> Would the world be safer (or more endangered) if Iran had a nuclear weapon

Is there any chance this invasion has ~anything to do with Iran having nuclear weapons?

The point the OP is making is not about the justification used by the US Admin, but instead a point about how when a country has nuclear weapons, they are typically not invaded, because you risk those weapons being used. NK developed a weapon and has some degree of safety from direct invasion.

NK is safe from invasion because of conventional artillery pointed at Seoul.

That's why they were able to develop nuclear weapons in the first place.

Israel has been invaded multiple times while having nuclear weapons.

Ukraine has invaded Russia here and there during the war even though Russia has nuclear weapons.

The argument is weak, because in general the countries that have nuclear weapons wouldn't be invaded even if nuclear weapons did not exist.

Since it developed nuclear weapons, Israel has never been invaded by a foreign country. Israel launched the 1967 war, and in 1973, Egypt only attacked occupied Egyptian territory. Same for Syria.

that's trying to move the goalposts. You are trying to make it a moral argument while the argument is a practical one.

It shouldn't matter if a country's territory is occupied or not if nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent.

The fact that the 1973 war only occurred in Egyptian and Syrian territory actually had a major impact on how other other countries reacted to it.

Even the US - Israel's main backer - basically treated Egyptian and Syrian war aims as legitimate.

There is a widespread belief that Israel would have used nuclear weapons if the Syrians and Egyptians had broken through to Israeli territory, and that this was one of the major American motivations for resupplying the Israelis during the war.

You moved the goal posts, at least on what I inferred the point to be. Nothing is an “ultimate deterrent” to war.

Does October 7th count?

Edited my post above to clarify that I do not believe Iran has WMD.

However, there is now messaging (on social media and on the NYT) from the US far right about how Iran has WMD. Take us back to 2003...

Obviously yes in the form that the comment you replied to refers to--US would be much more careful stringing a country with nuclear weapons. So while the invasion may not be caused by proximity it can be allowed bc Iran doesn't have one.

That doesn't make sense for America to care about this much, given that Iran has no way to deliver nuclear weapons to it.

Nor does Iran have nuclear weapons.

Are we really back in "trust me they have WMDs" territory? How many times we gonna fall for this?

> That doesn't make sense for America to care about this much, given that Iran has no way to deliver nuclear weapons to it.

A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could also threaten U.S. bases and warships in the area. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.

> Are we really back in "trust me they have WMDs" territory?

Irrespective of everything else going on, it’s well established that Iran has a nuclear program in the advanced stages of development. There was a whole UN program around inspecting it.

> A nuclear armed Iran could hold oil and gas shipments in the Straight of Hormuz hostage indefinitely. It could threaten regional allies with a nuclear attack.

Personally, I don't care about the profit margins of oil and gas companies, and I will vote against any politician that partakes in sending my fellow citizens to die for the profit margins of oil and gas companies.

I also don't particularly care about the plight of regional allies, particularly ones that have a bizarre tendency to constantly poke the bears around them.

If you talk to your Asian and South Asian colleagues, the broadly held view among a lot of foreign "non aligned" nuclear countries is that Iran's regime is dumb and stupid because they didn't go nuclear first and instead tried to use it to squeeze the west by threatening to get nukes. The smarter states like India and China sprinted towards getting nukes before forcing the West to the negotiating table.

The middle eastern states are somewhat unique (and perhaps this is what inspired the end of history Western convergence school of thought in the late 90s geopolitical theory) in that they cannot survive without trade/exchange with the West. Your Asian powers like India/Pakistan/China/DPRK are all perfectly happy to be isolationist states to pursue autarchy and nuclear freedom but all of the middle eastern countries (including those like Syria/Libya) want to cosy up and trade with the West instead of going full autarchy. My theory is that it's because they are stuck in the oil resource trap and its just too easy to print money with oil than having to work and innovate.

