Historic U.S.-Iran nuclear deal could be taking shape

[politicus]

Rather a glum perspective :/

Worldwide disarmament is not an impossibility. In fact it's increasingly vital, and the rouge states (including, regrettably, my own country) that still insist on keeping WMD's are increasingly embarrassing and dangerous.

I think the loathing between Israel and Iran is pretty much mutual, to be fair to the Iranians.

Britain is such a pinko country..

Whether Iran loathing Israel is a widespread popular sentiment or an ideological belief among the ruling elite is hard to verify.

[politicus]

Rather a glum perspective :/

Worldwide disarmament is not an impossibility. In fact it's increasingly vital, and the rouge states (including, regrettably, my own country) that still insist on keeping WMD's are increasingly embarrassing and dangerous.

I think the loathing between Israel and Iran is pretty much mutual, to be fair to the iranians.

Problem is, there's always going to be one country that's the last to disarm. In the global power scene, that's likely to be either Russia or China - which spells a rather grim future for hundreds of millions of people in their power sphere.

I think the status quo of carefully maintained stockpiles of nukes among superpowers is pretty sustainable, because all the superpowers have an interest in their own survival. The thing that really caused things to unravel is the nuke trade, which led to less stable countries like North Korea, and active enemies like Pakistan and India, getting nukes.

India and Pakistan balance each other nicely. It would be bizarre if a billion+ country should not have nukes - and if India has them, Pakistan needs them too.

Israeli nukes is a vital security guarantee for a country with far stronger enemies.

[politicus]

Also, Israeli politicians have alluded to a desire for genocide against Palestinians on multiple occasions. Does that make their possession of nukes less legitimate?

Which politicians? Far right nutjobs do not count in this context.

[politicus]

States without nukes, that once had nukes or nuclear programs but gave them up through diplomacy:

Pre-2003 Iraq
Pre-2011 Libya
Pre-2014 Ukraine

The idea that Iraq and Libya had nukes is not really backed up by hard evidence.

[politicus]

Everyone and their mothers had a nuclear programme at one time. Frickin Sweden had one.

Sweden was much closer to getting the bomb than Libya or Iraq ever were. In 1965 the technicians at Foa (defence research department) only needed political acceptance and 10 kilogramme of plutonium. They had everything else ready.

In all likelyhood the US decided to cover Sweden under it's nuclear umbrella in 1964 and they dropped it afterwards. That year Sweden began a sudden expansion of air bases and runways were extended to receive large strategic bombers. The connection fitting on the fuel lines from the flying refill planes was changed to NATO standard and US intelligence reports (which had previously warned against Sweden's nuclear weapons program) began to downplay the risk.

It is somewhat interesting that Palme accepted to become dependent on US nuclear protection, but there was a growing anti-nuclear sentiment in the population.

Most of the remaining Swedish plutonium was shipped to Britain in 1972 (after they had conducted thorough test series), but until then they had the capacity to relaunch the programme fairly quickly. They still kept a small "spare supply" of plutonium to 2012.

Sweden had a high technical level, ample supply of uranium and a non-war damaged industry + nukes was their only chance against the Soviets, so it was not an unreasonable idea. Sweden actually needed nukes more than Britain.