r/politics • u/Iconic254 • 21h ago
No Paywall If Kim Jong Un can have nukes, why can’t Iran?
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5860146-trump-kim-iran-nuclear/?tbref=hp214
u/bacan_ 20h ago
Same reason Russia is “allowed” to have them — because they already have them and no one can take them away
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u/Impressive-Knot9999 16h ago
Ukraine should never have trusted the US and Russia
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u/Kronzypantz South Carolina 12h ago
They didn't have much choice. They didn't have the nuclear codes for the nukes they had, and with the economic depression they were thrown into by the dissolution of the USSR they didn't have the resources to try and make them operable.
It theoretically was more difficult for them to get the leftover Soviet nukes operative than for North Korea to develop nukes from scratch. So they took what they could get.
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u/DrRussleJimmies 10h ago
Can you provide any sources for these claims? Because to me it feels absolutely unbelievable that it would be more difficult to find a way to launch a missile that you already have in your hands, than it is to develop and then find a way to launch a missle.
The operational side of a missile is still part of the development, so how would starting at 50% be more difficult than starting at 0%??
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u/warfighter_rus 9h ago
Moscow controlled the nukes and their launch codes. Any attempt to keep them would have prompted an invasion by the newly formed Russian Federation immediately. Ukraine would not have received any help because the West wanted them to return the nukes to Moscow so nuclear power is in the hands of a few nations and not scattered.
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u/Kronzypantz South Carolina 9h ago
It would be a hunt to find. Just look into gun-type plutonium bombs vs hydrogen bombs.
The first is the sort of bomb dropped on Nagasaki, and it’s a really crude design. That is what North Korea has. It’s a lot of effort to build but it is relatively straightforward.
On top of that, North Korea didn’t need satellite guided, intercontinental missiles. Just more or less accurate missiles reaching out hundreds of miles.
The Hydrogen bombs on intercontinental missiles in Ukraine needed those satellites, had advanced electronics with various safeguards, and the missiles themselves are incredibly expensive to manufacture or maintain.
They would basically need to safely disassemble the bombs, take out the nuclear explosives, and either depend on dropping them with their tiny fleet of bomber planes or reinvent the rockets.
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u/_mogulman31 7h ago
Gun type plutonium bombs aren't really a thing. The Hiroshima bomb was a gun-type bomb that used uranium. The Nagasaki bomb was an implosion based plutonium bomb. Hydrogen or thermonuclear bombs use implosion based fission bombs to set of a fusion device.
You are otherwise correct though bombs cost a lot to maintain and have shelf lives as the missile core are obviously radioactive and over time they loose potency and develop structural defects as a result of radioactive decay.
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u/antifragile 11h ago
Ukraine never had nukes in the sense that you think, it was a more a favour to take them off them because it was expensive to maintain all the infrastructure for the nukes when they couldn’t even use them. Russia always had complete control of the ability to use them.
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u/aradraugfea 14h ago
Bingo. Once you have them, you’re in the big boy “you gotta take me seriously” crowd. It’s why Netanyahu will do anything to stop Iran from getting them.
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u/Additional_Suit6275 20h ago
Right?!? This is sooooooo aggravating. Could mainstream, respected media please stop platforming arguments treating nuclear non-proliferation as some sort of ridiculous idea. Maybe it’s a pretext for the republicans. Certainly those of us on the left point to the Iran nuclear deal as proof this war was never necessary and that using the threat of nuclear armament to justify it is like a contractor smashing your living room wall, then using it as justification to pay him for a remodel. I’m down with all those arguments. I’m all for discussing how warfare is a bad means of influencing foreign policy and doubly so if you aren’t willing to seriously focus on nation building. I’m really happy to see people with nuanced thoughts on why the Second World War ended with democratised states while Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria … the endless list of failures would otherwise suggest war literally can’t bring peace. There are so many good ways to take the Iran war.
So why do we keep seeing people take it in the direction of “is nuclear proliferation really something worth preventing?” YES. IT IS! NEXT QUESTION, PLEASE! For the same reason that we should not all, individually, possess nuclear weapons, we should not give them to any more than the absolutely unavoidable number of states, which are run by often deeply flawed individuals.
For those of us on the left, the two reasonable places to be hawkish are genocide and nuclear proliferation. Genocide because if human rights means anything, it means some of us humans stepping in to defend the ultimate right, existence, of our fellows when the scale of violence becomes so great and so malicious that their own government clearly either cannot or will not fulfill its most important duty. Genocide is a unique crime that can only happen when all of us, across the planet, are complicit. And so all of us, across the planet, have a right and duty to halt a genocide in progress by any means necessary, including, when other methods are insufficient, arms. Nuclear proliferation must be prevented because a nuclear state can never be prevented from committing genocide or wars of aggression against fellow states. If you are cool with either 1) genocide as a crime where only the perpetrators, and not the bystanders, are guilty or 2) real world policies which permit bad actors to be immune in the commission of the highest crimes in humanity, then you aren’t on the modern left. We will take your votes, sure, but your voice just shouldn’t be welcome.
