Hi; this is my first ever post on reddit and I’m not exactly sure how to do this so bear with me. I’ve been struggling with this issue a bit and I just need something, any sort of input because I don’t know where to turn.
My SO (20M) and I (22M) have been dating for almost 19 months now and we were good up until COVID hit. Drinking was never an issue (or at least not for your average college student who drank once maybe every week or two, but never anything concerning and always responsibly). Once COVID came, I noticed his drinking habits get worse. It started out with 4Lokos and Monacos, and moved onto wine and now vodka. At first we both would barely be able to finish half a 1.5L wine bottle and now he can drink a quarter or half a bottle of vodka a night. Once every month or so, I don’t think he realizes how much he drinks because he falls asleep on the bed with the trash next to him in case he throws up (which he always does, leaving me to clean up after him so the room doesn’t smell).
I didn’t realize until it was too late that I was enabling this behavior so I tried to talk to him about his drinking habits and he got seriously offended and felt like I was judging him. I told him that I was not and that I was genuinely concerned for his health since he’s so young but he kept saying that he felt judged and was hurt. I felt bad so we dropped the conversation. That conversation was repeated every two months or so because I would see his tolerance get higher and higher. At some points, he would take a few days or a week break in between until he would start drinking excessively again.
We just had a fight tonight about it once again, and I told him how it hurt me to not have him understand my side which he claimed he did but he wants his freedom and his de-stressing method.
I think I’m partially to blame because since the pre-covid summer, I got a computer and started to play video games a lot more during the nights because I haven’t been able to since I was young. I always check in with him in the middle of game breaks and such but I feel like it’s my fault for just not being there with him. I’ve offered to play with him but he doesn’t like it.
It’s been almost a year of this and honestly I don’t think I can do it anymore. I don’t want to break up with him because we live together and otherwise I wouldn’t be able to pay rent by myself but I don’t think I have a choice. It’s always in the back do my head to think “what would your mom think of me enabling this behavior?”
Friends, what do I do?
submitted by First we got the bomb and that was good,'Cause we love peace and motherhood. Then Russia got the bomb, but that's O.K.,'Cause the balance of power's maintained that way! Who's next? France got the bomb, but don't you grieve,'Cause they're on our side, I believe. China got the bomb, but have no fears; They can't wipe us out for at least five years! Who's next? Then Indonesia claimed that they Were gonna get one any day. South Africa wants two, that's right: One for the black and one for the white! Who's next? Egypt's gonna get one, too,Just to use on you know who. So Israel's getting tense, Wants one in self defense."The Lord's our shepherd, " says the psalm, But just in case, we better get a bomb! Who's next? Luxembourg is next to go And, who knows, maybe Monaco. We'll try to stay serene and calm When Alabama gets the bomb! Who's next, who's next, who's next? Who's next? Tom Lehrer, "Who's Next?"
Well, since I've spent way too long reading detailed accounts of the Iranian nuclear program, how to build a nuclear bomb, the weirdness of Saddam's nuclear program [which has largely fallen into the cracks of history], and general things nuclear and Middle East.... and Iran is [kind of rightfully] back in the news lately...
Welcome to my explanation of "what's up with Iran's nuclear program", "what's up with Iran", "how do i make nuke", and other things of such nature. It involves a lot of history and explanations of industrial manufacturing processes, and actually fairly little recent stuff because... not much has actually changed, in many ways, and Iran's modern history is quite interesting on its own--it was a struggle not to write more, I'm afraid. Hopefully, even if I don't think it's my best written or most concise work, it proves enlightening.
1. America's Shah
Our first character here is the last of his kind. Shah Mohammed Raza Pahlavi, or, as everyone called him in America and I'll call him here, just "the Shah".
