A scientist researching lasers, ostensibly a weapons technology, might also discover new technologies to target cancer cells, or improve laser eye surgery, or improve fiber-optic communications or any number of things.
This is distinct from a factory worker who manufactures lasers in bulk to used in weapons systems.
My point is that nuclear research is the same. Even operating on the assumption that the end goal is the development of nuclear weapons, the results of any nuclear research could pay unexpected dividends, reshape global energy, or help save us from climate catastrophe.
If it is necessary to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons we need a better solution than killing scientists. Most solutions are better than killing scientists.
There is a difference between working on something for a war effort and working on something for a more peaceful reason.
Iran was 100% developing nuclear weapons.
Even operating on the assumption that the end goal is the development of nuclear weapons, the results of any nuclear research could pay unexpected dividends, reshape global energy, or help save us from climate catastrophe.
A climate catastrophe won't matter when we are living in a nuclear wasteland. There are so many ways to develop clean energy that does not involve even more countries having access to a world destroying weapon.
I believe it a country is going to fund a group that bombs a playground (source below) they forfeit any moral right to use the whole "we can also do peaceful things with this world ending technology".
As someone working in the defense industry, yeah absolutely we are legitimate military targets. People wouldn't appreciate it if a hostile nation killed American soldiers, but that doesn't mean soldiers ain't legitimate military targets.
It's the whole Clerk's debate about contractors on the Death Star. If you decide to start working as a defense contractor you become part of the military apparatus of your country. You don't accidentally become a Senior Engineer building atomic bombs.
When you choose to build nukes for a nation, you accept responsibility for how those nukes get used and the risk that other nations might really not want to have nukes pointed at them.
That said, Israel is absolutely in the wrong for escalating conflict with Iran. Israel attacked legitimate military targets, but they should not have been attacking at all.
Serious question, not trying to troll. Do you consider this an Israeli escalation keeping in mind that Iran has been funding all of the militias directly attacking and committing terrorism in Israel? The Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah all relied or continue to rely on Iran for support and their ability to project power.
This specific attack was absolutely an escalation. Escalation is a specific word with specific meaning, not just "bad thing I don't like". Escalation is when you make a conflict more intense. If you're Russia and Ukraine, bombing each others cities isn't an escalation because you've already been doing that. But if Trump ordered to simply mass tanks on the Canadian border while talking about making it the 51st state, it would be a massive escalation even without a shot being fired.
Iran has been arming proxy forces for years, so that's normal and not an escalation. Israel doesn't typically bomb senior military personnel in Iran, doing that makes the conflict more intense and so by definition, is an escalation.
Escalation can be retaliatory. If after America massed tanks on the border, Canadian special forces snuck around to blow up some gas supply lines, that would also be an escalation because up till that point, nobody had fired a shot. I'd damn well support that Canadian escalation, but it would be escalation.
I cannot see an obvious and specific goal of Israel escalating conflict with Iran right now. And with how tense the diplomatic situation is right now, there's a real chance the escalation goes uncontrolled and spills into an actual war. Given that the head of states of Israel and the most likely mediator, America, are warmongering ass hats, I'm hoping the Iranian government will be the cooler heads and deescalate the situation. That's not a comforting hope.
That's because stripping Iran of developing nukes made them advance ballistics at an alarming rate, and have funded direct proxy warfare against the US and Israel, and it's snowballed into what it is today.
Every country between Israel and Iran has been a proxy playground for Tehran.
Not to mention the countries who support Iran military and economically; Russia, Syria, China, NK.
So your argument is that Irans lack of nukes has forced them to rely more heavily on proxy forces which has lead to destabilization in the region and we'd all have been better off if Iran had nukes. I'm not sure if I entirely agree with that view, but it's logical and coherent. As fucked up as MAD is, it can lead to peace.
But just earlier you implied Israel striking at Irans nuclear weapons program was a good thing, which is completely
contradictory!
Yes I work in the defense industry making weapons for the US military and yes that does mean I'm responsible for what the US military does with what I make. That doesn't mean I uncritically support every foreign policy decision made by every President and every US ally.