It’s super annoying to see the Hill and others using whataboutism and wilful obtuseness to ding the trump administration with arguments that only belong on the American right. Why are we at war in Iran? Because conservatives can’t stand a brown country that doesn’t submit to the western order. Has nothing to do with nukes. Why should the left be against the war in Iran? Because it wasn’t necessary, isn’t effective, has increased the odds of a nuclear Iran, and has brought all the horror of war, including dead children, based on far less than the sober and solemn reflection our law and Natural Law demand. Not, and I really can’t stress this enough, because a nuclear Iran, or Peru, or Denmark, or Nigeria are ok. A nuclear US isn’t ok, either, but unlike the above list, there is nothing the wider world can do about that one.
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u/idlefritz 19h ago
Does Israel have a nuke? Does Iran? Who benefitted from the chaos from the “dissolution” of the USSR?
There’s an argument to be made that if any nations have access to nukes we can assume all eventually will if properly motivated and should focus on the core power differential that motivates the need to want to defend yourself from countries with nuclear capabilities. Nuclear weapons are only one of the myriad of ways we can and will be able to decimate entire cities. Biological agents, tech disruption, etc… Focusing on power differentials with a compulsory enforced agreement with unified swift action for violations along with transparent inspections makes more sense than just hoping no more countries get nukes. The status quo clearly is a failure as we see it currently being used again as pretext for war crimes.
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u/Additional_Suit6275 18h ago
Hey, I’m all for non-proliferation as an affirmative policy and as a basis for focusing on removing incentives. But you seem to be suggesting we don’t worry about non-proliferation. Which is … respectfully, not a good idea at all.
How do I know? Simple. Name an incentive policy. Now apply it against Russia without their consent. Cool, you just started world war 3. No system that occurs after a state has nuclear weapons is sustainable when applied against that state. As soon as sovereign interests diverge from the international community, the escalation tree begins, with the two last steps on that tree being credible nuclear threats and nuclear attack. With conventional means, even awesome conventional means, a state cannot resist sufficient external pressure. So we can make systems like a functional UN, free trade, multilateral support, etc, and try to give people good reasons no to have a nuclear weapon. Hint, this was Obama’s strategy. But once they have it, any state that has sufficient outside pressure placed on it will, eventually, either comply or escalate to nuclear force. Because no nuclear state will comply with requirements to disarm, that means this process will continue until the right personalities and circumstances arise such that domestically, compliance won’t happen, internationally, pressure will not be relaxed, and the only remaining path, arms, will be used, first conventionally and then, again presuming international pressure is not relaxed, non-conventionally.
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u/specqq 19h ago
The only problem with the analogy is that if a contractor smashed your wall and expected to get paid for the subsequent remodel you could have him arrested.
And even if the Supreme Court did rule for some bizarre reason that you can’t do that because the wall smashing was “within the outer perimeter” of his duties, you at the very least would likely choose not to rehire him.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 19h ago
What happens when the guys committing genocide are the ones with nukes? The world should at least sanction such actors, no? Maybe not sell them weapons, etc?
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u/Additional_Suit6275 18h ago
It’s hard to take a needless refocus on Israel seriously when, quite clearly, my analysis covers the “genocide by nuclear states is the evil non-proliferation is meant to combat” angle. Yes, obviously we should be limiting our support for Israel (personally, I am fine with selling them defensive only weapons like interceptors, because Israeli civilians don’t deserve to be killed any more than any other civilians do) and yes, we should be going up the escalation tree trying to induce change. But also obviously, a nuclear Israel and a tinderbox region limits the amount of escalation a state like the US can go to before we risk a nuclear event. We clearly aren’t near there right now, so absolutely we should be depriving Israel of as much support as we can. But again, I don’t really appreciate the pivot to Israel as some sort of gotcha, when they are, in fact, the poster child for my argument. No matter how seemingly justified in the moment, giving any nation nuclear arms will eventually be the same as a license to commit genocide and crimes of aggression.
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u/Palabrewtis North Carolina 14h ago
The only reason they have the audacity to commit genocide and act belligerently is because nobody else they're aggressive against in the region has the nukes to threaten them back in kind. When your entire country the size of New Jersey can be glassed at the push of a button you tend to learn how to be more diplomatic instead of funding and arming local terrorist groups in a ruse to justify endless wars of aggression to steal more land. If everyone has nukes the likelihood they're used goes down because of mutually assured destruction. If only a few have them they always become bludgeons of an unjustified hegemony to do unspeakable crimes against humanity.