The Shah is a most curious character in history. Born at the end of the First World War, he was raised as Iran became the world's most important oil producer [only eclipsed by Saudi Arabia several decades later]. He was installed by the British and Soviets when they invaded Iran in a little-known episode of the Second World War--Iran would ultimately serve as a significant logistics route and oil source during the war, and housed hundreds of thousands of Polish refugees in an odd quirk of history. Some descendants of Poles actually remain in Iran to this day.
However, Iran, despite boasting some of the world's largest oil reserves, largely remained a backwater. A large reason for this was that Iran had an exceptionally terrible oil deal with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company [later to be known as British Petroleum], which gave Iran only 16% of the revenues and even that only in name since there was little accountability to Iran in the bargain. This situation was unacceptable to the general Iranian public, in which feelings turned nationalistic rapidly, and, in the early 1950s, Prime Minister Mosaddegh [who largely controlled the show, despite the Shah being nominally in charge] nationalized the oil, to the general applause of Iran.
What happened next remains mired in deep political controversy across the globe. Britain is almost certainly mostly to blame for what happened; as they instituted a general embargo on Iran, and managed to convince the Americans to support an effort to launch a coup [counter-coup?] in Iran to restore the Shah [who had fled the country] to power. Even more confusingly for historians, it seems that there was legitimate factions within Iran pushing for the return and installation of the Shah, and Mosaddegh began to become increasingly desperate, dissolving parliament and placing himself as de facto dictator [and it should also be noted that Mosaddegh was not legally the prime minister at this point since the Shah nominally had the power to dismiss him and did so]. In any case, the events of the early 1950s ended with the Shah back on the throne as absolute monarch, unchallenged by any parliament, advisor, or landed noble. Ultimately, the oil was not nationalized, but a better [though still not exceptionally great] deal was made with a consortium of American and British oil companies.
And so things remained, until the early 1960s. The Shah was nothing if not ambitious, and his plans never lacked for grandeur, so, with much public aclaim, he launched a program of reforms he dubbed the "White Revolution" on account of it being bloodless [in theory, anyway]. These reforms led to the rapid growth, urbanization, and development of the Iranian economy, but they carried with them the seeds of their own destruction. While they did avert the rise of an effective communist movement in Iran, they created another revolution. These reforms created a new class of urban poor, of dissatisfied farmers, and particularly enraged the Shia clergy [largely because they deprived them of their traditional rural economic and power base].
However, it is not economics that really interests us here, but the Shah's true passion: World domination. Or at least close to it. Beginning with the massive surge in oil prices in the early 1970s [some of which were in fact instigated by the Shah himself with OPEC], the Shah finally had the financial resources to pursue what he always loved: Building an oversized, incredibly well-armed, and well-trained military. The Shah ordered billions of dollars in military equipment, almost all from the United States, to the point where Congress began agitating to restrict sales--to little effect as the executive branch, at least until the arrival of Jimmy Carter in 1976, was of little mind to control arms sales. Iran got its hands on everything from highly advanced electronic intelligence equipment [in the form of a collaboration with the CIA] to F-14s. The orders that were never delivered included
300 F-16s,
300 F-18s, squadrons of E-3 AWACs, and 4 guided-missile destroyers, the largest and most capable ever built at the time, among other miscellaneous sundries. To the Shah's credit, unlike almost every third-world tinpot dictator, and especially unlike his immediate neighbors and rivals--Iraq and Saudi Arabia--his military was, by all accounts, one of the world's best trained as well as best equipped. In particular, the Shah--a trained pilot himself--loved his air force, to the point that the Islamic Republic is still suspicious of it to this very day. Their feats during the coming war, while sadly never winning widespread recognition abroad, were some of the most incredible ever achieved in the skies. The Shah also engaged in aggressive diplomacy, developing a close relationship with Israel and a very close relationship with the United States, which eventually resulted in the US being closely associated with the Shah's rule to the point where he was sometimes called "America's Shah"--though those who study him closely learn that he also cultivated increasingly developed relationships with the Soviet Union, China, and other world powers, always striving to be more than America's outpost in the Middle East.
