> Nuclear weapons are a MAD red line that will result in total annihilation of the attacker. They are only useful in a defensive capacity.
Also in a "if I'm going down, everyone else is going down with me", which is Ian's strategy in this war (for good reasons). If the IRGC had nukes, and was severely threatened (like, killing the Supreme Leader and threatening to kill all of the replacements until they bend to the US/Israel will), they might have decided to go out "with style".
Yes, but the whole point of having nukes as a deterrent is that the US wouldn't have arbitrarily killed their leader in the first place. "If i'm going down, everyone else is going down" is the feature, not a bug.
To be clear I don't like the idea of MAD one bit. But this is indeed how it's meant to work.
Nothing geopolitical about it in the sense I intended, except as a reference to the Vietnam-era catchphrase. It's simply a case of "putting spyware on everybody's corporate PC for security is like fucking for virginity".
I think it’s possible they already have nukes and want to wait for Israel to over extend themselves so that they can use them for a first strike with maximum efficacy. They’ve done a lot for Russia. The idea that they don’t have nuclear armament is somewhat hard for me to believe.
This kind of aggression, however, does seem to make their value as a deterrent clear.
Observe how nobody is fucking with North Korea like they did with Iraq or Venezuela.