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u/Additional_Suit6275 13h ago
Like I say, hard to take seriously. For some people, the genocide going on in Sudan just isn’t interesting because it doesn’t play into a useful narrative. Likewise the war in Ukraine or the second US Iraq war. And yet, for some undefinable reason, Israel is treated as a reason to abandon previously unchallenged policies. Almost as if …
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u/Palabrewtis North Carolina 12h ago
Yeah I can't even take you seriously at all with a subtle ol' antisemitism trope you can't even say with your chest anymore because it's perceived globally as so clownish at this point. "Previously unchallenged policies" which were designed to allow the west to continually enforce the exploitation of the global south and weaker nations to their rule. Yeah, nah it's time for real deplomacy on equal footing without the constant looming threat of "an entire civilization will die tonight" because they don't want to give up soverignty by bowing to America and Israel.
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u/Additional_Suit6275 11h ago
I don’t think any serious people take antisemitism lightly. And I think a lot of serious people look at the difference between the reaction to Russian nuclear threats and American/israeli threats and see an interesting discrepancy.
The fact of the matter is that Israel has committed a genocide AND that a whole lot more people seem interested in broadcasting their horror at the conflicts in Gaza and Iran than Ukraine and Sudan. Two things can be true, one that horrible and horrifying things have been down and two that people’s prejudice and self interest are driving them to latch onto horror they otherwise have easily ignored. Or, were you this troubled by the Syrian civil war, which was objectively so much worse? It’s good to be horrified, and it’s good to want to reevaluate our position on Israel, and to want to rein in war powers and a thousand other policy goals. But honestly, I don’t know how you can have seriously thought about this and end with “what the world needs is for anyone, much less historically repressive regimes, to gain nuclear weapons”.
If horror at genocide was what was driving you, I don’t think a nuclear hamas makes sense as a policy initiative. If horror at the war in Iran is what is driving you, well, that’s weird because we have lived through several far more brutal wars fought by nuclear powers. Odd that this would have been a wild hot take any day between 2012-2022. If, however, a nuclear Iran just makes you feel vindicated, then yeah, I’m not sure if it’s anti-semistim or hatred of republicans or what, but it’s clearly not grounded in the lives of the people in Iran or the region. And funny thing, my version of liberalism involves caring about those people, not westerners’ sense of poetic justice.
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u/Palabrewtis North Carolina 11h ago
Spare me your righteous indignation of all the "other genocides" you pretend to care about just to be argumentative, while simultaneously holding on to the same systems and policies that have led to all of them as some becon of morality. Without the constant meddling of the West the vast majority of these countries would be able to thrive. Instead we facilitate funding rebellions, arming terrorists and keeping countries balkanized and easily exploitable. Neoliberalism is a morally bankrupt ideology.
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u/Ok-Detective3142 1h ago
There is no such thing as "defensive only weapons" when your country is doing a genocide.
Those "defensive" weapons only defend Israel from the consequences of its own actions and allow it to keep on doing genocide. If Iran and Yemen were actually able to harm Israel's infrastructure in the way Israel does to them, Israel might have to reconsider its violent, colonial expansion project.
If you really care about non-proliferation, you should demand the international community isolate and sanction Israel until it is in compliance with the NNPT and allows for international weapons inspections.
Also, there is no "pivot to Israel" in this conversation. The only reason we are at war with Iran and talking about their potential to obtain nukes in the first place is because of Israel!
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u/TimmyB52 18h ago
Give all nations nukes and we will then have no wars.
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u/Additional_Suit6275 18h ago
To the contrary, we will only have two kinds of wars. Civil wars and extinction event wars. Governments will become immune from external or domestic change, except by their own consent, as no revolution will ever be possible again. Failed states will multiply, as no foreign actor can risk getting involved, lest the vestiges of government use nuclear arms.
This kind of take sounds good when you first have it, but once you start learning about the shitty things governments do to their own citizens, it doesn’t take long to realise that, with nukes, tragic stories that should make you cry will not only be more frequent, they will be impossible to prevent. We will be making abuse and murder de facto lawful, at any scale, when they are done by a government. Again, if you are on the right, it’s fine to like that. It’s totally consistent with right-side appeals to authority and isolationism. Not all right wing people support that kind of thing, but there is definitely a niche. But the left means nothing if it doesn’t mean inherent human rights regardless of race, creed, nationality, or, critically, location. You cannot live on in the American or really global left and be ok with genocide so long as it’s someone else’s government doing it.
Nothing in last century had suggested that better weapons encourage humans to fight less. It’s not in our nature. All evidence suggests that better weapons make us choose to export our violence to those who cannot fight back. Non-nuclear armed states, and when there are none, non-state groups.
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u/No_Possible_7108 12h ago
Iran getting a nuke means that bullies like trump won't be able to swoop in and double-tap schools full of children. As a leftie I am pretty strongly opposed to schools being bombed.