It is around this point when Iran first began getting funny ideas about nuclear weapons [though those likely started some time before, when Iran received its first nuclear reactor in 1957 through the "Atoms for Peace" program]. It's no real surprise, knowing the Shah's character. In fact, the Shah once, saying what most of those close to him and many within American intelligence already knew aloud, stated that he wanted the bomb.
in February 1974, following a Franco-Iranian agreement to cooperate on uranium enrichment, the shah told Le Monde that one day "sooner than is believed," Iran would be "in possession of a nuclear bomb." The shah’s surprising comment was at least partially in response to the 1974 Indian test of a nuclear weapon.
Realizing the repercussions of his comment, the shah ordered the Iranian Embassy in France to issue a statement declaring that stories about his plan to develop a bomb were "totally invented and without any basis whatsoever."
[Foreign Policy, The Shah's Atomic Dreams]
This was no idle threat, either. Iran had already, unbeknownst to most, been conducting experiments with plutonium reprocessing using its research reactor. And the Shah had plans to run Iran almost entirely on the clean power of the atom, building 23,000MW of nuclear capacity. The plutonium reprocessed from these plants could allow Iran to build up to 600-700 nuclear warheads
every year. Around this point, Iran began demanding what it called "total control over the nuclear fuel cycle", which involved it being able to reprocess its spent fuel and enrich uranium. The US government, probably about the only country that actually cared about non-proliferation [well, the USSR might have as well] was quite nervous about these ideas and refused to export Iran sensitive nuclear technologies without extensive restrictions on what could be done with spent fuel. France and Germany, however, had absolutely zero qualms about selling the Shah [and later Saddam Hussein] nuclear technology, and several plants with very few restrictions on them were lined up for construction in Iran. America ultimately caved when it saw that Iran was just going to get uncontrolled reactors anyway from Europe and figured it might as well be the one building the power plants, so American companies got some contracts to build some of the 23,000MW of capacity too.
However, the Shah's love of his army would ultimately lead to his downfall. Inflation spiked as Iran kept importing weapons with increasingly scare dollars as oil prices receded from their highs in the mid-1970s, and the Shah saw no reason to take austerity measures. The Shah's economic reforms were also showing problems [though as an interesting side note, the Shah planned to nationalize the oil in 1979]. The intelligentsia, which had always hated the Shah, joined forces with the general populace and, for the first time, the Shia clergy, to expel the Shah. This would later prove to be a huge mistake.
2. Revolution and War
Ultimately, it was inevitable once he returned that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini would come to power in Iran. He was the Shah's most vocal critic abroad and was beloved by the religious population, and he and the other Shia clerics even pretended to play at politics. That was until they were able to seize power, at which point they promptly discarded, imprisoned, and later executed the other factions involved--such as the intelligentsia and liberals, whom were responsible for the revolution that brought him back in the first place. The new Supreme Leader instituted a theocracy, turning back the clock of social progress decades. And he promptly began to dismantle everything the Shah had built, including the nuclear program, the entire military, and the expensive arms and nuclear purchases.
In a sense he had help on that matter, though. After early assurances and outreach, when the US welcomed the Shah for medical treatment, students [with the tacit support of the Supreme Leader] stormed the American embassy, taking the personnel there hostage. This resulted in a split between Iran--angry, nationalistic, upset at the US because it was associated with the hated Shah--and the United States, furious at the new upstart who had taken the embassy personnel hostage. A military rescue attempt failed disastrously, spelling doom for the Carter presidency and for the American relationship with Iran. Eventually, the hostages were recovered.
Iran's neighbors, however, would not remain quiet for long. Iran under the Shah had many enemies--the Soviet Union overshadowing it to the north, Iraq a danger to the west, Saudi Arabia an irritant to the south and Pakistan an uncertain factor to the east. Iran's many enemies were a large reason why the Shah had spent so much on weaponry and done so much to strengthen Iran's relationship with states on the periphery, from Oman to Israel. While the Shah was still around, none dared openly work against him. But with the Shah gone, and his mighty army in shambles, Iraq, now under the rule of Saddam Hussein, decided it was time to invade--this time actually for Iran's oil, which largely lies in the southwestern Arab marshlands bordering on Iraq.
