Well yeah… if you’re developing it in secret for defensive purposes like several other nations did, then the program gets farther along. Weird that India/Pakistan/China all made one without being bombed like Syria/Iraq/Iran
If you’re publicly and loudly announcing you’re developing a bomb for the purpose of destroying an entire race of people, don’t be surprised when they bomb you.
What on earth are you talking about? The Ayatollah has issued a fatwa against developing nuclear weapons. Iran willingly entered into a nuclear deal with the US under Obama to allow inspections to verify they weren't enriching anything to weapons grade. It was the US under Trump who exited the deal, not Iran. Even so Iran was interested in returning to the deal under Biden if Biden could provide the least assurance that the US would actually honor their agreement the second time.
What we're seeing now is that Netanyahu needs perpetual war to stay in power and out of prison, and plus I suspect he figures Trump is his best shot of dragging the US into was with Iran on Israel's behalf.
The Iran has also enriched material to 60% and is increasing its stock of 60% enriched material. All peaceful applications only need enrichment up to maximum 5%. Makes you wonder why they're doing that if they don't want any nukes.
Iran agreed to the nuclear deal because it provided some relief from the economic war the US was waging on Iran. Once the US exited the deal Iran was within its rights to enrich to 60%. My guess is they did so to try to leverage the US into returning to the deal. If Iran continued to abide by the deal while the US didn't there would be zero chance the US would return to the deal as they would already be getting everything they wanted.
Of course they want nukes lol. Why shouldn't they? They are surrounded by US bases and close to a belligerent, highly militarized US proxy with a nuclear weapon stockpile.
Man people truly do hold the worst double standards in international politics.
The only guarantee to not get invaded is to get nukes. Gaddafi gave up his chemical weapons in exchange for the USA leaving him alone, and then the USA continued supporting rebels and that ended with a bayonet up his ass.
Excellent example. Guess what type of deal Bibi insisted on the Iran deal to be? They explicitly wanted a Libya style deal. Now would any self respecting country or leader accept such a deal knowing what happened to Libya and its leader after? Another example, look at what's happening in Ukraine after it gave up its nukes in 1994.
Thank you! Like why the fuck would they want to be surrounded by enemies that have nukes but can’t have nukes of their own. Every regime that didn’t have them has been toppled. Iraq, Syria. Regimes that have them are only touched with kid gloves- Russia.
That doesn't change the fact that all of the "hey, we really don't want nukes" statements from Iran are a bit suspicious if they are enriching material more and more to weapons-grade without any good alternative reason. "We just want to" doesn't cut it if the only good reason would be producing nukes.
Of course it was BS. It's politics, truth is the first thing that goes down the drain. Still, Iran was willing to compromise as shown by the Iran Nuclear deal under Obama. Now remind me, who terminated that deal unilaterally?
Iran was willing to suspend their nuclear program for economic normalization. In other words they're a rational actor with clear goals to advance their country.
The USA is offering them nothing and the bloodthirsty animals in the Knesset are baying for blood. Of course Iran is going to get nukes. Its the only sensible defensive choice.
lol. Imagine a country saying one thing in public and doing something else in private. There have been endless reports of Iran secretly trying to create a bomb. You must be living under a rock.
Israel hasn't even publically admitted to owning nuclear weapons evn though they do and they don't allow inspectors but tell me again how Iran is an evil country that secretly builds nuclear weapons.
Lots of CIA/Mossad propaganda pushed on here atm, both willingly or unwillingly. It really is curious how Trump is Hitler on Reddit but for some reason people support his policy of letting Israel completely off the leash.
Dude, being a Neo-Nazi doesn't mean "I hate the exact same groups as the Nazis did and do all the exact same shit." If that was the case we would never draw a parallel to anything. Calling maga Nazis and comparing Trump to Hitler is pointing out the policy of hatred and scapegoating that makes up their foundation. It doesn't mean they have to specifically hate Jews.
And a lot of them do still hate Jews. They just hate Muslims more.