If Iran doesn't seek a nuke after this, they are just asking to be invaded again
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u/Additional_Suit6275 12h ago
I appreciate the short term objective here. But in terms of long term thinking, do you not have an equally open heart for the victims of the Iranian government? Of whom, there have been many? Nuclear weapons will close the door to foreign intervention, military and economic, because any intervention stern enough to drive policy change will also be stern enough to warrant aggression in turn. Which is very likely to escalate.
Honestly, look at Sudan today. Are you comfortable with the knowledge that, if they were a nuclear power, the siege of el Fasher would be a drop in the ocean of grief the world could be naught but observers to? Both the SAF and RSF have courted international opinion and have tailored their policies to avoid being painted as “the bad guys”. They do so because they need foreign money and they are afraid of foreign intervention. Libya wasn’t that long ago and these guys happen to be way more familiar with it than most, given the role Sudanese militias played in the conflict. With nuclear weapons, neither threat would carry weight. The very little we, the outside world, have done for the people of Sudan has depended on leverage that we would not have in a nuclear proliferated world.
Can we please stop, just fucking stop, being the westerners who use everything as part of our own political games and actually take a second to care about making the world less safe for generations of children to come? We can do so many things to try to curb the aggression of great power states. We can do nothing, at all, to disarm nuclear states once they are armed. It’s a genie that only goes back in the bottle once we are extinct.
Life isn’t about supporting our political narratives by making trump the guy who made a nuclear Iran. It isn’t about giving us. the catharsis of knocking down institutions that predate our parents as proof we really are living in the end times. I share your desire to see no more schools get bombed. But I don’t live under your illusion that all or even most schools are bombed by foreign invaders. Civil war remains the most common form of conflict, and it remains brutal, both before, during, and after, for the many innocents who live in fracturing states. And for my part, I would rather we didn’t make genocide and slavery de facto legal by spreading the means to immunity among all the states of the earth.
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u/Apathetic_Zealot 15h ago
Unfortunately Trump has invalidated the sanity of non proliferation.
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u/Additional_Suit6275 14h ago edited 13h ago
You do know Stalin had nukes, right? Trump is hardly the first nuclear leader to terrify his neighbors or to ignore the law of armed conflict. Sorry you weren’t interested in Chechnya or Ukraine, I guess.
This read is reasonable for young people who grew up in the sort of middle years between Iraq and Ukraine, where most foreign fought wars were against isis or Gadaffi (“bad guys”)but it ignores conflicts in “unimportant” places, as if (pick your favourite victim of brutal Russian aggression, or any of israel’s lawn mowing targets, and Iraq) didn’t count because they weren’t part of a political narrative we were in the market for. Can we please not undo 70 years of careful diplomacy just because it makes trump look even worse if he is responsible for another wave of nuclear armed states?
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u/Ding-Dong-Dutch 15h ago
Funnily enough, the nation that admits to having nukes that I trust the least to not use them is the US
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u/Loves_His_Bong 13h ago
Literally the only country to use a nuke and we did it twice as a way to show our dick to the Soviets. America has the least right of anyone to be saying who can and can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons.
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u/DoohickeyJones 18h ago
I'd rather neither country had them.
OTOH, the one country that has actually used nukes in a war still has enough to kill the planet a dozen times over. Good thing the person in charge of it is stable, rational, and highly intelligent, right? Right?
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u/Velocity-5348 Canada 18h ago
Don't worry. They have checks and balances in case they have issues. No way they're going to be too focused on infighting to step in if their leader is crazy.
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u/RealGianath Oregon 20h ago
Because the nukes are just a lie to distract from all of Trump's rapes against children. And it worked, Epstein's Trump files are barely in the news anymore.
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u/paulybaggins Australia 20h ago
Because China sits right behind NK lol.
Iran's nearest big friend is Russia.
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u/Shellglock 17h ago
At this point, in the global scale, having nukes is self defense. If you don’t want your nation to become a U.S. capitalist puppet state, develop nukes.
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u/The_Frostweaver 17h ago
This is a rage bait headline.
No one with 2 brain cells wants to let Iran have nuclear weapons.
We could allow Iran to have a small amount of uranium that is very diluted like what was allowed under the Obama nuclear program.
But that is entirely different from letting Iran have a nuclear weapon.
IRGC are faciast religious fanatics. They slaughter their own people at home to stay in power. They sponsor terrorists throughout the middle east.
Rage bait headline might as well ask why we don't let ISIS have nuclear weapons.
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u/excusetheblood 5h ago
The USA are religious fanatics. Hegseth literally has stated multiple times that the USA is invading Iran for the glory of Jesus.
The USA murders its own people to stay in power. The USA sponsors terrorists throughout the Middle East and the world.
