_man says "Yes, making a bomb is easy once you have the materials. Getting the materials is very difficult."
Well, apparently they've had (lots of) the raw material for years. And they have training: all those Iranian science majors at universities during/after the Shah was deposed are candidates. They've had 40 years to study, play and worship. As a friend says, Pakistan got the bomb and if they can do it, anyone can!
Marie Curie purified plutonium all by herself before the turn of the century (albeit in minuscule amounts at high personal cost), so I have little confidence in your assessment.
laughing_man says "...use of that kind of weapon would probably get Iran invaded"
That's the situation they're in. Furthermore many of them are "holy warriors" for whom death is a reward. 72 virgins waitihg for each martyr - I can almost smell the testosterone from here.[Note to countermeasures people: possibly use smell to "sniff them out" of their caves and hidey-holes?? Farhad's flatulence brings him down, bwahahaahaaaaah!8-))]
laughing_man says [dirty bomb] "not a very practical weapon".
Unfortunately I believe this is just wrongheaded. When I was a kid I read Flash Gordon cartoons. There was an episode with "cobalt bombs" to wipe out a civilization permanently. One of the few times that I was freaked out as a kid. Nuclear war didn't scare me at all, but cobalt bombs and extermination - sheeeeeeit!8-(
Seems the Russians read the same comic strip and took it to heart:
who's to say Iranians are any different (albeit hornier - though granted it really is a lot colder in Russia than in Paradise!).
laughing_man says: "When somebody finally does break that taboo the world will be a much, much more dangerous place for everyone and planners in places like Washington, Moscow, and Beijing know it. Once a nuclear weapon is used, especially by a country with a large arsenal, every country that could have nukes but doesn't is going to have nukes.?"
No shit, Sherlock! You're waking up. "Nuclear deterrence" is dead IMO (The July/August 2026 issue of "Foreign Affairs" magazine discusses this). [I hope there's no rush, I haven't yet bought a plane ticket. Goddammit! Probably end up rowing again!8-((].
> Well, apparently they've had (lots of) the raw material for years.
"raw material" != "material".
While I assume they could've purified enough of the former into the latter by this point if they wanted to, it is a much much harder thing to do than to say.
> Marie Curie purified plutonium all by herself before the turn of the century (albeit in minuscule amounts at high personal cost), so I have little confidence in your assessment.
No, what she discovered was *polonium*, not *plutonium*.
She named polonium that in support of the nationhood of Poland (which was at the time was partitioned between three countries), despite discovering it she never actually isolated it because polonium has a half life of 138 days which makes it a really really small fraction of the total material.
Polonium was first isolated in 1902 by Willy Marckwald who managed a whole 3 milligrams and even then it took another three years for people to realise what he'd isolated was the same thing Marie Curie had found. It took 15 tons of pitchblende to get those 3mg.
*Plutonium* on the other hand was first discovered in 1934. Plutonium (and uranium) is the stuff that makes fission bombs. It takes tens of kilograms of uranium or plutonium per bomb.
Purification of chemical elements (both polonium and plutonium) is much, much easier than separating the isotopes of uranium; and you need to purify ("enrich") uranium to a specific isotope to manufacture more than trivial quantities of plutonium. (And, indeed, polonium).
> Unfortunately I believe this is just wrongheaded. When I was a kid I read Flash Gordon cartoons. There was an episode with "cobalt bombs" to wipe out a civilization permanently. One of the few times that I was freaked out as a kid. Nuclear war didn't scare me at all, but cobalt bombs and extermination - sheeeeeeit!8-(
You're taking a comic book plot device as evidence?
Also, cobalt bombs != dirty bombs:
A cobalt bomb is a bomb powered by a nuclear explosion, that has enhanced fallout.
A dirty bomb is a normal, non-nuclear, explosive, that has some radioisotopes attached to it.
The former easily wipes out a city; the latter messes up a building.
Thanks for the history corrections and clarifications. Now I'll never forget that Mme. curie isolated polonium (another nearly-useless factoid). History is important but not as important as science. Still you're looking more and more like Frank Drebin: "Nothing to see here, folks, move along!"
ben_w: "You're taking a comic book plot device as evidence?"
I was telling a story about my early life! Get a grip! It was a lead-in to a)the Soviet doomsday device which may have been real and may still be around and b)to my early fright at the nasty side-effects of nuclear weapons.
ben_wL "The former easily wipes out a city; the latter messes up a building."