Citing essentially made-up pretenses, the Iraqi Air Force launched a devastating surprise strike on the Iranian Air Force while the Iraqi Army rolled into the southwestern region of Iran, a marshy swamp populated by Arabs that held almost all of Iran's oil reserves. Or at least that was what was
supposed to happen. The Iraqi Air Force was so hilariously bad at launching a first strike that the Iranian Air Force was able to launch a retaliatory strike the very next day that crippled the Iraqi Air Force for several years. The Iraqi invasion was able to penetrate a short distance into the region, but was fairly quickly halted, with Iraq doing incredibly dumb stuff like making unsupported armor assaults into urban terrain. It turned out that even as a shadow of its former self, the Iranian military was surprisingly good at its job.
What followed was eight years of one of the 20th century's bloodiest and least-well-known conflicts, far too long to describe here. Iraq tried repeatedly to invade Iran, with little success. Iran pushed Iraq out and took regions in southern Iraq. Iraq started frantically buying French and Soviet weapons, Iran was able to find some American hardware via Iran-Contra, and various black market sources--and, strangely enough,
Israel, which actually had a team of advisors in Iran through much of the war. Iran used human wave tactics, often utilizing child soldiers, to make up for their equipment disadvantages, while Iraq turned to chemical weapons [largely supplied by European companies, with some help from... the United States] in an unsuccessful attempt to turn the deadlock. It was like the First World War, if fought with 1980s technology, but also worse somehow. Iran instigated revolts in the Kurdish regions of Iraq [which was basically what Iran had done for decades already] and Saddam responded by just gassing entire Kurdish villages. The French, the Gulf monarchies, and the Soviets backed Iraq [and at times even the United States got involved, though seldom very directly]. All the Iranians had were the Chinese and North Koreans.
In the end, the war resolved in a restoration to
sine quo antebellum. Literally nothing changed. Iran was devastated from the war, which in its ending stages involved ballistic missile attacks on civilian areas.
These ballistic missile strikes, initially launched by Iraq against Iran, led to the development of an indigenous Iraqi ballistic missile program [with the support of, strangely, Argentina] along with the development of an Iranian ballistic missile program with support from the North Koreans and Chinese, along with some residual support from Israel which had been collaboratively developing long-range missiles with Iran under the Shah. That ballistic program would be one of the war's many legacies, and since then Iran has developed one of the world's most sophisticated ballistic missile arsenals, moving on from crude scud clones to highly advanced, precision-guided tactical missiles that can reliably hit within a few meters of their target. This would almost certainly be the vehicle Iran deployed any nukes it got on, and it could do so with good reliability, range, and protection.
Iraq, whom had suffered from Iranian ballistic missile strikes and air raids, but mostly from borrowing a whole lot of money from the Gulf States to finance the whole war, was also devestated. Iraq decided its solution was to just kill the creditors, in this case Kuwait, which proved to be a terrible idea as literally the entire world united against Iraq to remove it. Thus, the entire Western world, which up until a year or two before this had been loaning money and selling weapons and advanced technology to Saddam Hussein, ended up ganging up on Iraq and obliterating its army. Then it turned out that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program--largely fueled by Western technology. But to understand what they and Iran are doing, we need to learn some physics. Well, mostly engineering.
3. How to build The Bomb, a DIY Guide
Okay, I finally have gotten to the nuclear bomb part. So how
do you build a nuclear bomb?