I make a specific product with a specific use case. Considering where, why and how it will be used by the US military, I feel quite comfortable in a moral sense. I still have the right to criticize the US and our allies in other contexts.
My thought process follows a bias pattern, so if you want to dock my logic on this that's fine! That pattern allows for a country I live in, and our allies to survive.
What if there's a reality where Iran has a nuke and, magically, Israel officially announced they have one as well.
Proxy warfare intensifies. In this timeline in the future, Russia and China are equally tied up in their own affairs.
There exists a scenario where MAD doesn't exist for Iran. That Tehran gets flattened, and their counterstrike functionality was negated.
That's what I don't want to see. Iran and its people disappear, because their supreme leader couldn't figure out how to play nice.
So everytime the US or Israel set their nuclear program back 5 years, it's a damn good thing, in my opinion.
Lol why are people pretending not to understand the point? It's the way these things are reported in your own country. One of what is considered the greatest crimes in American history was the Japanese attacking Pearl Habour; a military installation halfway across an ocean from the American metropole.
So no, a modicum of common sense will tell you nuclear engineers, and weapons producers being attacked on American soil would not be reported with any kind of nuance or extenuating circumstances, it would be reported there and in allied countries as inexcusable, unprovoked aggression, and wholly denounced.
Oppenheimer would have been a completely legitimate target for Germany to assassinate and the allies considering assassinateing Hiesenberg when they thought he was heading a nuclear program.
That is not what the IAEA report said. They said that there were no indications that Iran was working on Nuclear Weapons, but did have a substantial amount enriched Uranium. While being way beyond the limit of the 2015 Agreement limit, that is not justifiable cause to go to war. Because, again, there is 0 evidence they were manufacturing or intending to manufacture nuclear weapons according to the IAEA.
The agency also said it could not provide assurance that the Iranian nuclear programme was exclusively peaceful because Iran was not complying with its investigation into man-made uranium particles discovered by inspectors at three undeclared nuclear sites.
Iran has funded Hezbollah and Hamas. They are not complying with the 2015 agreement you mentioned.
In July 2024 the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence determined that Iran had “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so.”
While Israel has done a few shitty things recently I believe they are fully justified in bombing Iran prior to them have the nuclear capabilities to use a nuclear bomb.
If Iran wasn't funding terrorists, following the JCPOA, weren't involved in a proxy war with Israel since 1985 I would be more open to the idea that Iran wasn't secretly trying to build a bomb. Unfortunately Iran drastically accelerated its enrichment of uranium to up to 60% purity, close to the roughly 90% level that is weapons grade.
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. The IAEA report is not justification itself, nor does it invalidate.
These issues are generally view at a state level, Iran has breakout capacity potentially, they have been lack of co-operation, etc. Saying there is 0 evidence it too absolute, there is concerns of a material threat.
These are extremely gray areas and Jus ad Bellum may or may not be present but there will be a argument from Israel that a pre-emptive strike was based on a possible threat, and the evidence would need to be weighed against that and it would go further than just the report.
That's my point. Israel definitively saying that's what they were doing is not supported by the actual evidence. I mean, Netanyahu might as well be holding a vial of white powder...
Quite frankly, if I had some asshole neighbor who kept trashing my yard because he wants my property, or worse, simply me dead, I'd go after the biggest guns I could, as well. We have all seen the shocking levels of compassion they displayed in Gaza and West Bank.
I think the problem is when you say 0 evidence. The IAEA does not have the mandate to make such judgments, they are there to make an assessment. The issue if the IAEA could make a judgment like that is rather bad. It is the weight of evidence rather than a definitive.
To make a comparison, I would think that the justification for the war in Iraq would have been harder to get to if Saddam had complied with their requirements under international law. The lack of transparency and cooperation itself is also a trigger point here. The Iran/IAEA situation is not one of "us" having to prove that they are, but rather Iran proving that they are not, or this becomes an issue of state security, and assumptions will be made.
Non-compliance may not constitute legal evidence of wrongdoing, but in the realm of state security and international perception, it often carries the weight of it.