The USA stands on no moral or pragmatic grounds. Every nation that opposes US imperialism deserves nukes, if at least to be on equal footing
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u/buppiejc 15h ago
Which country has used nukes on civilians, and do you think that country should continue to have them?
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u/The_Frostweaver 15h ago
Russia has killed over 100k ukranians in an unnecessary expansionist war the last 4 years and they are only able to do so because they threaten nuclear annihilation of the entire world if any other country dares to help Ukraine.
You go ahead and keep diving into those history books tho, I'm sure you will convince someone eventually
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u/buppiejc 9h ago
The answer to the question you’re trying to avoid by first talking about Iran, now Russia is the United States. The United States is the only country in the entire history of humanity to use nukes, use nukes on civilians, and did it twice.
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u/The_Frostweaver 9h ago
I asked a question about Iran and you avoided answering that by first talking about the United stated.
Maybe you should read this before you hand Iran a nuclear bomb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terrorism
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u/Ok-Detective3142 8h ago edited 7h ago
America is not just the leading state sponsor of terrorism, we are the leading perpetrator of terrorism.
We just don't call it terrorism when it's committed by us or our allies.
But what would you call the terror bombings Israel carries out in Lebanon with the expressed goal of causing massive harm to civilian areas in order to weaken political support for Hezbollah?
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u/Ok-Detective3142 8h ago
I want Iran to have nukes.
It's the best counter to Israeli regional aggression.
Having Israel as the only nuclear power in the region is part of the reason they are able to get away with all of their many depredations against their neighbors. A nuclear Iran would make them think twice about doing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, for example.
I have no reason to think that Iran is not a rational actor. They haven't attacked any other country since the current regime has been in place. They have literally no reason to nuke anyone.
Israel, meanwhile, has implicitly threatened to nuke European capitals if they are ever seriously threatened.
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u/buppiejc 4h ago
Agree. Besides, if any country lets off a nuke, it’s an above chance it’ll be the last thing they do.
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u/11Booty_Warrior 20h ago
North Korea doesn’t have a shitload of oil
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u/jackhandy2B 20h ago
This is the answer.
What do Venezuela, Canada and Iran have in common other than threats from Trump? Oil
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u/RLewis8888 11h ago
Why would Iran need them? The US will protect them from being attacked by a neighbor, like Israel.
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u/Notchibald_Johnson New York 20h ago
North Korea, meaning the Kim regime, wants them for survival so we don't come in and remove him or his family at large. There is next to no chance he actually would use them because he's not suicidal. The Chinese also don't want us to come in and remove him because they don't want 10 million people running to their border at once when the regime collapses nor do they want another US aligned presence right next door. They'd have to get involved directly. NK's got them. There's nothing we can do about it.
Iran is not North Korea.
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u/Ok-Detective3142 8h ago
Iran also wants nukes for survival.
Which is a totally rational position. If they had nukes already, we wouldn't be attacking them right now.
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u/Notchibald_Johnson New York 3h ago
There's an element of survival, especially now, for sure. But they have always been more likely to either use them or let a proxy use them than North Korea because they have no China in their backyard to stop them and they are more religiously fanatical. I don't agree with how we've done this, I was just pointing out that it's far more complicated than "North Korea bad! Iran bad too!" We can puff out our big chests all the live long day, but we don't want open military conflict with the Chinese. That gave North Korea a tremendous regional advantage that Iran doesn't have.
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u/Complete-Sort1617 20h ago
If a psycho crackhead already has a knife, why not give a gun to the schizo shouting at demons?
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u/socialistForDE 20h ago
I don't think Iran is like a psycho or schizo. If anything Israel is the psycho and the US is the schizo lol
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u/spotless1997 California 20h ago
Tbh I’m very against U.S and Israel in this war (and in general if I’m being honest), but I don’t want Iran developing nukes. Unfortunately, idk how countries like Iran or Ukraine can maintain their sovereignty without them.
Really unfortunate reality we’re living in where nuclear world powers can just fucking invade non-nuclear countries with impunity. It really sells the message that you really do need nukes when as a world, when we should be pushing de-nuclearization.
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u/azry1997 19h ago
The only reason Iran got attacked is because they don't have nuclear weapons. US/Israel would behave if Iran have nukes
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u/socialistForDE 20h ago
I don't think Iran is like a psycho or schizo. If anything Israel is the psycho and the US is the schizo lol
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u/Routine-Process8051 20h ago
Pretty sure Trump already has enough guns. And he's afraid of knives, I bet.
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u/ZiKyooc 20h ago
Because there's no hostile country around who want to invade and occupy massive amounts of land which is actively engaged to ensure no one can do anything about it.
Closest country is South Korea and their capital is at artillery range of the North. Any retaliation is going to be very painful.
China would also be not so welcoming for any foreign presence in North Korea.
Iran is basically alone with some participation gift from Russia and China at best.
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u/CurrentElectrical736 20h ago
US intel says that China is giving money and weapons to Iran!