Indeed an understatement! The Chernobyl reactor is an accidental "dirty bomb". It FUed quite a large area: people don't do much picnicking in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone:
Spare me talking about how large the Chernobyl reactor and how heavy its fuel rods are, etc. Fissionable material and fission by-products are generally toxic: spreading it around is devastating and difficult to correct. And the Iranians have lots of that kind of crap.
> Thanks for the history corrections and clarifications. Now I'll never forget that Mme. curie isolated polonium (another nearly-useless factoid). History is important but not as important as science. Still you're looking more and more like Frank Drebin: "Nothing to see here, folks, move along!"
Sarcasm noted, but you were mixing up something that wasn't isolated by Curie because it was too hard to do so, with something that was only found in the year she died.
> Indeed an understatement! The Chernobyl reactor is an accidental "dirty bomb". It FUed quite a large area: people don't do much picnicking in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone:
If you gathered all the nasty decay products from Chernobyl and put them into convenient balls to strap to an explosive for the purpose of messing up someone else's country, you'd immediately have a problem of *the balls would cause the explosives you put them next to, to catch on fire, because of the heat output of their own radioactive decay*. Even in the spread-out form of the real life incident, robots stopped working when they got too close to large concentrations, the radiation fried circuits.
You are scared of something that is not only not plausible, it's something such that if they could do it at a scale big enough to hurt you, they'd have better things to do, e.g. hitting the US warships counter-blockading Hormuz.
> Spare me talking about how large the Chernobyl reactor and how heavy its fuel rods are, etc.
Spare you the most important point?
> Fissionable material and fission by-products are generally toxic: spreading it around is devastating and difficult to correct. And the Iranians have lots of that kind of crap.
You say "lots" like it's a point, but it isn't: "lots" is far too vague.
Chernobyl had nearly 3000 times as much uranium in it as a fission bomb, to a different enrichment level, but how much enrichment matters during a criticality incident which transmutes elements into the nasty radioisotopes that you don't want to be around is complicated for fallout calculations. Nobody, including SpaceX, has a missile that is big enough to carry that all in one go.
At the time of the accident in the reactor of the fourth power-generating unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986, the core contained 1659 fuel assemblies. Each assembly contained 114.7 kg of uranium, and therefore the reactor contained a total of 114.7 x 1659 = 190,287.3 kg of uranium. If the amount of fuel is calculated according to the uranium dioxide, i.e. in the form in which the fuel was loaded into the fuel elements, then its mass in each fuel element was 3.6 kg. A fuel assembly consists of 36 fuel elements, and therefore the reactor contained 3.6 x 36 x 1659 = 215,006.4 kg of uranium dioxide. The investigations performed in the destroyed buildings showed that the nuclear fuel after the accident is found in three main modifications: in the form of uranium dioxide tablets, in the form in which it was loaded into the reactor; in a dispersed form as dust and aerosol; and in a remelted state, in the form of a lavalike fuel-containing mass. This paper discusses the amount of nuclear fuel in the lavalike mass at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
This scale difference is also (one of the reasons) why even having a nuclear reactor as a "civilian program" is suspect. Makes it relatively easy to hide a weapons program.
Much, much more effective to use the reactor to transmute yourself some plutonium, than a dirty bomb. Apart from anything else, half the plutonium won't vanish in 30 years (caesium-137) / 28.9 years (strontium-90) / 8 days (iodine-131) like the main Chernobyl fallout is doing.
OK, so you seem the proper nerd to ask something I've been wondering for a long, long time: the world has tons of nuclear weapons. Each consists of at least one fission component and an optional thermonuclear component. Let's concentrate on the fission part.
Q. Would it be possible to economically move the fission component into a standardized nuclear reactor that could then generate electrical power?
IOW is there a "swords to plowshares" solution to the disposal of fission weapons or, once you've made one, are you stuck with a device that can only be used to blow things up?
Reason I ask is, I see Russia et al sitting on all these weapons which cost a great deal, are no doubt costly to maintain and of little or no benefit to anyone (well, other than as a threat). [I mean, it's almost like owning a fleet of BMWs but even less useful! ] If we could build a "reactor framework" into which we could move a single warhead's fuel and that fuel could generate electrical power until sufficiently diminished to be of little/no use as a weapon, then that would IMO be a very good thing. Countries like Russia who had a closet of nukes but no money could sell the nuclear fuel off and benefit, buyers could get electrical power cheaper(?), and the world would be better off. Everybody wins.