Well, what you need for the most simple sort of weapon--a pure fission weapon, a meagre few tens of kilotons of TNT-equivalent, the technology that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki--seems tantalizingly simple. A trivial amount of plutonium-240 or uranium-235 will do the job for you--around 15 kilograms, varying on how good you are at physics and how big you want the boom to be. Add that in a package with certain other components, none of which are especially hard to make--mostly having to do with precision explosives--and you have the bomb. It's essentially just an engineering and implementation problem [the H-bomb is a bit different, but we'll ignore it for our purposes].
Of course, that's easier said than done. Plutonium-240 and Uranium-235 of sufficient quality [around ~90% purity] are actually pretty hard to get, and while there are alternative routes--you can use reactor grade plutonium if treated right, according to Anglo-American research, or lower-enriched uranium [though in much greater quantities], or even unconventional routes like the uranium hydride bomb--these are really the two things that you need in quantity.
There are a number of ways to get Uranium-235. Uranium-235 carries with it one substantial advantage: You can just dig it up out of the ground. That's where the advantages stop. Enriching uranium from its natural levels of around 0.7% U-235 to 90% is pretty difficult, as it turns out. There are several approaches.
The first one tried is the "Calutron" which uses particle accelerators to separate out the isotopes, and turned out to be horrendously inefficient, never being used after the Manhattan Project [which really did believe in throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks] until some were discovered in Iraq in the mid-1990s when UN inspectors were allowed in. Called "Baghdadtrons", Iraq had developed them because the technology was subject to essentially no export controls [and nobody asked why the Iraqis were suddenly interested in magnets and particle accelerators] and was quite simple to master. Fortunately, they didn't produce that much uranium, but if they had gone on for just a few more years, Iraq would have ended up with a bomb.
The second major method relies on gaseous diffusion, a process requiring massive structures that could handle uranium hexafluoride, and proved quite difficult to develop. The big nuclear states all had these facilities, along with other commercial interests--the French consortium that enriches uranium actually had a 10% interest purchased in it by the Shah. However, they were never that practical for the small, aspiring weapons state--too big and too complicated, and very obvious. The only state which developed its first bomb through gaseous diffusion is, to my knowledge, China.
The third, however, and the one that has gained the most attention now, is the centrifuge. This technology, via which virtually all uranium enrichment these days occurs, relies on just spinning a centrifuge at ultra-high speeds to separate the isotopes--like you might have done in biology, but on a much larger scale. These centrifuges are rather difficult to build and rely on advanced, hard-to-manufacture materials like carbon fiber and maraging steel. Unfortunately, though, thanks to the work of Pakistani nuclear scientist A. Q. Khan, and the efforts of a number of German and French corporations, the knowledge of how to build advanced centrifuges is out there if you know the right people--like Iraq did. They were building a centrifuge using training and technology from European companies, though they never got it up to scale. Libya also got this information, and Iran and North Korea as well. Turns out the Axis of Evil is real, but it's mostly just Pakistan and European nuclear companies.
Oh, and as a minor note, there's a fourth process that's been collecting a lot of concern that relies on lasers to enrich uranium, which has actually been commercialized in Australia. There's a good deal of fear that the technology is so compact that it'll enable virtually any state to enrich uranium in secret. Also, it should be noted that enriched uranium does have other uses than to make bombs--it fuels certain classes of nuclear reactors, for instance. However, the primary reason for enrichment is usually to make bombs.
Plutonium-240, though, comes pretty much one way: Out of nuclear waste. You take raw nuclear waste--there are some specifics if you want to optimize generation of plutonium, but you can do it to pretty much any nuclear waste--then you do some fancy and extremely toxic and dangerous chemistry on it, and, if you've done everything right, out comes plutonium of weapons grade, along with some uranium. This can be reused as fuel for nuclear reactors, and often is--Japan, for instance, has literal tons of plutonium reprocessed from its fleet of nuclear power stations. However, it also produces weapons-grade plutonium [or reactor-grade plutonium, which can be turned into a crude device anyhow]. The only problem with this is that generally people are quite touchy about nuclear reactors, especially the kind good at making high-quality plutonium, and IAEA supervision and controls are required in non-nuclear states. They're also very easy targets for airstrikes, as Syria and Iraq both discovered.
