The Iranian nutballs may be religiously crazy but they aren't stupid. We won't seen Iran's path to nuclear weapons until it is too late.
Iran has no civilian use for 60% enriched Uranium:
Iran has stockpiled at least five bombs worth of HEU, given Iran’s current stockpile of 128.3 kilograms of 60 percent HEU. Iran previously planned to serially produce nuclear warheads for ballistic and cruise missiles as part of its pre-2003 nuclear weapons program[8] The stockpiling of HEU is one of the key steps Iran would have to pursue to develop an arsenal and has previously conducted work on the other key steps in weaponization and delivery vehicles.[9] The Iranian enrichment infrastructure is also designed for a speedy mass production of HEU and/or weapons-grade uranium for multiple nuclear weapons.[10]
I've long worried that Iran's long path to mastering weapons-grade uranium enrichment is too obvious of a red line for somebody bombing their nuclear weapons infrastructure. The obvious counter-measure for Iran to avoid bombing is to have nuclear weapons prior to reaching the red line. I quoted an early post of mine:
If Iran can announce both the ability to make nuclear bomb material and the possession of actual nuclear weapons--perhaps by detonating one in a test on their own territory--Tehran would quite possibly deter an attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure.
We're not dealing with idiots. If the Iranian mullahs believe there are red lines that trigger Israeli or American action, why wouldn't they take counter-actions rather than just blindly cross those lines and provide a pretext for military action against them?
America has conveniently given lots of cash to Iran for empty nuclear promises and its renewable hostage supply.
And while Iran doesn't seem to have ordered Hamas to enrage Israel on October 7, 2023 to obscure Iran's final drive for nuclear weapons, perhaps that's going to be the unintended effect.
Have a super sparkly 2024.
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.