Or is making a nuclear weapon effectively an economic one-way street (i.e., you're stuck paying for it forever?
Weapons-grade uranium is easy to blend down into lower grades. Once you've got all the safety protocols you need because nobody wants to risk the theft of the weapon part, the down-blending process is just "break apart the metal and keep in small chunks so nothing gets close to critical while you do this, mix with similar sized chunks of depleted or natural uranium, melt, stir".
Plutonium is its own special thing, and I don't know much about its use in reactors: while it's definitely possible to use as reactor fuel, I can't speak to the cost or effort required. Apparently plutonium is a PITA when it comes to metallurgy, but while this makes it hard to process into a weapon, I don't know if it also makes it hard to process back to fuel.
So theoretically, Russia could begin converting their nuclear warheads to heat-generation units that could be used for all sorts of purposes. What kind of safeguards would be required?
The Russkies have lots of nukes but no cash. They're apparently as money-illiterate as I am, which is pretty awful. But if converting warheads to "heaters" (for everything from heating to power generation) would be worth a fortune, then it might be enough to rebuild Russia's economy.
Furthermore, it might be a way to save OpenAI by creating cheaper power supplies for AI datacenters [just kidding about this last one - always like to get the AIers excited, see if their stocks rise!].
A little too well, in fact, undercutting other suppliers; to quote from the page:
The program was credited for being one of the most successful disarmament programs in history, but its low set price for nuclear fuel caused Western companies to not invest in uranium refining capacity, resulting by 2022 in Russia's government-owned Rosatom becoming the supplier of about 50% of the world's enriched uranium, and 25% of the nuclear fuel used in the US.
> What kind of safeguards would be required?
Mostly the classified security measures kind of safeguard: Make sure nobody can come in and steal the hard-to-make enriched weapons grade stuff before it gets blended down.
For material handling, everything I've heard about uranium as a metal is fairly mundane. Just:
• don't ingest it, lick it, or sniff it, it's an alpha emitter and a heavy metal
• and make sure the weapons-grade chunks are not ever under any circumstances near each other while working on them, for which the main big surprise is "do not work them into cylinders, because cylinders can roll towards each other and end up touching".
No, Ukraine is not the (sole) reason. USA has been in multiple wars since 1945, and never used the bomb again. They know the value of the nuclear tabu, and are not interested in breaking it, independently of the situation in Ukraine. They also have enough conventional weapons to level Iran with those, so they dont need to use nukes.
In addition I would hope that even in the morally bankrupt state USA is in today, murdering 92 million people would cause some political problems (but this might be naive of me).
> In addition I would hope that even in the morally bankrupt state USA is in today, murdering 92 million people would cause some political problems (but this might be naive of me).
Doesn’t matter. This question turns entirely on what Israel’s leadership thinks. If they’re faced with an existential threat, nukes are likely on the table.
> The only reason the USA doesn't flatten Iran with nukes is that the USA fears Russia will view it as an "all bets are off!" action and will do the same to Ukraine et al. Which is probably true right now.
That is not the only reason the United States doesn’t flatten Iran with nukes. It’s not even a consideration. How are you even arriving at such a conclusion?
It's theater for the Iranian regime. They expect almost all of the missiles will get taken down by the iron dome and US interdiction, but they still need to launch them to save face at home and not let attacks go unrequited lest they look weak.
Iran doesn't actually want to hit Israel hard, or at least doesn't want to do it right now. If they did, they wouldn't rattle their sabers so hard before each giant volley toward Israel, giving the Israelis ample time to prepare for a strike.
That's likely theater. if real rockets / drones were fired, there would be 100x more people dead. There is almost certainly some "understanding" with all parties involved.
A more likely reason for the lack of widespread death in Israel is the Iranians don't have the capability to cause it. The Israelis have air raid shelters, plus early warning radars that give them time to get to those shelters. And they have anti-missile systems to take out the most dangerous incoming ordinance.
If we are at a point where - instead of condemning each active warcrime as being independently abhorrent, we are offering friendly suggestions to consider each in relation to others on some subjective view of severity then I don't see much hope for our children.