Then again Iran is fractured internally, there's a lot of traitors within selling out the country to foreign powers. If you have Persian colleagues, ask them about the Iranian "Mossad jokes". They have a lot of funny jokes about the regime and Israeli intelligence.

The world and its countries are only a safe place as long as the US believes no one is doing anything remotely against "American Interests" or they are doing enough to promote "American Interests".

In this century, excluding Nukes (in most cases), no other reason comes even close.

It's much simpler than that. North American oil is suddenly worth twice as much. Plus it gives an excuse to allow Russia to sell some oil on legitimate markets.

> North American oil is suddenly worth twice as much

That doesn't make up for the tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of American capex at risk in the Gulf, for example Exxon's tens of billions of dollars of capex in Qatar's LNG supply chain or Chevron's monopoly as the sole upstream producer in Kuwait and the KSA.

Any potential profit they could have made from North American extraction (which itself is questionable due to the significant processing requirements for North American crude) would itself have been eaten away by losses that have already been incurred in the Gulf.

The ONG industry has very low net margins (around 4% for integrated ONG), which means any shock is catastrophic, let alone a crisis such as the current one.

> Would the world be safer (or more endangered) if Iran had a nuclear weapon?

No. The fanatic muslims in charge of the government in Iran are already targeting civilians (not military bases) in UAE, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, etc.

Can you imagine if they had nukes?

> Would the world be safer (or more endangered) if Iran had a nuclear weapon

A nuclear Iran would mean a nuclear KSA, UAE, Qatar, Turkiye, Egypt, and Oman.

We literally had a war between two nuclear armed states barely 1 year ago (India-Pakistan) [0], and a standoff [1] that almost became a war [2] between two other nuclear armed states (India-China) barely 5 years ago. Additionally Iran and Pakistan had a border conflict barely 1 years ago [3] as well that also almost spiraled

The world is already crazy enough as it is - more states with nuclear capabilities would dramatically increase the risk of an actual nuclear war.

Edit:

> Not sure if North Korea is a good example, but is that not a detente? Bad for the NK people, but not a geopolitical crisis.

The PRC has committed to denuclearizing North Korea [4] in order to unlock a trilateral FTA between the PRC, SK, and Japan, which led NK to become closer to Russia in order to build second strike capabilities against both the US as well as China.

At some point, this will force SK and Japan to seriously consider going nuclear, which incentivizes Taiwan and potentially even the Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam to join the scramble - and would cross multiple red lines for the PRC.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_China%E2%80%...

[2] - https://theprint.in/defence/nearing-breaking-point-gen-narav...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Iran%E2%80%93Pakistan_con...

[4] - https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/53131

And the conflicts fizzled out because both parties remembered that the other also has a WMD? That was my point above.

Nope.

India-Pakistan only ended because the US and the Gulf intervened after India struck PAF Nur Khan which is located barely a couple hundred feet from the Pakistani Army's GHQ as a warning about decapitation strike capabilities after Pakistan launched Fatah-IIs.

India and China didn't go to war because Gen Naravanne unilaterally decided against firing artillery at Chinese positions in Rechin La and Russia intervened to mediate between China and India.

MAD is truly mad. What can happen will eventually happen, and the more countries have nuclear capabilities, the harder it becomes to push back against their use, becuase at some point someone will decide to press the button.

Nor does it actually reduce conflict - it instead incentivizes proxy conflicts between states, as can be seen with Myanmar (India and China both meddling), Afghanistan (India and Pakistan both meddling), Syria (Russia versus NATO+), Libya (Russia versus NATO+), etc.

> Would the world be safer (or more endangered) if Iran had a nuclear weapon?

No.

> Not sure if North Korea is a good example

It's not in an instructive way. Iran has killed thousands of people outside its borders, directly (e.g. the AMIA bombing [1]) and through its proxies. If we exclude South Koreans, Pyongyang has killed maybe half a dozen people, and those were under Kim Il Sung (the Rangoon bombing in '83 and Korean Air Flight 858 in '87).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing