{"id":1474214,"date":"2024-06-28T23:40:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T03:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1474214"},"modified":"2024-06-28T23:40:00","modified_gmt":"2024-06-29T03:40:00","slug":"iran-openly-talks-about-building-a-nuke-in-historic-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/iran-openly-talks-about-building-a-nuke-in-historic-shift\/1474214\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Openly Talks About Building A Nuke In Historic Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden\">Iran Openly Talks About Building A Nuke In Historic Shift<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item\">\n<p>In what&#8217;s likely messaging intended for both Israel and a potential incoming Trump administration in the US, Iranian officials are becoming more open about the possibility of building a nuclear bomb. Tehran&#8217;s official policy, backed by years of consistent statements by the Ayatollah, has been to insist its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes, and that nukes go against Islamic morality.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Currently, it is no secret that the Islamic Republic has been drastically increasing the quantity and purity of its enriched uranium &#8211; which has hastened over the last year, after an already upward trajectory since Trump pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear deal in 2018.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>The New York Times<\/em> in a fresh report says an unprecedented trend is cause for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/27\/us\/politics\/iran-president-nuclear-bomb.html\">serious alarm<\/a>: &#8220;For the first time, some members of Iran\u2019s ruling elite are<strong> dropping the country\u2019s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes<\/strong>.&#8221; This comes just as Iran &#8211; which remains the archnemesis of Israel &#8211; is about to pick a new president after Ebrahim Raisi&#8217;s recent death in a helicopter crash.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/irannkst.jpg?itok=4tHgej9X\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Instead, they are <strong>publicly beginning to embrace the logic of possessing the bomb<\/strong>, arguing that recent missile exchanges with Israel underscore the need for a far more powerful deterrent,&#8221; continues the NY Times.<\/p>\n<p>Tehran is fully aware of its status as a <strong>&#8216;threshold state&#8217; <\/strong>and is using this to project strength in its broader standoff with Israel in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/27\/us\/politics\/iran-president-nuclear-bomb.html\">the region<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><em>In interviews with a dozen American, European, Iranian and Israeli officials and with outside experts, the cumulative effect of this surge appears clear: Iran has <strong>cemented its role as a \u201cthreshold\u201d nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>And yet Israel&#8217;s Benjamin Netanyahu has warned many times over the years that he will not allow Iran to achieve nuclear status. He has vowed to launch a <strong>preemptive attack<\/strong> should Tehran cross this line.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But this has not stopped an official close to Iran\u2019s supreme leader from recently explaining that if the country were to face an existential threat, it would <strong>&#8220;reconsider its nuclear doctrine&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 as quoted in the\u00a0<em>Times\u00a0<\/em>report.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Without doubt, Iranian leaders have in the back of their minds the examples of Iraq&#8217;s Saddam Hussein and Libya&#8217;s Muammar Gaddafi. Both gave up their WMD programs and nuclear aspirations, and soon after were invaded, overthrown, and executed (and in Gaddafi&#8217;s case he was killed on the street by NATO-backed rebels).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/s3\/files\/inline-images\/nukesitesmap.jpg?itok=G4ehZiOx\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Below are some key sections from the lengthy NY Times investigative report&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>* * *<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>How fast to achieve a bomb?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And they caution that while Iran could now produce the fuel for three or more bombs in days or weeks, it would still take considerable time \u2014 maybe 18 months \u2014 for Iran to fabricate that fuel into a warhead that could be delivered on missiles of the kind it launched at Israel in April.<\/p>\n<p>Gaza tinderbox has raised the stakes<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIran is sending a clear message that if the pressure of sanctions continues, if assassination of its commanders continues and if Washington or Israel decides to tighten the noose, it will then break all the chains,\u201d said Hossein Alizadeh, a former Iranian diplomat who defected in 2010. He spoke from Britain, where he now lives.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Practicing preemptive strikes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While the U.S. and Israeli air forces often practiced what it would take to bomb Fordow, even building a mock-up of the site in the Nevada desert, military officials say it would take repeated, precise strikes by the United States\u2019 largest \u201cbunker buster\u201d to reach down that deep.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anti-nuke Fatwah still officially in place<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Iran has insisted that it cannot manufacture or use nuclear weapons because of a 2003 \u201cfatwa,\u201d or religious edict, issued by the country\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The country said the fatwa remained in effect even after Israel stole, and then made public, a huge archive of Iranian documents that made plain the country was trying to design a weapon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Coordinated statements signaling policy change<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>If Israel threatened Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities, General Haq Talab said in a speech in mid-April, \u201cit\u2019s entirely possible and imaginable that the Islamic Republic <em><strong>will reconsider its nuclear doctrine and policies and reverse its previously stated positions<\/strong><\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks later, Mr. Kharazi told Al Jazeera that Iran had the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb, but that it has not decided to do so.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf Iran\u2019s existence is threatened, <em><strong>we will have no choice but to reverse our nuclear doctrine<\/strong><\/em>,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>And in late May, Mr. Araghchi said at a conference in Doha, Qatar, that Israeli attacks <strong><em>\u201ccould force others to rethink their security calculations and their nuclear postures.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>      <span class=\"field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden\"><a title=\"View user profile.\" href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/users\/tyler-durden\" class=\"username\">Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden\">Fri, 06\/28\/2024 &#8211; 19:40<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/iran-openly-talks-about-building-nuke-historic-shift\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/iran-openly-talks-about-building-nuke-historic-shift<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iran Openly Talks About Building A Nuke In Historic Shift In what&#8217;s likely messaging intended for both Israel and a potential incoming Trump administration in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1474215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1474214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-6bvE","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2024\/06\/irannkst-dTYWEu.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1474215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}