The semblance of an international order post world war 2 at least suggested that we as a species were attempting to move toward a better place. Many notable breaches occurred but there was a much stronger universal condemnation of each, with real political repercussions even for western powers.
Sure, except the OP was not condemning each active warcrime as being independently abhorrent, they were only condemning Israeli warcrimes as being abhorrent. I was just independently reminding folks that Iran is also committing abhorrent warcrimes and those need to be condemned very vocally.
> The semblance of an international order post world war 2 at least suggested that we as a species were attempting to move toward a better place.
Unfortunately neither Russia, China, Iran (Hamas/Palestine, Hezbollah, Houthis, &c), North Korea, Cuba nor other anti-western actors valued that order and instead have sought to destroy it. The world we live in today and the issues we are seeing are primarily due to their actions. In each circumstance the above list (and there are others) demonstrably took actions under their authoritarian anti-democratic governments or societies to break down the order you value.
No-one alive more than a few years needs reminding that Iran is part of the 'axis of evil'. However, there are a large number of people unaware that my country and allies are also currently committing warcrimes.
You have the right to believe what you like, in my opinion the consequences for blaming our own crimes on others is dire.
No, people do need to be reminded. When all you do is talk about alleged bad actions by the West folks forget about the bad actions that precipitated this conflict and others.
> You have the right to believe what you like, in my opinion the consequences for blaming our own crimes on others is dire.
Nobody forced Iran to kill 30,000+ of its own people, try to build nuclear bombs, fund terrorists who have and continue to kill innocent people throughout the Middle East, and more. Those are their crimes that they are blamed for and those are the ones that we should be talking about mostly because that’s what matters.
It’s rather strange for you to try and take away the agency of others people, countries, or civilizations or infantilize them.
I can't reply to your latest comment as we reached the end of the thread. It's all good, let's agree to disagree on a few points. Discussions like this are difficult enough, and through text on a site like this even more so
So many assumptions. Have I now ascended to become the embodiment of everything you hate in the world? As the kids say, touch some grass, and then thank God you weren't born Iranian
I really have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t really hate anyone or anything except murderers and child molesters and such, those airplanes that fly around with big advertisements trailing behind.
Bizarre in the sense of mostly performative tit for tat strikes instead of some kind of serious strategy to win and to win for good. And in the case of Iran, the strikes are telegraphed in advance in almost comedic fashion. “OK, we’re starting operation True Promise n. We’re launching missiles. We’re about to do it, guys. OK is everyone ready? For the missiles? These are the targets, but next time it could be more serious, OK?”
This does not resemble what I would imagine a fight for civilization survival to look like. I’m talking about the stakes being you win or you, your family, and every man, woman and infant you know is going to be killed or starved in concentration camps.
If you're launching ballistics in a conflict where a local-theatre adversary has nukes, you might actually want to telegraph just what you're lobbing, when, and where, to avoid a Petrov-gone-wrong scenario.
"We're only hitting Gulf neighbour US-adjacent targets" is less threatening than "we're aiming directly at Israel".
For those unfamiliar with Colonel Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, you can thank him for being able to read this comment today.
It is really comedic! When the US sent over that bunker-buster bomber run, I noticed this for sure! The US and Iran's leadership basically choreographed this over X, and the misdirection, with one bomber's transponder flying in the opposite direction, was nearly adorable!
And the later "retaliation" against local bases by Iran was in the same, choreographed public fashion. At this point it seems to be a very respectful gentleman's conflict. It's very unlike some of the wars we've got entangled in, for sure. It seems like both sides sort of acknowledge that if we don't play fair, if it's not choreographed, if we don't stick to the rules, we really possess the power for world-ending, horrific conflict.
Israel has densely populated urban neighborhoods that would be completely wiped out in a conventional attack. Tehran would be destroyed with nukes but so would every major Israeli city. The scale of country size is immense. If Israel thought that nuclear weapons were a viable option, they would use them already. That’s the reason for the tit for tat. They both have capacity to attacks that would devastate each other countries. Smotrich would rather the US take the brunt of attack and losses their ME bases.
I'm skeptical as well. This guy who ran underage pageants and modeling agencies, who bragged about unimpeded access to locker rooms, dressing rooms and, um, other private areas, and whose name appears in the Epstein files more often than Harry Potter appears in the Harry Potter books, sounds legit to me.
UAE has been down for months, Bahrain is now offline, Saudi Arabia is still under construction.