Submitted via IRC for boru
Israel appeared to confirm claims that it was behind a cyber-attack on Iran's main nuclear facility on Sunday, which Tehran's nuclear energy chief described as an act of terrorism that warranted a response against its perpetrators.
The apparent attack took place hours after officials at the Natanz reactor restarted spinning advanced centrifuges that could speed up the production of enriched uranium, in what had been billed as a pivotal moment in the country's nuclear programme.
As Iranian authorities scrambled to deal with a large-scale blackout at Natanz, which the country's Atomic Energy Agency acknowledged had damaged the electricity grid at the site, the Israeli defence chief, Aviv Kochavi, said the country's "operations in the Middle East are not hidden from the eyes of the enemy".
Israel imposed no censorship restrictions on coverage as it had often done after similar previous incidents and the apparent attack was widely covered by Israeli media. Public radio took the unusual step of claiming that the Mossad intelligence agency had played a central role.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:19AM (10 children)
Basically, while some Iranians chant "Death to Israel" like the QAnons talk about The Wall, it is Israel that is assassinating scientists in Iran and doing sabotage.
Let's just say, for a kids analogy, if you have someone that is all talk and only talk, with maybe trying to prod some friends to go punch someone else, that kid would be called Iran.
And then you have that kid that says "don't fuck with me" and to answer the all talk guy, they go and set the car on fire in Iran's driveway and kill their dog .... that would be Israel.
So now, who that police should be worried about here? In case of our weird world, it's the all talk Iran is the trouble maker while the kid that sets fires to not their property and kills things, that's a role model....
In reality, Israel wants to derail the nuclear agreement. At this point, it's kind of asinine for Iran NOT to get nukes and fast. They seem to be the only way Iran can remain safe. Sad sad state of affairs but that is the state of international lawlessness we live in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:31AM (1 child)
Your argument is interesting, but I'm waiting for experts in the field (like Ethanol Fueled) to weigh in before I makeup my mind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:39AM
But if they could pull off something like this, where is the strike on Ethanol_fueled? Unless, he is one? Another Jonathon Pollard, in the unmaking?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:32AM (4 children)
The problem is that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, they will probably be used. Israel is too arrogant and too used to getting away with shit like sabotage and assassinating other countries scientists. Any attempt to call them out on it is answered with "But, Hitler".
They won't give up the attacks, and at some point they are going to off someone close to someone who can launch a nuke. At that point it's goodbye Tel Aviv.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @11:02AM (1 child)
I don't know. I would assume the Paki+Indian nukes are more likely to get used. Remember when Clinton (you know, the president Clinton) was on the phone with leaders of Pakistan and India trying to explain that nuclear war was NOT in their interest?? At the time, both sides thought it would be good to nuke the other and 'win'. Also there is the idiots in North Korea.
Reality is that Iran hasn't invaded anything for a very long time and are not going to. And another reality is that nuclear weapons are the most useless weapons -- you can't use them without basically committing suicide these days. On the other hand, Israel can no longer prod Iran if Iran had nukes. You can't launch a an existential war with a nuclear weapon state because you'll probably get something blown up in return.
So, I'm not worried about Iran having nukes. I'm worried that if Iran has nukes, then the MBS and Qatari and the rest of the elitist feudal lord system in the region will want nukes too, and fast. The entire region would go nuclear and then it becomes a rather delicate situation for everyone, including Israel. This is why it's so stupid for Israel to try to kill the nuclear deal. Israel will push everyone in the region to make nukes through their own actions.
It is what it is. After Sharon was 'taken care of', Israel is on their ultra-nationalist streak with a crazy as a leader. It's crazy like American politics, but in Hebrew.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:38PM
I believe you're referring to the assassination of Yitzak Rabin, not Ariel Sharon (who was incapacitated while PM by illness, but replaced by the also fairly left-wing Ehud Olmert). And yes, the guy who killed Rabin got everything he wanted from that, which was no peace.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 14 2021, @11:23AM (1 child)
Why would they be more likely to use them than anybody else? They know what would happen if they launched: Goodbye Tehran.