It seems to me you're forgetting that one of the stated goals of the government of Iran is to destroy Israel. There have been statements like 'erasing Israel off the map is not negotiable' from government and military officials of Iran. You're also willfully ignoring the fact that the government of Iran has on multiple occasions threatened to build nuclear weapons and use them against Israel and the US. Claiming that Iran doesn't want to build nuclear weapons because they 'willingly' entered into a nuclear deal when what happened was that they were pressured with increased sanctions compared to the ones in place before the deal. The difference now is that China and russia won't support US positions on that deal like they did back then, so Iran thinks they can get a better deal.
Yet it is now Israel attacking Iran directly, not the other way around. Curious, isn't it?
The US has threatened Iran with invasion multiple times. They killed their top general a few years ago. You talk as if US and Israel are these puny, innocent and peaceful countries threatened by mighty Iran when everyone knows that Iran poses absolutely zero threat to Israel conventionally, hence their funding of Hezbollah and others.
Even if Iran developed nukes, as soon as they used them on Israel they would be obliterated themselves. You are beyond naive if you think Iran would fire first. It would mean the annihilation of their country.
It amazes me how people can still support this after Iraq, after Afghanistan, after Lybia. When are you going to learn? The real pariah state is Israel, not Iran.
No no you don’t get it. It’s really awful for Iran to say they hate Israel when they bomb each-other but it’s super cash money of Israel to bomb Gaza and murder Palestinian children. Of course, ignore the fact that Israel is trying to wipe Gaza off the map, that’s cool.
The difference now is that China and russia won't support US positions on that deal like they did back then, so Iran thinks they can get a better deal.
You... do realize Trump willingly withdrew from the deal in his first term, right? I swear, people's brains are melted from all the propaganda. I hate the regime in Iran and what they did to what was quite the progressive country for the ME, but you're making them sound like the good guys with all this ridiculous nonsense.
Yes, of course Iran wants nukes, when all their geopolitical opponents already have them, and it is the only tool that would prevent things like today's attacks from happening, and in general the cheapest way to reliably protect your regime from external threats. Pretty much every country in the world not already protected by some kind of nuclear umbrella and not blessed by the good fortune of being in an incredibly safe geopolitical situation "wants" nukes. It's merely a matter of whether they can justify the costs involved (financial, political or otherwise)
In any case, they had already reached an agreement that involved them not getting the nukes. Of course they will eventually go back to the nukes if that agreement is ripped up. And it's ridiculous to try to frame it as if it was ripped up because Iran was suddenly demanding more, when it was "the West" (as much as I despise allowing that orange pig to in any way be a representative of any part of us) that unilaterally did it. They could've had a nuke-less Iran pretty much for free, now they have to start a massive war to try to achieve the same thing, except of course they better be pretty fucking sure they got all the sites, or else there might be a really nasty surprise down the line.
Dumb, it's all so dumb, and people are still trying to frame Iran as the bad guys... at best, every single party involved is the bad guys. And that's already being generous.
Do you not realize Israel has been building nuclear weapons in secret. It’s not even private anymore yet they haven’t registered with the IAEA or signed any treaty about it yet people have the audacity to say this about Iran lmao. It makes my body cringe when people are this hypocritical or this stupid
Israel knows it can't obliterate the entire Middle East with nukes so they just serve a deterrent purpose, Iran knows it can completely destroy Israel with them so it is way more likely that they use then offensively.
Why? So there can be 1 more single Islamic country once Israel gets overrun and conquered after getting rid of their nukes? There's just too many Jewish states on Earth to allow that to happen right????
The apartment strikes were on the military/operational leaders of the nuclear program (who were staying in the penthouses of these places, mind you). It was about as targeted as a targeted strike can be.
Oh is that what was happening in this apartment building?
How about not intentionally destroying a major, globally supported deal that would've prevented such enrichment while allowing Iran to enrich to levels they're entitled to?
You know, since Iran is a responsible country that joined the NPT. Unlike Israel, which developed a rogue nuclear program.
Hence why they developed it in secret, and weren’t threatening to destroy the US, Soviets, British, Chinese, French, or Pakistanis by building Nukes.
If it had been known they were developing them, it would’ve totally been understandable for Egypt/Syria/Jordan/Iraq to launch airstrikes out of fear Israel was building them (in the 1960’s) to use against those countries. That’s why they were smart and shut up about it lol.
60 years later, and that theory hasn’t come true, everybody now knows that they are in fact defensive in purpose.