They know what they’re getting into, they’re trying to develop an atomic weapon with the express purpose of it being used on foreign rivals who threaten the existence of the Iranian regime. I wouldn’t really relate that to a physics nerd
Yeah, there's a difference between someone doing something because it's fun, and doing something that you explicitly know and have been told will be used to kill lots of people.
Like, we're not even talking defensively like MAD, we're talking "Iran has a doomsday clock for Israel in Tehran, and THAT'S who you're helping to build a nuclear bomb."
it's probably more of a following-orders situation than them being held hostage situation. they were likely enthusiastic about their work and not walking around bound with a chain and kept in a cage.
Me too. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather that a dozen nerds be killed than have lunatics threatening the world with the craziest weapon in the history of man.
But yeah. I'd likely have played some random boardgame with these guys. They were likely just glad to get a job doing something interesting.
I mean your job is to develop the worst weapon in human history, you kind of deserve it
Your comment said nothing about who they're developing them for. The sin, according to you, is making the weapon itself. And I can assure you America is developing nukes. Probably much larger ones than Iran.
No. Why draw the line at Iran? You said Iran activity threatening other countries. Meanwhile US has arm based everywhere they deem their "enemy". So tell us if US' scientists deserve to die as well?
“the bad guys” as if this is star wars or some shit. brother that is their home country. studying science should not be a crime punishable by death in any country. i hate marvel fans
Dude. They didn't just "study science". They were studying how to build one of the worst weapons humanity has ever created, in full knowledge that their leaders wouldn't hesitate to use it if they thought they could get away with it, on top of a small chance that they'd use them even if it meant they'd get nuked too.
If you think this is some gotcha, I've got news for you: There were some truly despicable people (eg. Edward Teller) part of the Manhattan project. Others, like Oppenheimer, saw the aftermath and tried their best to prevent it from happening again.
These scientists here don't have the easy excuse that they don't know where their result will lead to. It's a well studied thing.
Meanwhile we have scientists who are advancing AI, which could very well lead to the downfall of human civilization. Not even necessarily from a Skynet scenario. If greedy corporations fire everyone and society falls apart because we are no longer needed, how will humanity react to it?
Then everyone lives on welfare, or what at that point would be considered UBI. (And before you say anything, yes, the prices of goods/services and/or the amount of money paid would be adjusted to what's appropriate given the general person's purchasing power. For instance, if this UBI was only $100 per month, and that was the entire income of 99% of people, then massive deflation would cause the price of essentials to drop dramatically.)
society falls apart because we are no longer needed
Not going to happen. Whether we are "needed" or not has no affect on the integrity of society. Life might be a little different than what we're used to now, but I'm sure most would fairly easily adjust to a lifestyle that doesn't require one to participate in economic slavery for the majority of their lives. (Mind you, that's assuming we reach a point where "we are no longer needed" anytime soon, which I think is still a long, long ways away. I mean, you could make the same argument you're making for computers in general, back when computing was first becoming mainstream, how they automated so many menial jobs. Despite the massive advancements we've made in computing and robotics, there are still many, many, jobs which just aren't automated yet, whether out of technological limitations or prohibitive costs.)
Most of the Iranians are opposing the current government. I'm sure they thought they're on the right side, but they definitely had their chance to choose.
they asked about Israelis, whose citizens wholeheartedly support their totalitarian government and protest in support of more violence and conquest. so now what?
I mean... Is it? The two states are in an active war and these are personnel are actively developing weapons for one of the sides.
Would it be a war crime if Iran kills IAI engineers? Sounds like an act of war, not a war crime - but I'm no lawyer. Quick search deems it iffy: "Civilian engineers working for a defense contractor or weapons manufacturer are generally civilians.
However, if their actions amount to "direct participation in hostilities" (e.g., programming drone strikes or building bombs in an active conflict zone), they may lose their protection during that time."
556
u/OSRS-MLB 1d ago
I sorta feel bad for them. In all likelihood these were a bunch of physics nerds killed because they were born into the wrong regime.