Israel Hezbollah Pager Attack.

solo_wing said:

Rumor is going on that Iran has already tested a Nuke as there was an earthquake measured somewhere there.
Not sure how true and probably would have become main news if it was true.

Earthquakes In Iran And Israel Fuel Theories Of Covert Nuclear Testing

The unusual timing of the earthquakes, coupled with the ongoing geopolitical tensions between Israel and Iran, led to speculations about a covert nuclear test being conducted.

www.ndtv.com

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Wait for more confirmation. It's not unusual for earthquakes to happen in iran but I'm not sure they are all that common in Israel.

blr_p said:

Now I have another recent counter example. Iran.

Iran launched a raid into Pakistan some time back. Pakistan is a nuclear power.

Iran fired 300+ projectiles at Israel in April and another 180 ballistic missiles at Israel recently. Israel too is a nuclear power.

In the short space of a couple of years, Iran has challenged not one but two nuclear powers with conventional conflict without being nuclear.

Is it clear to you now that for deterrence powers, nukes have not and will not deter conventional or subconventional attacks.

Only takes one for Israel. They won't be able to recover from that. The threat is Iran and their stated objective is wipe Israel of the map. Israelis could give a hoot over what I've said here. Ideally for them Iran should never have nukes.

Recently I left a rebuttal to an Israeli commentator who scoffed at the idea Iran nukes would be defensive and not offensive. For deterrence powers that is the case. India, Israel or China. All defensive. Paks pretend otherwise but they too are in the same boat.

Only Russian & American nukes are offensive.

The leadership is what I mean. Gaddafi surrendered his nuclear plans after the AQ Khan affair came to light. He was gone a decade later. Kim saw this and won't let go of his.

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Honestly you seem to be repeating so I will too, as I said please see what I spoke of before regarding border clashes (or equivalents) and showing that a country has the intent to use nukes.

Don't know how many you need. Again as before I think people will use their nukes as they please.

I don't follow politics that much so can't comment but nukes are a safety card as I mentioned before, especially for small countries against someone like USA but that doesn't mean they won't use them first.

PS - You like to argue for argument's sake don't you? Just curious.

Decadent_Spectre said:

Don't know how many you need. Again as before I think people will use their nukes as they please.

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Not if they are deterrence powers in which case the ideal situation is they never are used

Decadent_Spectre said:

I don't follow politics that much so can't comment but nukes are a safety card as I mentioned before, especially for small countries against someone like USA but that doesn't mean they won't use them first.

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The only way a small power can hope to deter a nuclear attack by the US is by surrendering it's nukes.

Deterrence is not war fighting.

The possibility of a second strike may be there but the Americans will just double down. You won't have a country left.

So the very last thing a smaller power will do vis a vis the Americans is go first.

Decadent_Spectre said:

PS - You like to argue for argument's sake don't you? Just curious.

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You really think I'm merely arguing. I've made my points and they're all defendable. You are only disagreeing with no counters. Having discussed this topic for over a decade with those in the know I'm very confident. It's always amusing to see how many don't get it.

blr_p said:

Not if they are deterrence powers in which case the ideal situation is they never are used

The only way a small power can hope to deter a nuclear attack by the US is by surrendering it's nukes.

Deterrence is not war fighting.

The possibility of a second strike may be there but the Americans will just double down. You won't have a country left.

So the very last thing a smaller power will do vis a vis the Americans is go first.

You really think I'm merely arguing. I've made my points and they're all defendable. You are only disagreeing with no counters. Having discussed this topic for over a decade with those in the know I'm very confident. It's always amusing to see how many don't get it.

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Most countries would prefer they are not used. When the time comes to use one, no one is going to let some paper stop them. I think the term for all this talk between countries about their nukes and doctrines is called "posturing".

The US used a nuke against a country without one, if anyone thinks they are safe from the US nuking them by giving up their nukes they are, IMO, fools. Typical thought is not to go first as a small country against the US but I said that doesn't mean they won't go first, meaning they can if they want.

So the answer is yes. I understood what I wanted to. Thank you for the (indirect) answer.

Decadent_Spectre said:

Most countries would prefer they are not used. When the time comes to use one, no one is going to let some paper stop them. I think the term for all this talk between countries about their nukes and doctrines is called "posturing".

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So use them. Then what?

Decadent_Spectre said:

The US used a nuke against a country without one, if anyone thinks they are safe from the US nuking them by giving up their nukes they are, IMO, fools. Typical thought is not to go first as a small country against the US but I said that doesn't mean they won't go first, meaning they can if they want.