Most countries historically opted for the plutonium route--they could operate nuclear reactors on their own and nobody nearby could stop them. The United States, the United Kingdom, France, Israel, the Soviet Union, and North Korea all opted for plutonium. Only China, Pakistan, and South Africa have opted for enriched uranium--though the option seems to be rising in popularity.
4. Iran [maybe] builds a bomb
Well, since Iraq isn't the focus of this and Saddam is very much dead.. back to Iran.
Iran's bomb program is thought to have begun in 1973, when the Shah summoned a nuclear physicist named Akbar Etemad, told him he wanted to launch a nuclear program, and asked him to develop a plan. And, just like that, Iran was off on the road to a bomb. An Atomic Energy Agency was formed, its employees being the best paid in the entire Iranian government. Students were dispatched to a special nuclear engineering program set up with MIT. Huge quantities of money were dumped into nuclear energy, the development of uranium mines, and, of course, the bomb program. This is when the aforementioned activities of the Shah took place.
And since then, it's never really died. It probably would win an award for longest continually operating nuclear program that hasn't built a bomb. The Islamic Revolution was a serious setback as most of the Shah's atomic scientists were purged or fled the country, and so was the Iran-Iraq War, which represented a massive drain on Iranian resources. It continued working at the bomb, but, without those people--and more importantly without the cooperation of Europe, whom were not fans of the revolutionary regime--they stood no chance at building it anytime soon. Still, they worked away--largely knowing that Saddam was pursuing nukes as well, and that he would use them against Iran if he got them first.
In the 1990s, Iran largely focused on reconstruction and development from the catastrophic war. The nuclear program kept whirring away in the background, though. With the help of new technology, new friends--including Russia, no longer committed to non-proliferation as it once was, and soon-to-be nuclear state North Korea--and with a new generation of experts, Iran kept on developing the bomb right up until 2003, when... it stopped. There were probably many reasons for that--Saddam was gone, the United States was acting aggressive, international pressure was up--but they also likely had most or all of the needed information to build a weapon--just not the materials.
However, they kept up another angle--using the very same nationalist rhetoric as the Shah did, years ago, they asserted their right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty [whether one exists is debatable] to enrich uranium and possibly reprocess plutonium in pursuit of a domestic nuclear power program. This program would both fuel Iran's energy needs [which, surprisingly, it has quite a lot of] by producing fuel for Russian-built nuclear reactors, and also provide them with the same materials required to build a nuclear bomb--making them a nuclear-latent state, just like Japan or South Korea. That's when Iran's program really began attracting concern. Along with attention from Israel and the United States, who engaged in assassinations, sabotage, or expatriation of Iranian nuclear scientists [stealing them from nuclear conferences, rescuing their family from Iran, and bringing them to the US] in order to slow the program, with mixed results--while they did serious damage, it still continued. So efforts turned to negotiation.
5. JCPOA, or, how to successfully punt the can
Negotiations began in the late 2000s to attempt to halt the progress of Iran's nuclear program, which was rapidly developing and showed breakout potential to build a bomb by about 2010. While initially they bore little fruit, in 2013, an interim agreement was signed, followed by a full agreement in 2015. The agreement, concluded by the P5+1 [USA, Russia, UK, France, China and Germany] lifted most sanctions on Iran through a phased period, including sanctions on arms exports and an embargo on selling arms to Iran, and in return Iran would subscribe to certain limits on its nuclear program.
