Does Iran Actually Have a Nuclear Weapon? || Peter Zeihan

Everyone is talking about Iran's potential development of an active nuclear weapon. Before anyone gets too frightened at the prospect of this announcement, let me give you some food for thought.

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#iran #nukes #war

[manofsan]

@3:25 - India did not develop nukes because of Pakistan, but because India fears it otherwise can't deter nuclear-armed China. Pakistan did not have nukes when India got them, so there was no Indian fear of Pakistan in this regard.

[jkbrown]

On the other hand, Libya and Ukraine are lessons to never trust the bureaucrats in Washington in regards to assurances if you give up your nuclear weapons.

[johnfranks]

An implosion is not necessary for the manufacture of a simple type of atomic bomb. The bomb that levelled Hiroshima was a gun type device called little boy. where two quite large subcritical masses of uranium 235 were slammed together at one end of a cut off large gun barrel. This device was so simple it wasn’t even tested prior to being used.

[houseplant]

A better question would be: does Iran have good helicopters?

[Fixtor]

Didn’t expect to open a Peter Zeihan video and randomly see my city. I hope you’ll enjoy Poznań!

[chadirby]

Getting this all right for a basic nuclear weapon was extremely difficult - in 1945.
This is nearly 80 year old technology. The things they had to work very hard for are off-the-shelf tech now - everything from timing the implosion to machining the plutonium/uranium.
The only hard part is getting suitable amounts of quality fissionables, and they've been working on that for decades.
The science part? Iran has had plenty of time to hire former Soviet physicists to oversee the construction of such a device.

[manofsan]

On his recent trip to Pakistan, Iran's Raisi may have been negotiating for Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons designs (which are themselves of Chinese origin)
In exchange for some untold billions of dollars for the cash-strapped Pakistanis, the Iranians may have gotten the lower-yield nuke designs they wanted (this lets them make more of them with their available fissile material). One further clue in relation to that was the Pakistani PM's quick trip to Beijing while Raisi's visit was going on (Chinese are the ones who gave the final nod for proliferating their bomb tech)

[jazznik]

Peter, I love your work. But you say at 2:29 that if Iran demonstrates that they have "capture the power of the atom", Iran's opponents will hit them immediately to prevent them from creating a way to deliver the bomb. If this is true, why did this not happen w North Korea? Did N. Korea effectively conceal its nuclear capability and ability to deliver a bomb from us until it was too late? Or did the fact that they are seen as China's ally deter us from stopping them?

[hififlipper]

I love when Peter calls Iranians Uranians.

[Lurreable]

Sweden was very close to its own nuclear bomb in the 60's, but closed the program in part due to influence from the U.S.

[jedijc]

"I'm not afraid of the man who wants ten nuclear weapons, Colonel. I'm terrified of the man who only wants one"
(Julia Kelly, Movie, The Peace Maker 1997)!

[deviationblue]

And yesterday, their president pulled a Kobe…interested in the geopolitical fallout from this.

[robertlynn]

Nah. Fission bombs are 1940's tech, made super easy in the era of µm accurate CNC machines and high power semiconductors, and Persians are really smart. The only impediment was access to highly enriched Uranium which the Iranians for sure have in more than ample quantities now. They'll be gradually building up a stock of warheads to mate to their delivery systems with the intent of announcing once they have enough to prevent anyone wanting to risk a knock-out strike against them.

[jasonblack]

The pipes in the back made me chuckle. Like, there's this lowkey patriotic-sounding music in the back and he's going on about nukes 😂

[currawong]

Saudi Arabia has a deal with Pakistan regarding nukes. They just have not called it in yet.

[behroozkhaleghirad]

Iranian here: you are neglecting an interesting scenario: We know that Iran and NK have had close military ties for decades. Some Iranian missiles (Shahab-3, for instance) can carry nuclear warheads, and these missiles are copies/improvements of NK missiles. NK does have nuclear weapons and, from time to time, tests long-range ballistic missiles and sometimes carries out nuclear warhead detonation underground. Who can say for sure that at least some of these tests are not conducted for Iran, at the presence of Iranian scientists, and even maybe a few of these warheads are actually made in Iran, transported to NK and then tested there? Maybe that goes for the longer-ranged missiles too (so that Iran's claims about limiting the range of their missiles to 2000 km doesn't turn into a lie).

[melvin]

I believe Iran can build a nuclear weapon and it’s scary. Some of the things Peter said is inaccurate simply because countries like India and Pakistan build nuclear weapons with limited budget and expertise and still managed to build one. India build nukes because there was a threat from china. Subsequently Pakistan build nukes because of the threat from India. It was a security chain reaction(Google the timelines you’ll know). So Iran maybe closer to build one so we should not get ahead of ourselves.

[charliedontsurf]

So I can think of about 50, 000 people in Hiroshima who would disagree that a nuke needs to be complex. Apartheid South Africa had a half dozen of the gun type bomb that they gave up when it was clear the ANC was coming to power.

I do agree how comical that “Iran is 6 months from the bomb” for 25 years. It’s like how every election is “the most important election of our lifetime.”

[adiwidjonarko]

Just the man i was looking for given the Iran helicopter incident

[bruh]

Actually, you only *need* an implosion-type bomb if you use plutonium because uranium is capable of supporting a long enough chain reaction to reach critical mass without an implosion-type bomb. That's why little boy was a canon-type design.