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Don't misunderstand what I said. I said in the case of a confrontation the only way to keep from being struck is by surrendering your weapons. Not go all peacenik and surrender them for no reason.

You want to keep from being nuked. The idea with credible minimum deterrent is you can prevent an attack by responding in an unacceptable way. That's the theory. It works against peer nuclear powers.

But not with the big two.

Countries being destroyed vs. leaders being replaced. For the most part, nukes will prevent the latter but faced with the prospect of the former the only option is surrender. In this exchange a nuclear strike was averted.

Decadent_Spectre said:

So the answer is yes. I understood what I wanted to. Thank you for the (indirect) answer.

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Is it?

blr_p said:

So use them. Then what?

Don't misunderstand what I said. I said in the case of a confrontation the only way to keep from being struck is by surrendering your weapons. Not go all peacenik and surrender them for no reason.

You want to keep from being nuked. The idea with credible minimum deterrent is you can prevent an attack by responding in an unacceptable way. That's the theory. It works against peer nuclear powers.

But not with the big two.

Countries being destroyed vs. leaders being replaced. For the most part, nukes will prevent the latter but faced with the prospect of the former the only option is surrender. In this exchange a nuclear strike was averted.

Is it?

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These are hypothetical scenarios, what happens depends on the situation in these scenarios.

I don't agree. You seem to not acknowledge the simple part that war/politics are usually not run from paper that sets the rules. The actual practice is simple, countries understand there are some things you don't do with a nuclear power and they stick to those, this works both ways and neither country uses nukes. It is as I said before, what applied during the cold war, MAD. Also as I said before the delivery system is gaining importance today, not just for speed and accuracy but also for being able to penetrate air defense and hit the target. If your nuke can't hit the target, there is no "deterrence", deterrence is also originally built upon the MAD theory. It is notable that the theory (IIRC) was coined after it was already playing out. As such it is a simple theory that humans understand, if I do this, they will do this, and we both are eliminated.

Decadent_Spectre said:

These are hypothetical scenarios, what happens depends on the situation in these scenarios.

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Make it real then. If a small country goes first it ends up like Gaza. The fundamental mistake the Israeli defence made was convince themselves that Hamas was deterred. It turns out there is no way to deter a group like that. But there certainly is with those in charge of Pakistan or Iran.

Would Hamas have gone ahead with Oct 7 if they knew what Israel would do? No

They thought with 200+ hostages that there was no possibility Israel would invade in the manner they did and with as much determination.

Both sides got the deterrence equation wrong.

blr_p said:

Make it real then. If a small country goes first it ends up like Gaza. The fundamental mistake the Israeli defence made was conince themselves that Hamas was deterred. It turns out there is no way to deter a group like that. But there certainly is with those in charge of Pakistan or Iran.

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Make it real? Sorry did not understand.

A small country going first depends on the details, also for them to strike first there must be reason.

Deterrence is based on making a credible threat that your opponent believes AND is unacceptable to them. Nuclear or not.

Decadent_Spectre said:

Make it real? Sorry did not understand.

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Gaza is an example of a small country that struck a much more capable one. Just to show that such a foolhardy move by a smaller power means the smaller country is going to get destroyed most of the time.

What is Israel asking? Surrender (and return of the hostages) for peace. But for the purpose of the discussion focus only on surrender. Sooner it is done, more of the country survives. You lose the war but still have a country. As opposed to losing anyway with no country left.

Scale that up to the nuclear level and it will still hold.

Decadent_Spectre said:

A small country going first depends on the details, also for them to strike first there must be reason.

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Hamas calls it resistance. Hence Oct 7.

Decadent_Spectre said:

Deterrence is based on making a credible threat that your opponent believes AND is unacceptable to them. Nuclear or not.

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200+ hostages was believed by Hamas to be deterrence enough.

blr_p said:

Gaza is an example of a small country that struck a much more capable one. Just to show that such a foolhardy move by a smaller power means the smaller country is going to get destroyed most of the time.

What is Israel asking? Surrender (and return of the hostages) for peace. But for the purpose of the discussion focus only on surrender. Sooner it is done, more of the country survives. You lose the war but still have a country. As opposed to losing anyway with no country left.

Scale that up to the nuclear level and it will still hold.

Hamas calls it resistance. Hence Oct 7.

200+ hostages was believed by Hamas to be deterrence enough.

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I am not interested in talking about gaza.

Superhind said:

No they wont. America is tired of war and they hell won't jump into Iran. Iran isn't Afghanistan and the Iranian Military is no joke.

