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U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

bbc.co.uk

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Re: U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

#461

Post by Beefin »

hearsathought wrote: post #297
tptacek wrote: post #23

I think Netanyahu belongs in prison, and Trump, the less said the better, but: couldn't have happened to a nicer unauthorized weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility dug into the side of a mountain hours outside of population centers. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up on the GBU-57 "bunker buster" bomb, because it is some Merrie Melodies Acme brand munitions. It's deliberately as heavy as they c…

> I think Netanyahu belongs in prison Didn't Netanyahu perjure himself to congress about iraq's wmds two decades? Isn't that grounds for arrest? It's amazing how our media never mentions that netanyahu is a habitual liar when they push netanyahu's iran's wmds spiel. At this point our media companies are israel's PR department. Fox news should be banned like RT for being a foreign mouthpiece.

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Re: U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

#465

Post by cakealert »

Iran never had the deterrent North Korea had. And by being a theocracy they heavily skewed any threat calculus against themselves.

What they were doing, inching towards nukes, was a horrible move. In their position, you either sprint covertly and not play at all.

I suspect that after their nuclear program was discovered and set back they fell victim to the sunk cost fallacy and convinced themselves they could repurpose it as leverage. But they are a theocratic regime and their messaging (whether genuine or not) made that a non-viable option in reality.

This is probably what happens when your government isn't very competent and you don't have mathematicians doing game theoretic simulations for you? Theocracy with nukes screams nuke them first if you can't destroy their capability by other means. What happened today likely saved millions of Iranian lives.

Re: U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

#466

Post by gorgoiler »

As I understand it, conventional explosives derive their destructive force from using chemical energy to vaporize material so quickly that it explodes forming a destructive shockwave.

With a kinetic energy impacted like the MOP bunker buster, does the material vaporize ahead of the munitions? Is the destructive shockwave the munition casing itself, or perhaps the vaporized breccia being pushed in front of it?

In some ways I imagine it like a nail being driven into the ground but my gut feeling is that, at such high impact energies, something more complicated is going on. For example, with small calibre ballistics you can have many kinds of terminal action: from square edged paper cutting rounds used to make clean holes in targets, to subsonic rounds transferring energy into a target, all the way up to supersonic rounds which drive a shock cone through a “soft” target to cause trauma.

Re: U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

#467

Post by tw04 »

tptacek wrote: post #23

I think Netanyahu belongs in prison, and Trump, the less said the better, but: couldn't have happened to a nicer unauthorized weapons-grade uranium enrichment facility dug into the side of a mountain hours outside of population centers. If you haven't already, I highly recommend reading up on the GBU-57 "bunker buster" bomb, because it is some Merrie Melodies Acme brand munitions. It's deliberately as heavy as they c…

All it did was prove to Iran they need nuclear weapons. There’s one thing every country knows and it’s that the only way you don’t become the target of Russia, the US, or Israel is to maintain a nuclear arsenal.

We couldn’t stop North Korea with threats of violence but we did manage to stop Iran for almost 50 years through diplomacy. That’s all pissed down the drain now.

Re: U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

#469

Post by PeterHolzwarth »

IceHegel wrote: post #455

I voted for Trump. I'd support his impeachment now. He has betrayed his core by letting Israel suck our country into another Middle Eastern conflict, after promising to do the opposite.

I understand what you mean, but we've been in this conflict for decades already. America and loads of other countries have been working to stop Iran from achieving nuclear weapons. Remember that in much of the middle east, Iran is considered an enemy. A nuclear armed Iran would result in the rest of the middle east rapidly pursuing nukes by way of defense against Iran - a country most of the middle east views as a combatant and an enemy.

I won't comment or discuss who you voted for - that isn't germane here. What is important is that America has been working for decades - often quite blatantly, sometimes with the thinnest veneer of deniability - to stop Iran from getting nukes. We're now just saying the quiet part out loud.

Re: U.S. bombs Iranian nuclear sites

#470

Post by IceHegel »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #376

I imagine every reasonably-sized country looking at this and thinking: "well, we'd be idiots not to have nuclear weapons by any means necessary." This will be one of the single-most proliferation-inducing events in history, maybe save Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This is obviously correct. Nuclear weapons = sovereignty. UN recognition is a piece of paper.

9 countries exist. So much for self-determination.

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