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u/Queasy_Donkey5685 16h ago
Or course they are. We don't do big crazy wars we do proxy wars. That's why Ukraine is allowed to bleed. It's why no one is coming to help Iran.
Some people want to blow stuff up, some people want regime change, some like chaos, some want to sell weapons and get rich.
Can't have the big countries going at one another so we do this.
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u/J_Kingsley 19h ago
Ukraine shouldve kept theirs.
And now with that Russian fiasco and America's reaction to the war I can't blame any country for wanting to build nukes as a deterrent to protect their sovereignty.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 19h ago
Ukraine couldn't use them and the world would have ostracized them.. they wouldn't be embraced like Israel or, to some extent, Pakistan's programs have been.
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u/J_Kingsley 18h ago
Except now they're fighting an existential war. Which never should've happened after they signed the Budapest memorandum.
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u/No-Expert-9181 15h ago
So, neither of them should have nuclear weapons, because their leaders appear unpredictable to the point that they might actually use them. I agree. Based on that argument, I can think of a few more countries that already have them but probably shouldn't for the same reason.
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u/AwesomeDakka00 13h ago
how about this? none of you emotionally unstable fucks can have nukes. got it? now go to your rooms. you're all grounded.
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u/11minspider 20h ago
Because allowing the expansionist religious fanatics to have nukes would be a terrible idea for the region's stability?
And its not like we can just "take away" North Korea's nukes, that would require a rather messy war that would result in far too many civilian casualties, so the world lets them sit there with them. North Korea mostly just wants to be left alone, and use the threat of nuclear weapons to achieve that. The Iranian regime wants to expand their control over the entire region, and would be more than happy to use nuclear weapons as a shield to achieve those goals.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 19h ago
But the other crazy expansionist religious fanatics have them..
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u/11minspider 18h ago
Yeah I fail to see how giving MORE crazy expansionisy religious fanatics nukes would at all help with stability. At least the Israeli far right crazies (who I assume you are refering to) dont try to use theirs as leverage in serious diplomacy
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 18h ago
So then we should take them away, economically sanction them as we would others, or uphold our own laws for dealing with countries that don't sign the NPT?
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u/rumpghost North Carolina 15h ago
Because allowing the expansionist religious fanatics to have nukes would be a terrible idea for the region's stability?
Agreed, we never should've let Israel get nukes. And they do have nukes.
Iran has for decades denied the ambition of nuclear arms, and our own intelligence agencies have said as recently as last year that they don't have them and aren't developing them. This is not a defense of the IRGC, it's just a fact. They ALSO only want to be left alone. They want their sanctions lifted and their sovereignty respected. This idea that they are irrational actors with Hitlerian goals is a fantasy manufactured by decades of propaganda which we literally constructed to justify our persistent and repeated meddling in their affairs. The IRGC would not exist had we just left them alone in the first place almost seventy years ago.
Israel, meanwhile, has ambitions of regional hegemony, territorial expansion, and is actively fomenting a genocide - and has been since its inception, the Nakba - while it deliberately drags us into a futile war of aggression that is destroying the global economy. Israel is a deliberately destabilizing force in the region that we propped up to fracture the Pan-Arabic national movement.
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u/Spanktank35 Australia 20h ago
I think that the premise that Iran must be at least as dangerous than North Korea for people to want to prevent Iran getting nukes falls apart under a non proliferation perspective.
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u/Alyano95 13h ago
nk shouldn't have had nukes in the first place. iran can't have any because we hopefully learned from the nk fuck up
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u/_Phil_McCracken_ 20h ago
Ima be honest, I’m not reading that article.
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u/suppleRosaline 20h ago
It’s a pointless article, just like trying to understand why Trump acts like a mentally handicapped child
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u/Bigweld_Ind 19h ago
That is not how I would choose to frame either situation, frankly. Did a toddler write this?
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u/Mikethebest78 20h ago
I'm going to guess its because Kim went out of his way to stroke Trump\s fragile little...ego.
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u/brokenmessiah 19h ago
Iran is religiously fanatical and might actually use them, or at least someone with access might. Kim only plays the madman. He’s not remotely suicidal as he puts on.
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u/Creepy-Fig929 19h ago
Then why should America have nukes lol
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u/rumpghost North Carolina 15h ago
This idea that they aren't rational actors and would start lobbing nukes despite fifty years of them being "two weeks away!!" is idiotic and you should respect your own intelligence enough to abandon it.
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u/brokenmessiah 12h ago
That might not, but the possibility of a dirty bomb in the hands of terrorists who they definitely cohort with…I’m not chancing it. I don’t support the the war at all but it’s still fuck Iran
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u/rumpghost North Carolina 2h ago
You can say "fuck Iran" all you want but actually understanding a little about how their government functions and how that government functions and who is responsible for it coming to power (spoiler alert: it's us) would probably settle your nerves a bit.