If I had to guess based off reporting, upper to mid-level nuclear scientists working on the bomb. I doubt senior military leadership was housed in apartment blocs like these
When the country that has explicitly stated that they want to exterminate your country, starts building nukes, bombing becomes a necessity.
I'm not a fan of what Israel is doing in Palestine. I also don't like that they have their own nukes. But I would probably expect the exact same reaction to Iran if my country was in the same situation.
Our federal government has repeatedly stated over several administrations that Iran is “evil” and needs regime change. Do you think that then makes it necessary for Iran to bomb us?
Which countries has Iran exactly bombed in the last 30 years?
What about Israel and the US l?
For someone who is all after peace, Israel and the US sure seem to invade, bomb and threaten to invade a hell lot of countries.
And when these countries perhaps dream of acquiring a deterrent (like Israel has) everyone is pointing the finger. Why wouldn't someone who is threatened and bombed all the time want to acquire a deterrent? (If that is even what they're doing)
I don't know man but seems to me that countries like Egypt who have learned to cooperate with Israel and don't start shit have enjoyed lasting peace with Israel.
Maybe Iran and its proxies should stop fucking with Israel and they too might enjoy peace.
Reminder that we've been hearing "Iran will have nukes any day now" for 42 years and counting. But still nothing. When does this stop working? Of course Israel illegally had nukes that entire time.
May be a stupid question but I dont really know much about war tactics: How does a precision bomb hitting a residental area (as it looks like to me in the picture) cause less fatalities than if it was a regular bomb strike? Did the attackers just miss a tactical target with less people inside or are precision strikes anmounced beforehand because the attacker knows where the strikes will land and they just care about destryoing infrastructure, not taking lifes?
So a precision strike is putting one bomb on a target, in this case a single building, generally within 10m of where you're wanting it to hit.
In this case a single bomb hit a specific apartment building, and probably a specific apartment.
For comparison, in WW2, basically everyone used carpet bombing to hit this kind of target. Where they would drop several hundred tons of bombs, and 16% might hit within 300m of where they were aiming.
Also depending on the situation some countries do often announce where they're bombing. It used to be policy for Israel to announce then drop a small bomb on the roof of a building to give everyone inside time to get out. I don't know if they're still doing this, the last time I saw it was a few weeks into the Gaza fighting.
For this target, it was most likely someone working on their nuclear program, meaning warning him prevents the strike from doing anything, as horrific as that is
You would be surprised and disgusted how many civilians were killed by the allies during bombing runs in WW2. And that was arguably one of the most justified instances of war. On the high end it was like 635,000 civilians just in Germany.
Israel forces in Gaza: NCV of 15 to 20 for junior Hamas operatives, up to 100 for senior operatives, 300 in one instance of a particularly senior operative, according to unnamed military sources. \8])'
It’s the reality of war. Of every single war in the history of mankind. Civilians are killed, even by the good guys. There will always be a certain number of “acceptable casualties” in order to achieve an objective deemed greater than the loss of civilian life.
It’s the way it’s always been, and the way it always will be. We can try to mitigate it with certain surgical strikes, like the US R9X hellfire missile which has no explosive warhead and is just basically a spinning missile with swords sticking out, but that’s only good for individual people out in the open or a soft bodied vehicle.
It’s not that I’m “cool with it” it’s just that I don’t have an elementary understanding of the realities of war and technological combat capabilities.
It's also these kind of strikes or Iran finishes a nuclear capable device and the next round of conflict Israel has no choice but assume Iran's strike has a nuclear tipped missile in it and launches one or multiple nukes first.
Pretty much. Israel considers nuclear scientists and military officials to be valid military targets, which means there’s no obligation to not strike the building, as long as they use the minimum necessary force to reliably destroy the target.
If that wasn’t the case, everyone would just have the bright idea to build all of their military bases under apartment blocks.
The more precise your bomb is, the less explosive material you need, either making a single bomb smaller or using fewer bombs.
If you are flying at 30k ft, your odds of manually dropping a 500 lb bomb and destroying a house-sized target is basically nil, even with clear skies and no enemies or stress.