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In the event that Iran fired of numerous dirty bombs at Israel? The US would have to act because they are the overlord in the region. The gulf countries could be next. They are US allies too.

What the Americans would like very much is to not be put in such a position where they are forced to act so they keep the jewish dog under a tight leash. In other words appease Iran. At least with this administration. With Trump it could be different but he too wants no forever war.

Superhind said:

Iran has everything ready to make a nuclear bomb quickly but it isn't planning to because that affects its relations with Qatar and Saudis.

Source

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I believe the same too but for different reasons.

Superhind said:

If a country wants to make a nuclear bomb, they will and US or Israel cannot stop em. India, Pakistan, NK are prime example.

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Israel, Pakistan & India didn't sign the NPT. They are free to develop nukes and even base them abroad if desired.

Iran under the Shah did sign the NPT as did NK.

What happened when NK abrogated the NPT? The toughest sanctions possible. As will be the case should Iran test a nuke like NK did. Can the Iranian regime survive such sanctions? I don't think they can and this is why they won't test.

But appearing to be nuclear capable and over time never getting there serves Iran's purpose if you see what I mean.

You have no deterrence unless you do a test. Having a bomb or two in the basement means squat if it isn't proven. The usual reply here is NK has done the test for Iran already. Whatever. Iran declares, they get crippled by sanctions. Russia & China have an interest in the NPT being adhered to and would not be able to protect Iran in this case.

solo_wing said:

Putin also backed off from killing Zelensky because he was warned of it too by West.

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Just a factcheck here. Ex Israeli PM has already confirmed that during the first day of the invasion, Putin gave an assurance that he would not eliminate Zelenkyy. The then-Israeli PM conveyed this message to Zelenky who was in a bunker. Only after this assurance, did Zelenskyy came out and made his famous "Need Ammo not Ride" statement. West was not in position to warn then. They wanted to get the Z man out.

Hell, they expected Ukraine to fall in 3 days. American Gen Milley said so. The "3 Day to Kiev" came from US not Russia.

solo_wing said:

Every country wants nuke and they are working on it or almost there but not filling coming out....America Israel kis kis ko rokega.

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That was the case before the NPT came into force. Over time everyone was made to sign. Three holdouts only. In the entire world. What you describe was the nightmare scenario without NPT.

solo_wing said:

Japan has already started militarisation.
They ofcourse are very anti nuke but how long can they deny rising China and Depend on America .

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In this context I often hear the line, would America sacrifice San Francisco for Tokyo?

You hear this at think tanks even but there is a fundamental flaw in there.

For every scare story the presumption is deterrence just magically disappears or was not there to begin with. Frequently its from the anti nuke lobby or as I pejoratively refer to them as the 'deterrence means squat' lobby. They don't understand deterrence and therefore think its meaningless. You can craft any scare scenario in that case. Any politics oriented attention seeker will be pedalling this nonsense. You see them in many countries.

The question of sacrificing San Francisco for Tokyo presumes America cannot deter a strike on their own country. How did that happen? Where did American deterrence go. How did it suddenly vanish.

It's like saying we should be afraid of Pakistan. For some reason their nuke are real but ours are not. So we have no deterrence? Nonsense.

solo_wing said:

Trump is already asking for hafta (protection Money ) even from small tiny nation like Taiwan.

Nuke is atleast a guarantee that conventional war will not go beyond a level.

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But it requires a country to leave the NPT to do so. That is not so easy. Taiwan had a nuclear program but were talked out of it as the 80s wore on.

solo_wing said:

Look at Russia how they were able to stop USA and Europe from giving long range missiles to target deep within Russia by threatening with nuke.

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Russia can do it for the reasons explained already. US too. Nobody else. Unless you want to build a thousands plus arsenal. Very few can afford to do so.

solo_wing said:

My point is nuke in next 20 years will be with many more countries specially likes of Iran, Saudi and even Bangladesh want nukes ..not sure about them though. But Saudi and Iran is definitely there.

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That implies NPT has failed because enforcement of NPT has failed.

Job of the P5 is to enforce NPT. It has held so far. I do not forsee a disagreement among the P5 over it.

To date only one country in the world has challenged the NPT. That is North Korea. The result is the equivalent of committing economic suicide on a country wide level.

Who wants to be next?

When the west attacks, they go as a huge group against an individual country, that is how nato + nato friends work.
Only two countries in the entire world those can hold against such attacks with minimum credibility are Russia and China.
Russia is now fully engaged, China will only mind it's own business, use passive aggressive tough diplomatic games or Munchausen syndrome kind of proxy attacks against west.