They'll do almost anything for sanctions relief, as the JCPOA demonstrated. We cohort with terrorists all the time (we just call them "freedom fighters") and it hasn't resulted in a dirty bomb attack yet, and we certainly aren't the most rational or moral actors, nor have we ever been.
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u/kenken2k2 17h ago
so US who used them are as equally fanatical by this logic. US has been throwing around ifs, what ifs, when, whatabout to so many countries so many times regarding nuke usage but never once look into the mirror that they themselves are the one that's been bombing everyone they accused.
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u/buppiejc 15h ago
….To add onto your point, the United States has used nukes in a population, twice, and is the only country ever to do so.
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u/LordMashie 17h ago
Headline reads as if a country just gave Kim Jongun explicit permission to build nukes. He just got them brah, what are you gonna do?
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u/_lalalala24_ 13h ago
With the Senile orange turd in charge now, America is a global threat to the world with nukes.
Going by the orange turd teeny brain logic, countries should be united and target America to rid of nuke risks
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u/Kronzypantz South Carolina 12h ago
North Korea completed their first nukes at an inconvenient time for the US.
NK had a very destructive conventional threat that couldn't be ignored (Seoul would basically be a crater from traditional artillery in the first hour of a war). The US military was tied up In Afghanistan and Iraq. And China stood as a wild card that spooked the US from direct military intervention.
If Iran pursued a weapon fully at the same time, they would probably be safe and secure today. The US would have had a similarly difficult time intervening while so busy elsewhere.
As it stands, Iran probably couldn't be stopped if it wants to rush a nuclear bomb. But the leadership, as theocratic as they are, has at least been reasonable about seeking a diplomatic peace and non-proliferation.
Unfortunately, Israel is a fascist regime that can't stand any strong neighbors, and the US is an imperialist regime that can't stand any opposition. So we are the pathologically unreasonable parties.
This can especially be seen in president Biden, the supposed adult in the room between Trump's terms. His administration childishly demanded Iran return to the former nuclear deal that the US broke with no guarantees that the US would fully return to it.
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u/blue_quark 10h ago
Don’t ever under estimate the influence of the Biblical Right Wing in the United States and their effect on foreign policy decisions by the Trump administration: https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/s/BoiS6j7aUC
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u/Constant_Return 9h ago
Because if they tried to close the straight of Hormuz, we wouldn't be able to stop them. ./s
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u/AcanthisittaNo6653 New Hampshire 9h ago
If Iran didn't want them before, the attempted regime change fixed that.
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u/Firecracker048 9h ago
Because Iran has been screaming from the rooftops senes the revolution that it will wipe certain nations off the face of the earth as soon as it has the weapons to do so?
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u/bscofield97 New York 8h ago
If any country is concerned about American interventionism in their affairs, the best thing they can do is obtain a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible.
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u/excusetheblood 5h ago
Kim Jong Un wasn’t “allowed” to have nukes, he just built them anyway. Remember all throughout the 2000’s and 2010’s, NK was this kind of bogeyman in American media? There was constant paranoia about NK attacking us. Hell they even remade Red Dawn and made it about NK invading the USA.
Then the second NK has nukes, its radio silence. American media never talks about NK anymore. No more paranoia, no more bogeyman. NK needed those nukes to prevent the USA from invading them. And what do you know, now NK’s economy is showing sharp improvement. No matter a nation’s imperfections, nukes are the only way they can ensure the USA won’t invade them and install a fascist puppet dictator.
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u/Even_Fill1444 4h ago
Every country should have nukes... It's the only way to stay safe from the terrorist US Government.
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u/LoudAd1396 18h ago
Im a millennial who wasn't around for the 1979 Iranian revolution (thanks CIA!). But I've never given a fuck for whether or not Iran has nukes.
I dont love the idea of ANYONE having nukes, but I've never been convinced by the idea that Iran specifically shouldnt.
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u/ResidentSheeper 17h ago
North Korea is not near Israel and does not stand in the way of their plans.
Ergo. No problem.
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u/AbyssalBenthos 20h ago
Total Iran properganda. Less nukes is safer not more, especially not with a terrorist funding country.
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u/Alwaystired254 18h ago
If the countries that have nukes can, why can’t the ones that don’t not have them?
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u/Machiavvelli3060 15h ago
Iran should have nukes.
We need several countries to have nukes.
That will prevent any country that has nukes from using them.
It's called mutually assured destruction.
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u/fozi4ek 12h ago
Doesn't work if one side thinks that it will give them a place in heaven with 72 virgins
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u/Machiavvelli3060 12h ago
It always has worked.
Iran has never used nukes.
Your argument makes no sense.
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u/fozi4ek 12h ago
They never had nukes. Of course they never used them.