The point of getting nukes is that if you get nukes, especially nukes that can travel a long way, the US stops considering attacking you, at least conventionally. The North Koreans learned that a long time ago. The Pakistanis learned it more recently. Whereas if you don't have nukes, but do have a valuable resource like oil, you can end up on the US target list whether or not you've done anything recently that would generally annoy them (see: Iraq).
Something worth mentioning here: Israeli PM and bribe recipient Bibi Netanyahu is on the record spouting a conspiracy theory that says that Hitler wasn't really a bad guy, and wouldn't have wanted to kill all the Jews had a Palestinian guy not convinced him to do so. His government, and the Israeli right wing in general, now is more-or-less officially of the mindset that actual Nazis were just misunderstood, but anyone who studied the Holocaust and concluded "genocide is always wrong, and yes that includes Israeli efforts to eliminate the Palestinians is wrong too" is anti-Semitic.
My favorite example of this: A member of the US House correctly pointed out that legislators in the US House Foreign Policy Committee shouldn't have to sign a pledge of loyalty to Israel in order to end up on that committee, because Israel isn't the US and where those country's interests diverge US legislators should be loyal to the US. And then correctly pointed out that AIPAC existed and had political influence, and that's one reason that pledge existed. At which point, AIPAC used its influence to demand and get the censure of that member of the US House.
Also, there's every reason to think the Israelis have had nukes for a long time, probably getting them or at least the tech to make them from the US. We don't know for sure, because Israel is one of the handful of countries that hasn't signed any nuclear weapons treaty.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:19PM
The accepted story of WWII is nearly 100% propaganda by those that won. This is expected, and is the right of the victors: to write history as they see fit. But, don't for a second think that it went down according to the history book story. That treaty was fucked up, crimes against humanity were being perpetrated against germans in poland, and the bolsheviks really were mostly jews; jews from the german idealism school of philosophy that really believed communism could work. Hitler knew a war was coming. He should have just waited 5 years for his scientists to develop nuclear weapons. Too big of a megalomaniac to do that.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:38AM (1 child)
Iran is the second biggest sponsor of terrorism in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and it is only the threat of reprisal that keeps them in check. Hezbollah is an unofficial arm of the Iranian military in exactly the same way that the Crimean 'militia' is really Russian Army.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:34PM
That is, of course, so long as we treat military attacks on civilians as "terrorism" as not-terrorism. If we did that, the USA would probably be right up there as a state sponsor of terrorism in the region.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Friday May 21 2021, @01:00AM
Israel has carried sabotage, assassinations and bombardments in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran but little known is the fact that is has also attacked the U.S. [wikipedia.org] [1] and killed 34 serviceman and wounded 171 others. Any other country had done that, the U.S. would have declared war immediately so the “but Hitler” argument holds.
Funny thing, the “but Hitler” argument has never worked for the Gypsies even though they were persecuted and exterminated as much as Jews.
See how it is called an "incident" and not an attack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:25AM (4 children)
To be perfectly clear, I don't blame the Iranians for wanting nukes. It is in their own national interest to get them. It just isn't in anyone else's interest that they do.
The west is playing the same stupid game with Iran that gave North Korea the bomb and these enrichment centrifuges are a critical step down that road.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:37AM (3 children)
The argument for Iran having nukes is the USA 2nd Amendment on a larger scale.
I think every country should have about 20 nukes on ICBMs that can travel at least 20,000 km. Make every country immune to external attack, after all "an armed league of nations is a polite league of nations".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:42AM
Until you get someone like the Bi-Dung in charge of the nukes.
One world government would be ok if it wasn't run by a bunch of corrupt idiots. We need to be decentralzing power, not centralizing it further.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:44AM
Nuclear weapons are the international equivalent of throwing grenades in an enclosed space.
(Score: 2) by srobert on Friday May 21 2021, @12:45AM
Your argument reminds me of an observation that Carl Sagan put forth during the arms race. I'll paraphrase it here:
You and I are standing in a room filled with gasoline up to our knees. I have 7 matches. You have 5 matches. And instead cooperating to extricate ourselves from this peril, we're arguing about who has the most matches.