It would limit the enrichment of uranium to a low percentage and how much it possessed at any one instance, it renounced certain activities involved in fuel reprocessing and bomb design, it had to export its heavy water [as a side effect Iran is now one of the world's largest heavy-water exporters], and numerous other restrictions were installed. However, the most stringent of them began expiring in the early 2020s, with virtually all restrictions gone by around 2030. This fact has attracted a great deal of attention--in essence, JCPOA is punting the can a little over a decade. Still, alternatives weren't great. JCPOA increased the time that Iran would have to take to get a bomb from around three months to a bit more than that, six months. It also diminished the likelihood Iran would seek a bomb--as long as it could get most of the benefits by remaining on the threshold without actually crossing it, it seemed unlikely that Iran would actually do so when it brought on so many risks--not just sanctions but preemptive military strikes and proliferation throughout the region via Saudi Arabia and the UAE. It wasn't a perfect deal by any means, but it was a deal, and it worked about as well as one might have hoped. That was, until Trump unilaterally pulled out of it.
6. Where We're At Now
When Trump pulled out of JCPOA, reinstating sanctions on Iran, the response began tepidly. But within a year, Iran systematically began breaching the limits of JCPOA. Initially, Iran hoped that other international partners would save it--Europe built a special financial instrument to trade with Iran without sanctions, and Iran turned to East Asia for economic support. However, neither of these really panned out--corporations were scared of American retaliation and Europe found itself unable to do much about the problem. So, Iran ended its good behavior and began slowly, systematically breaching the limits placed on it under JCPOA. It began raising enrichment percentages, and breached its uranium stockpile limits. Iran also became increasingly aggressive in other areas, engaging in mining and seizure of ships--most recently a South Korean tanker--and using its numerous proxy militias to target American interests. In the meantime, Iran's economy has entered freefall--it was never well-managed in the first place, especially with Islamic foundations and the Revolutionary Guard controlling much of the economy, and the sanctions and collapsing oil prices have sent it into a recession. Covid also hit Iran particularly hard, adding to its woes.
At the time I'm writing this, Iran has activated its Fordow facility--which was banned under JCPOA--and has begun to enrich uranium to 20% U-235 levels. This might not sound like a lot, but it's actually much easier to enrich 20% to 90% than 4% to 20%. In essence, with these latest breeches, Iran's breakout time has begun rapidly shrinking--probably back to three months now, or even worse.
7. Going Forward
If Iran wants the bomb, there's not that much that can be done to stop it. Diplomacy will be difficult considering what we did last time, and military strikes are risky on the part of the United States--which could face backlash via proxy attacks across the Middle East--and impossible for Israel, which does not have weapons large enough to destroy Iran's more heavily fortified facilities aside from any bunker-busting nuclear warheads it possibly possesses. Sabotage and assassination will only delay the inevitable. Iran's nuclear program, it seems, will be one of President Biden's first major challenges--vying for attention with all the other ones--and it remains to be seen what he will do about it. I myself have pretty much no clue how to handle the situation.
Other lessons that can be learned here [or at least I learned here] are:
- Never collaborate with violent extremists because they just kill you when the revolution is over
- Be careful about promoting nuclear technology and selling it to other countries because there very much are proliferation risks
- Don't sell stuff to Saddam Hussein [big one]
- We can blame Europe for nuclear proliferation [guess where AQ Khan got his first designs from, along with Pakistan... oh, and India got theirs from Canada]
- There really isn't much that can be done to stop most countries from getting the bomb if they want one, despite what some suggest. Nuclear weapons... find a way.
8. Citations
Iraq's Programs to Make Highly Enriched Uranium and Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons Prior to the Gulf War, David Albright The origin of Iraq's Nuclear Weapons Program, Suren Erkman, Andre Gsponer, Jean-Pierre Hurni, and Stephan Klement The Shah's Atomic Dreams, Abbas Milani Enrichment Supply And Technology Outside The United States, S. A. Levin and S. Blumkin Just Because No One Does It Anymore Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Work, Chris Camp U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003, Mark Mazzetti Atomic Ayatollahs, David Segal Timeline of Nuclear Diplomacy With Iran Iran starts 20% uranium enrichment, seizes South Korean ship And of course others I haven't noted here in minor capacities.
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