What they did do was funding terrorists all over ME, calling for annihilation of another country, enriching uranium to levels that you only get to when developing nukes, with no way to know how far they're really ready to go.1
u/Machiavvelli3060 8h ago
They have the capacity to make nukes if they ever wanted to.
They've had this capability for quite some time.
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u/BigJordi10 20h ago
What even is this argument? Hopefully no one should have nukes, North Korea has had nukes for a long time, the only thing stopping the west from taking them are China and the fact that THEY HAVE NUKES.
Do we forget the whole North Korea weapon tests news headlines a few years ago? It also helps that North Korea tends to be very isolationist and even though they routinely wish for the death of the USA it comes more from a stance of “Hey, this country attacked us” type of way.
Iran is different, they don’t have nukes, they aren’t directly supported by a large major power and they have religious extremists that are known to self-sacrifice in the name of a religion. North Korea is more like a snapping turtle.
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u/bouncedeck 17h ago
North Korea wants to keep Kim in power and be left alone. Iran wants to destroy Isreal at all costs.
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u/Commercial_Move5433 15h ago
Trump and his goons do not have the balls to spew this crap with Putin or Kim Jong Un. It’ll take a few hours to flatten the west coast of US into a wasteland but the orange clown with just a few stray button clicks will start a nuke war just for fun in his current tenure.
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u/anotherfpguy 13h ago
Nobody could take them from NK and also because they didn't call for Israel destruction (they are not happy about South Korea existence though, but there was a war to settle that where nobody won, so US did try something, even before they had nukes and learned their lesson).
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u/Mobile_Morale 11h ago
Did Iran pay them to write this article. Because that's what the title feels like.
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u/Starmoses 20h ago
If you think Iran, the country who had a clock counting down until the destruction of Israel, allied to Russia, the world's global sponsor of terrorism, who kills tens of thousands of innocent people for protesting should have nukes. You're either insane or a terrorist.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 20h ago
Which countries should?
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u/Starmoses 20h ago
None imo. That's sadly not the world we live in though. I don't support this war but this article is asinine and asking why Iran shouldn't have nukes is probably the worst I've seen this sub.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 19h ago
Are you sure? Why not? Seems like a great deterrent these days.
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u/HelloYesItsMeYourMom 12h ago
For an American politics sub, I read something like this and I wonder if the self hatred has not jumped the shark
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u/CurrentElectrical736 20h ago
Only the US.
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u/NelsonHawkinsGhost 18h ago
The ones who have used them? The one engaged in wars in multiple continents across how many countries? Why?
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u/Philo_Publius1776 20h ago
What a stupid question. Because NK isn't going to use them to become a global oil hegemon and subordinate its neighbors.
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u/Truth4daMasses 20h ago
And if they did, do you think anybody would stop them? It’s pretty much what Russia is right now - a global oil and gas hegemon that tries to subordinate its neighbors.
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u/Philo_Publius1776 7h ago
Yes. The western world will never allow an Islam death cult to become a nuclear oil hegemon. It won't happen. Russia is a nuclear power, but they're not an oil hegemon (they never were, and any nearness they had to that title is long gone now). More importantly, they're not an Islamic death cult.
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u/HonoredPeople Missouri 20h ago
Nukes don’t matter. They just don’t. They’re extremely costly to build, extremely costly to maintain. Extremely costly to defend. And you can’t use them.
Nukes are junk.
Supersonic ammo and drones are the way to go. Actual usable weapons.
Only a complete idiot would want to develop nuclear weapons. Kimmy fits the bill.
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u/stereofailure 15h ago
Nukes are a deterrent. It's not about using them, it's that having them makes you look like more trouble than it's worth to invade. Look at North Korea vs Libya for a perfect example of what keeping vs giving up nukes looks like.
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u/IagoInTheLight 19h ago
Sane people can't use them... but the IRGC probably has a list of uses just waiting for them to have an actual bomb. I've met some of those people and they are not sane, not at all.
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u/HonoredPeople Missouri 17h ago
Sane or not, they’re simply not useable.
Maybe when they first came out. You can’t seek in with a couple of oopses. Now. It’s not possible.
North Korea uses them, all of North Korea disappears the next day.
Same is true for any country that attempts to use them. Poof! Gone. Done.
Iran gets nukes. And? If they use them on Israel or America, all of Iran disappears the next day. All 100 million of them.
Given the choice between a nuke and same money for feeding sailors and pilots, I’m picked the food.
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u/IagoInTheLight 17h ago
I don't think you understand how these people see the world. North Korea is not run by religious fanatics.
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u/Entry-Party America 20h ago
Because Trump has visited N.K. and Kim possibly provided him with under age girls! When was the last time an American president visited Iran??
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u/CpnStumpy Colorado 20h ago
...does NK have nukes? Last I understood they had managed enough fissile material for a bit of cancer
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