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Lumifer comments on Open Thread, Jul. 13 - Jul. 19, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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How do you know?
For example.
I am not impressed by the opinion of this guy, mostly because he states obviously false things as if they were facts. Notably:
"A handful of bombs doesn’t help as long as Iran is surrounded by bombs". That is not true at all, a nuclear weapon is a highly useful deterrent, especially against conventional attacks. Ask Kim Jong-un about it.
"Iran would cease to exist only twenty minutes after having carried out a nuclear attack on Israel". Is there any evidence that the US stands ready to launch a nuclear attack (in 20 minutes!) against a country that would drop a nuke on Israel? Not to mention that the way Iran is likely to nuke Israel is via their Hezbollah proxy.
The whole strawman premise there seems to be that Iran wants to do some kind of nuclear-brinkmanship new Cold War with the US. This is utter nonsense, of course. Iran does want nuclear weapons, but not for launching at the US.
Whether or not the US is willing to launch nukes, Israel has submaries that carry nuclear weapons and that likely would retaliate with them in case Israel get's nuked.
Not "has", but "is in the process of acquiring". I suspect that has much to do with the nuclear weapons that Iran does not want and is not building X-/
Besides, the easiest way to nuke Israel looks like this: a rusty freighter under the Panamian flag arrives into Tel Aviv. One minute after it docks, Tel Aviv is a radioactive crater. That's all the information you have -- what next, do you order a nuclear launch on Tehran? On which basis?
And, of course, a few nukes will not make a large country like Iran "cease to exist". Look at Japan.
Yes,and think what happens to economic investment in Tel Aviv if people in a nuclear-armed Iran hint that they might do this.
Israel has at least 3 submaries capable of carrying nuclear weapons: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/israel-deploys-nuclear-weapons-on-german-submarines-a-836671.html
I would guess that Israel has protocols for direct nuclear answers.
There are the old Dolphins and the new Dolphins, they are very different. It is the new Dolphins which are supposed to have the second-strike nuclear capability and Israel just got the first one in the series. See e.g. here.
I am sure it has. But the situation when you tracked a long-range bomber from Iranian airspace and that bomber dropped a nuke is very different from the situation when a nuke just exploded in a city and you have no idea how that happened or who is responsible.
Especially if Iran announces that should we be hit in retaliation, we will use all of our (remaining) nuclear weapons.
NTI cites a 1999 Jane's report saying that the old Dolphins carried nuclear missiles. (And the 1999 ship may well have been specified in 1989.)
Maybe. There is very little reliable information about Israeli Popeye missile variants which are the cruise missiles that the Dolphins are presumably equipped with. Specifically no one knows whether they are capable of delivering a nuclear warhead over a 600+ miles range (the distance from the Mediterranean to Tehran).
OK, if you want to express doubt about whether Israel has nuclear missiles, fine, whatever. But a minute ago, you were claiming that nuclear missiles distinguished the old from the new Dolphins. According to my NTI link they have the same diameter missile tubes. It doesn't matter if the Popeye turbo goes farther than the Popeye. They all fit on the old Dolphins.
Israel has its own very sophisticated nuclear arsenal. US participation would not be needed.
I was under the impression that the true deterrent there was hardened and decentralized conventional artillery able to do significant damage to Seoul, since we're pretty sure North Korean nukes will work as well as their cure for MERS, Ebola, and AIDS.
Ideally you want multiple deterrents, of course.
As to the chances of the nuke working, well, you gotta ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk? X-/
Edited to add: We are discussing here whether Iran wants nukes. Therefore what is relevant is that the Kims wanted nukes, even though they had the artillery-can-reach-Seoul deterrent already.