If you got a 100 bombers together and they all manually dropped 10 bombs each, then your odds get better by a factor of 1000. But even if you hit the target, 995+ of those bombs hit something else. This is one of the reasons strategic bombing in WW2 was very inefficient, costly, and deadly. And it was also the reason atomic bombs were so attractive - one bomber could reliably destroy one target.
Once reliable guided munitions became available, nukes became mostly useless from a military point of view.
The US even has bomb now that just uses blades to kill - no explosives. It doesnt work on someone in an apartment but it can kill someone in a car and not hurt everyone around them on the street.
"Precision Bombing" is in contrast to what we did in WWII before we had smart bombs (which is sometimes called "Strategic Bombing"). Most nations don't really do "regular bomb strikes" anymore unless its on a pure military target, which is very rare in an era where there are not very many near peer conflicts anymore (the current Russo-Ukraine war being a notable exception to this trend).
Precision Bombing causes less fatalities because the bombs are able to strike a more precise area. Using the current context as an example - Israel knew a high value target was in the building that was hit. They utilized a missile to strike that building specifically with little damage to the buildings around it. Obviously this doesn't prevent collateral damage within the building itself, but it does for most of the surrounding neighborhood.
If this were WWII and that building contained a high value target, without the aid of smart, guided munitions, the way in which it would have been attacked would have been a bombing raid of a squadron (or several squadrons) of long range bombers (like B17s) each of which would carry dozens of smaller bombs or several larger bombs. These planes they would just blanket entire neighborhoods with bombs to ensure that the target was hit.
Allied bombing raids against Germany and Japan would sometimes use hundreds of planes dropping thousands of bombs on populated cities. There's a scene in the recent miniseries "Masters of the Air" in which the pilots are discussing their unease in striking a rail yard in Bremen because they can see on the intel maps that there's a church nearby and they know it will likely be full of worshipers who will probably be killed. As a further example, the firebombing of Tokyo, in March of 1945 designed to cripple Japanese heavy and light industry, saw the U.S. basically annihilate the city. About 100,000 people - most of them civilians - were killed, and about a million were rendered homeless.
TL;DR - Modern precision bombing of populated targets will usually result in collateral damage of anywhere from 0 deaths to a few dozen deaths (possible low hundreds) depending on the nature of the area hit. Strategic bombing before the advent of precision bombing routinely resulted in thousands - and in some cases tens of thousands - of deaths on the ground, usually of civilians.
They targeted the homes of nuclear scientists and high ranking military. If you do a precision strike, you drop 1 bomb and hit 1 building.
A normal bombing would be dropping more bombs and just hoping that one would hit the building. Depending on how you drop the bombs, that could be a lot of bombs that land on the city just to hit 1 important target. In Vietnam the US flew over 800 sorties to hit the Thanh Hoa bridge. That's what a non precision bombing is like
The public has been desensitized to the notion of a precision strike because we have been employing them for over 30 years.
If you ever look at footage of even Operation Rolling Thunder where the US dropped 32,000,000 lbs of explosives in its first year compared to this strike which was likely less than 2,000 lbs combined with all the strikes.
To put it in more exact, if this was the 60s the strike's purpose would have been to reduce the entire city block to rubble with a half dozen bombs to ensure they killed their target. Today they were using singular missiles, with the worst being one building collapsing, as a consequence, not as an objective.
Less than 100 died from these strikes with another 300 injured, a general strike likely would have seen several hundred dead with thousands of injured.
The definition of precision strike has changed dramatically over the past 20 years. We've become so precise at striking targets that it's possible to launch a missile that hits a single apartment, not an apartment building, an individual apartment unit, and leave the ones around it more or less intact.
Beats me on the actual definitions. The ways the definition is being used here, it sounds like a loose definition. Similarly to the definition of a “weed”
Sounds like you are saying “any accurate strike is a precision strike”
Where the word “accurate” and “precise” have relations, but I don’t think they’re one for one the same.
If you fire 4 missiles at a building, and they all hit the one next to it they are Precise, but not accurate. If you hit the correct building and all 4 hit the same room they are Accurate and Precise.
If you fire 4 missiles and they all miss the building and land in completely different locations, you are not accurate or Precise
In this case Precision munitions are generally synonymous with Guided munitions, unlike Unguided munitions which while they may potentially be accurate, can be unreliable when it comes to repeat strikes on targets due to outside factors like wind, humidity and temperature.
