There is a rumour that Iran will soon set off a nuke. Where and how they got the nuke is not explained. Maybe the Fatwa from the late Ayatollah meant they got close to a nuke, but not quite across the finish line, but after his passing, his Fatwas passed with him, and they finished the job. Or they might have gotten some help from someone, not at all clear from whom.
The basic idea is that the US were threatening the DPRK until they set off what they said was a nuke on 9 October 2006. A large, underground explosion was picked up on all the measurement instruments that track such things, an explosion that might have been a nuke, or just a huge pile of conventional explosives. The US have been threatening the DPRK on and off since the PRC evicted the US military from the DPRK in 1951, when the US had been close to forming a united Korea as a US puppet state, something the PRC could not allow.
But the second DPRK underground explosion on 25 May 2009 was definitely a nuke, at least 2 kilotons.
That wasn't the last test, but it was enough. The US backed off, and no longer threaten the DPRK.
So many who think that Iran should be left in peace keep saying, 'If they don't have a nuke, the US will keep attacking, doing massive damage, killing lots of Iranians, including schoolchildren, and making the people desperate for the relief that will come when they accept a Shah back, as they were forced to do in 1953, and let BP have all the oil and gas. Legally (under US/UK law) all Iranian oil and gas belongs to BP, which is 50% US and 50% UK owned. Will the US give the UK half? We won't know until the US convinces Iran to surrender and accept a Shah and BP back.
But if Iran have nukes, the US will have to back off, so (again, just a rumour for now) Iran might be planning to set off a nuke, probably underground, as the DPRK did.
Back in 1945, no other country had the tools to detect the US test in New Mexico, but that is no longer the case, so testing a nuke is now enough to convince other countries to leave one alone, it is not necessary to bomb two undefended cities in a country already carpet bombed with conventional weapons and with their army and navy already almost completely destroyed.
And, of course, actually using a nuke could provoke a nuclear response, which testing nukes has (so far) only convinced other nations that it would not be a good idea to attack a nuclear armed nation.
So will Iran actually set off a nuke to convince the US and Israel to back off????
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Meanwhile, Russia have been fighting NATO since 2022, more than four years. I watched various podcasts that said Russia were winning, and the New York Times wasn't saying much about the war in the Ukraine. But then, after a few months, the New York Times wrote that Russia, with old, poorly maintained Soviet weapons, were being destroyed by the Ukraine armed with the most advanced NATO weapons. Russia were unable to kill any of the Ukrainian military, only civilians in undefended Ukrainian villages, while most of the Russian military in the Ukraine had been killed, and Russia were desperately trying to round up young men to be forced to fight and die in the Ukraine. The Ukraine managed to attack and kill many Russians in Moscow at theaters and other such places. It did not look to the New York Times that Russia could hold out much longer: with their economy destroyed by sanctions, so they had no ability to build any new weapons, or even keep their cities running and their people fed, Russia had to collapse.
Reading the New York Times, Russia continue to suffer from a totally destroyed economy and keeps sending young (and also older) men to die in a futile attempt to annex a tiny bit of eastern Ukraine.
Watching the podcasts, it is the Ukrainians who have to send vans to capture young (and older) men and send them to the front to die.
But after four years, Russia have made little progress, only a tiny bit of eastern Ukraine, even if their losses have not been nearly as large as the New York Times reports (New York Times reporters get their news from the most reliable sources, the CIA and MI6, who have accurate intelligence on how the war is going, and we know they would never lie to the various US/UK/EU news outlets).
So, in desperation, several are suggesting that Russia should be escalating to nukes, something that will convince NATO to stop supporting the Ukraine, after which the Ukraine will have to accept Russian terms.
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And the famous American newspaper reporter Seymour Hersh says that the US is thinking that the simplest answer to the Iran war is to nuke Iran. Obviously, the US have thousands of nukes so no one would dare respond with more than a not-too-harsh statement to the effect that the US might have responded with a somewhat less intense response to Iranian aggression, but not much more than that.
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The US stated, after nuking Japan, that all their nukes were U₂₃₅. I read a Disney comic book back in the '60s about how U₂₃₅ was the most powerful explosive in the world, that a tiny flake would cause a huge explosion that would fill the Grand Canyon.
But then, years later, I read about the Chicago Pile. The US finally admitted that one of the nukes was Plutonium, which is very easy to produce if one has 50 tonnes of yellowcake and metallic uranium (the US gave Israel 100 tonnes). I have seen the public US descriptions of how easy it is to make a U₂₃₅ bomb, in the hopes that everyone who wants a nuke will try to make a U₂₃₅ nuke, something we have no reliable record that anyone has actually been able to do, so the US keep repeating that that is the easiest way to make a nuke, in fact the only way to make a nuke with only a small amount of uranium. I recently watched a podcast that less than 5 kilos of U₂₃₅ is enough for a nuke, and is very easy for any nation to produce. The US have been saying this since 1945, but there is no hard evidence that anyone has ever actually succeeded in building a U₂₃₅ nuke (but the US keep lying that their 1945 nukes were U₂₃₅ and the easiest and best way to build a nuke is to use U₂₃₅).
The DPRK apparently had 50 tonnes of yellowcake and metallic uranium. Basically, every nation with 50 tonnes of yellowcake and metallic uranium that want a nuke have a nuke. Nations without 50 tonnes of yellowcake and metallic uranium don't have one, but the US accuse of them of being close to a nuke as one of many justifications to attack and claim all their resources as war reparations. Of course, if one wants all their resources, one can't actually nuke them, or those resources would be too radioactive to be of any value.
So the US accuse Iran of trying to build a nuke as a casus belli.
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I worked in the US defence industry for several years. I have a STEM degree, so the US government kept giving defence contractors a lot of money to hire me. My contract said that if I quit, I had to repay the US.
My first day, they said, 'You were hired as a STEM person. We don't need any T or E, only S and M, Sales and marketing. Your quota is $250,000. Where are you going to get that money?' I had no idea, and they told me, if I had any decency, I'd quit because I was totally unqualified to do the job (they hoped I hadn't bothered to read my contract). So they had me dig holes and fill them up for a year.
I finally got a job where the government demanded they actually demonstrate a STEM result that they had claimed (but hadn't actually achieved) and my contract didn't have any requirement that I repay the government if I quit, so I solved their problem, got my pay cheque, and quit doing defense work.
The defence companies are all totally corrupt, so those US weapons that destroyed Iraq with minimal US losses don't work very well against a nation like Iran.
Also, Iraq were dependent on food and medicine imports, so the US sanctions (really, a blockade, which is an act of war) killed more than 500,000 Iraqis before the war started, something the US say was 'well worth it'.
But Iran grow their own food and produce most of the medicines they need (and they have had, since 2021, customers for their oil and gas who don't care about US sanctions, and who will sell Iran things they desperately need that are banned by those sanctions). So Iran are not suffering the way that Iraq suffered before the war started.
And the Iranian government did not fall as quickly and easily as the Iraqi or Libyan or Venezuelan governments, and they are proving that they do already have a nuke, not a U₂₃₅ or Plutonium nuke, a Strait nuke. And the US have tried everything their military can think of, but Iran still have their Strait nuke (using a Plutonium nuke would leave the Strait too radioactive to be of much use).
So where will the US go from here? No idea.
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My guess is that Iran will stick with a Strait nuke and won't bother with a Plutonium nuke, and Russia will not nuke Ukraine: it's not like nuking a country on the other side of the world, the Ukraine are much too close to be a good target for nukes. Which leaves the US the most likely nation to nuke someone, and they have a history of nuking nations that won't be able to do anything about it.
