Iran discovers world’s second largest lithium reserve

Nor does it change the fact that the USA has been violating that vision since day 1, and despite some moments of light, hasn't stopped.

I'm so sick of these articles. The amount of 'lithium discovered' articles are crazy. Nobody cares, lithium is plentiful, it exists in lots of places and we haven't even looked for it much. If people really search for it, it would show up in many more places.

The problem with lithium is not finding a resource, but doing the necessary chemical process to get it to be battery quality lithium. Lithium is not like base metal mining at all. Lithium is more like a specialty chemical, each resources and purification process has to get separately designed, and has to be individually verified by each battery (or battery materials company).

There are only very, very few companies who actually sell battery grade lithium, and lots of junior minors with lots of lithium in the ground and very little chance of developing it.

Iran will not be developing its own battery grade lithium anytime soon, no matter how large their resource.

As much as I can tell, Iraq as a powerful independent state was destroyed by Mongols in 1300s, and never restored.

Since then, Iraq was controlled by various foreign powers, as a colony: partly Persian, partly Ottoman / Turkish; since late 19th century, it was increasingly under British control, and since 1970s, under Saddam Hussein: independent but rather undemocratic.

Iran was independent and powerful since 1500s, and it even converted the previous waves of invaders to its culture (somehow similar how the Manchu invaders gradually converted to the Chinese culture). While obviously not democratic, Iran was not a cultural backwater, up until the Islamic revolution in 1979. Even under the power of ayatollahs Iran's urban societies feature strong citizen movements demanding more liberty and equality, e.g. women equality: women had much more rights under the last Shah regime, and people remember that.

In general, I suppose that Iran, had the current theocratic regime been overthrown, would not turn into a failed state, much like Russia hasn't become a failed state after the Communist regime fell. (Regarding perspectives of EU / US-style liberal democracy there, I'm much less certain, though chances are.)

> Now, the threat of being able to develop and fire nukes, on the other hand, is something that might be war-worthy.

No it isn't. The US helped plenty of bad regimens get their hands on nuclear weapons and did nothing to prevent it. In fact, if its about nukes, then maybe Israel is the clear problem. They are non signatory to the NPT and almost certainty have secret nukes (likely developed partly with stolen data from the US). So if a 'thread of war' is appropriate, Israel should be the target, not Iran.

Iran on the other hand is a signatory to the NPT, they also have never attempted to develop nuclear weapons. Their program was always monitored under the NPT. A bunch of fake evidence for nuclear weapons was 'discovered' on a laptop in Egypt by Mossad. This evidence was widely reject by literally everybody outside of the Mossad, including the CIA. The whole global intelligence community agree, Iran wasn't developing nuclear weapons.

That didn't stop Israel right-wing to try to use it to get the US to attack Iran for them over it. According to them, Iran is 'one year away from nukes' literally since 1990 so this was just the latest in a long series of such claims.

Iran was not even developing its own enrichment, they had a deal with France to handle the fuel production and France would be responsible for monitoring and taking the nuclear waste back to France. This deal was then killed by the US (Bush) who basically threatened sanction on France. Only in response to that did Iran set up enrichment facilities.

This was then used around 2008-2010 to start a panic about Iran nuclear weapons in a blatant attempt to repeat the Iraq war against Iran. All the right wing think-thanks (with lots of money from Israel, Ratheon and Loockeed and friends) were busy publishing mostly fake nonsense base on manufactured evidence to push the narrative. Thankfully everybody was sick of that shit because of Iraq.

This lead to Obama years of extreme pressure and results in Iran implementing a monitoring regime specially developed just for Iran just they could prove that they were not developing nuclear weapons. Of course all that didn't stop Trump from instantly leaving the deal.

War with Iran is literally an insane concept. Like delusional level of insanity. Even if they developed nuclear weapons, it would be insane to go to war over them. Its a nation with 90 million people, horrible geography and the ability to blockade the most important oil export route in the world.

At least I wasn't claiming there was anything deterministic at play.

I believe generally several characteristics of the Shah's regime are held to have laid ground for the revolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution#Background_...

So it's not about robbing Iranians of agency (who are among the most distinguished and ancient cultures), just stating that 1953 meddling gave rise to a regime that possessed these characteristics, and without the coup, different dynamics would have been at play.

I totally agree, there is zero chance of war over lithium.