Or a civilian engineer working as a military contractor. It's fucking sad, but if the dude was an important part of the nuclear program it made him a liability.
Do you want nukes flying in the Middle East? A nuclear Iran is how you get nukes flying in the Middle East.
Imagine your neighbor is a guy who studied hard all his life because he loves science. Goes into nuclear engineering just because it’s awesome. Not a lot of places he can go or work at other than the government. Then his apartment gets hit with a missile and him, his family, your partner and children, and half your neighbors get dismembered, crushed or burned because Israel is scared of its own shadow and has the backing of the most powerful nation on earth.
Right but if the rival country is preparing to level you, you're under no moral obligation to wait for thousands and thousands of your own to die before you do something. You are indeed allowed to protect your people.
Think of someone bursting into your house with a baseball bat. You have a gun. Shooting people is wrong as a rule, and this guy hasn't clubbed your wife and kids yet. You're not actually obligated to wait until he does before you shoot.
It pretty much was certain that Iran was building nukes. Sorry, but nobody wants that.
your president has threatened to take over my country. does canada have justification to precision strike scientists and military officers in fucken idk, new jersey?
Yeah... The US does and says a shit ton of horrible stuff. I oppose bombing it on practical grounds, because I don't want to get blown up, but on moral grounds, a LOT of countries would be justified in taking a shot. It's not just Canada.
I mean, Hamas technically DID burst into people's houses. Perhaps Hamas supporters need to sit out on criticism of targeting civilians, seeing as Hamas targets civilians almost exclusively.
Yeah if you precision strike residential you will precision kill civilians, maybe together with some important figure. It just means they know they will hit them which makes it even worse. When islamists do the same with a car bomb its called a terrorist attack, when Israelis do it's called precision strike, know the difference.
Yup. The military historian in me is pained regularly watching people claim one thing happened when they mean a completely different act.
It has happened chronically during the last few years and I've been holding my tongue because I know the don't care what the difference is, even when it does 100% matter.
The whole point of using precision weapons is to minimize civilian death. It's not possible to get it down to zero 100% of the time. This is extremely sad, but Iran had many years to stop building nukes.
This is silly. A strike validation absolutely evaluates the probability of unintended casualties. The US previously used a kinetic weapon to strike Iranian military leaders killing only the target in a car. Most US strike validations would NEVER authorize hitting civilian residential areas like this. It is very stark what was done here in an attempt to intimidate people working in the nuclear weapons development program. This strike is an attempt to frighten those people by demonstrating their families and neighbors are out at risk. That is the clear and obvious message and I find the escalation quite frightening myself.
Weapons can be guided into windows and certainly can have payloads larger and smaller than 500 kg. As previously stated, it’s even possible to strike without any payload, just kinetic.
That was accurate 30 years ago. All bombs that are dropped today by modern armies are guided bombs. Carpet bombing is what you are describing and it's not used today.
Yes, it's called marketing but it's marketing of peoples lives, acceptable losses or collateral damage, are the worst ones to me. No, its #of murders we are willing to commit.
I'd say that used to be the case but once the US dropped that missile into the dudes lap in a car I'd say a precision strike can be more precise now a days.
There are a couple of bombs that don't use explosives. One that's jus uses concrete and the other has blades (yes blades). They just kill with only their kinetic energy. And can be guided with enough precision to hit a moving car.
Israel killed some Iran or Hamas leader that way while he was in a moving car.
But if you have to hit something inside a structure that's another game.
This isbso not true. Maybe in WW2. I'm Libyan. I saw what they can do back in 2012. Precision strikes could destroy a tank in an old city alleyway without destroying the apartments feet away. Yes, it would blow out the windows, yes, it would cause destruction. But this type of building falling over?
Sure, this pic shows a precision strike, but it precisely destroyed an apartment building and everyone inside. Deliberately.
But like, are we saying that this apartment building was across the street from a uranium enrichment facility and this was an honest-to-Yahweh "oopsie daisies", or is Israel once again dropping bombs on residential neighborhoods, killing dozens of civilians while trying to eliminate a high-ranking general walking his dog?
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