Iran is already under all kind of sanctions, still slogging on.
They are known to be tough negotiators, will keep on holding like this until the last straw break the camel's back.
Once that happen, they won't care about what happens to whole world or about themselves. Because Iran know they are incapable of facing nato+.
It will be in best interest for everyone to not burden Iran with that proverbial last straw.
Even spewing some radio active material around will seriously impact the whole world, which is now burdened with metric tons of environmental issues all around.

TEUser2K1 said:

When the west attacks, they go as a huge group against an individual country, that is how nato + nato friends work.
Only two countries in the entire world those can hold against such attacks with minimum credibility are Russia and China.

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Russia can barely hold on despite Nato/EU only giving aid in the form of weapons/supplies. The current Ukraine/Russia war has only exposed just how hollow a superpower Russia is, and I wont be surprised if China is found out to be the same.

altair21 said:

Russia can barely hold on despite Nato/EU only giving aid in the form of weapons/supplies. The current Ukraine/Russia war has only exposed just how hollow a superpower Russia is, and I wont be surprised if China is found out to be the same.

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There is no comparison between Russia & China, China is far ahead in terms of everything except no. of nukes.

altair21 said:

Russia can barely hold on despite Nato/EU only giving aid in the form of weapons/supplies. The current Ukraine/Russia war has only exposed just how hollow a superpower Russia is, and I wont be surprised if China is found out to be the same.

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Huh, Russia is currently defeating the military industrial complex of NATO and from the entire NATO real time reconnaissance from Awacs and sattelites.

It will take years for NATO MIC to match Russia current production capacity. Nato has been scraping artillery supplies from South korea and even India.

The only area where Russia are behind is aircraft numbers. But if NATO is directly involved with air power. Those NATO bases and factories producing aircrafts in Nato countries will be bombed by Russia and with nukes if things really look dire.

Even if the Nato airforce is directly involved like in Yugoslavia, the serbs took down stealth aircrafts with pre historic AA weapons and at that time Russia was not in a position to help serbs.

The cost Russia can inflict on Nato aircrafts from ground based mobile AA will be devastating.

All the so called game changer western weapons Patriot, IRIST, Himars, Javelin, JASSM, M1A1, M2A2, Lepoards, Challenger, have been destroyed or made them irrelevant by Russia.

The moment a F16 or mirage 2000 or a Typhoon climbs to 1000ft or above, there will be a missile heading towards them. To launch a stand off missile at meaningfull distances, the aircraft needs to be really fly high, higher then a airline. Russia still has the world's largest AA defenses that has become stronger with latest variant of missiles and software algorithms from the lessons learnt with facing off Nato weapons.

adder said:

Huh, Russia is currently defeating the military industrial complex of NATO and from the entire NATO real time reconnaissance from Awacs and sattelites.

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With the conditions of nato help not allowed to be used deep into the Russian territory which is as good as fighting with one hand tied behind their back against Russia. Wars are not won simply by missiles & bombs unless it is nukes. It is always the ground forces that decide the final lasting outcome. Ukraine is destined to lose this war if they can't even destroy/attack Russian forces in advance coming to attack them from within Russia until they are face to face with them inside their own borders.

adder said:

Nato has been scraping artillery supplies from South korea and even India.

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Russia too has been scraping supplies from NK, Iran & China.

adder said:

Russia still has the world's largest AA defenses that has become stronger with latest variant of missiles and software algorithms from the lessons learnt with facing off Nato weapons.

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All those systems are for "defense" not "offense". Like I mentioned above, if not enough/capable ground forces then everything else is not of much use. Long gone are the days of countries occupying territory hundreds of KMs away from their borders. USSR learned this lesson the hard way in Afghanistan after USA learned the same lesson but in a bit less hard way in Vietnam.

Iran is sabre rattling without much substance, huge vulnerable population and some dirty nuclear material. Just a new age Iraq.
But we are underestimating China, they have progressed so much irrespective of what west says and Indians are let know.

altair21 said:

Russia can barely hold on despite Nato/EU only giving aid in the form of weapons/supplies.

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Only in form of weapons and supplies ? The extend of armaments, supplies and monies provided by nato+ to Ukraine till date unimaginable. Not to talk about covert fighters, intelligence, etc. What more are you expecting, wondering what this comment even mean. Lol.
If you were looking for direct attack by nato+, you can also look forward towards earth getting fried over and over till infinity.

altair21 said:

The current Ukraine/Russia war has only exposed just how hollow a superpower Russia is, and I wont be surprised if China is found out to be the same.

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Everybody already knew that Russia is just a massive explosive storage in the middle of massive wheat field.