Israel, Palestine and Iran (and Lebanon)

[OutByEaster?]

The worrying thing about the effectiveness of the Iron dome is that it won't take very long for the likes of Iran to realise that it's very difficult to kill Jewish people in Israel, but perhaps easier in London, New York, Singapore, Moscow etc.

[colhint]

I don't know much about nuclear weapons, I understand the principle of splitting the atom, but how do they work. Is it on impact or some time mechanism. Either way other than submersible attacks, it seems to me at least the intended target can quickly be neutralized. If I am correct and I really don't know is Iran's threat to Israel somewhat limited.

[OutByEaster?]

The EU: "The dangerous cycle of attacks and retaliation risks spiralling out of control. An immediate ceasefire across the region is needed."

Netanyahu ten minutes later: "They will understand. We will stand by the rule we established: whoever attacks us, we will attack him."

Nothing to worry about here.

[AJG23]

2 hours ago, Tayls said:

I’m confused as to why Israel wants to pick a fight with Iran, as well as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Palestine… surely they can’t handle that? 

Iran uses proxies against Israel for the most part in this conflict. 
 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict

The Iran–Israel proxy conflict, also known as the Iran–Israel proxy war or Iran–Israel Cold War, is an ongoing proxy conflict between Iran and Israel. In the Israeli–Lebanese conflict, Iran has supported Lebanese Shia militias, most notably Hezbollah. In the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Iran has backed Palestinian groups such as Hamas. Israel has supported Iranian rebels, such as the People's Mujahedin of Iran, conducted airstrikes against Iranian allies in Syria and assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists. In 2018 Israeli forces directly attacked Iranian forces in Syria.

Edited 2 hours ago by AJG23

[Mozzavfc]

43 minutes ago, colhint said:

I don't know much about nuclear weapons, I understand the principle of splitting the atom, but how do they work. Is it on impact or some time mechanism. Either way other than submersible attacks, it seems to me at least the intended target can quickly be neutralized. If I am correct and I really don't know is Iran's threat to Israel somewhat limited.

Nuclear bombs in general (and especially hydrogen-boosted weapons as most modern strategic warheads are) only go off under certain very specific conditions. They are not just lumps of explosive, they are relatively complicated machines engineered to explode in a very particular way. Something that destroys them from the outside doesn't create the necessary conditions for them to detonate. You would get some amount of explosion from the chemical explosives that are part of the detonation sequence and a bit of radiation but no nuclear explosion.

Shooting them down is difficult primarily because the missiles are relatively small and move very fast, and some probably have stealth technology to make them harder to target. It's just straight-up really hard to shoot something of that size moving at that speed.

[Nor-Cal Villan]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

The worrying thing about the effectiveness of the Iron dome is that it won't take very long for the likes of Iran to realise that it's very difficult to kill Jewish people in Israel, but perhaps easier in London, New York, Singapore, Moscow etc.

Buenos Aires 

[pas5898]

I wonder how long it will take for individuals on here to portray Iran as innocent victims in all this, when Israel inevitably retaliate? 
 

[Chindie]

1 hour ago, colhint said:

I don't know much about nuclear weapons, I understand the principle of splitting the atom, but how do they work. Is it on impact or some time mechanism. Either way other than submersible attacks, it seems to me at least the intended target can quickly be neutralized. If I am correct and I really don't know is Iran's threat to Israel somewhat limited.

Nuclear bombs are extremely complicated. For them to work a series of processes needs to happen precisely. It's quite possible for a perfectly well made high end nuclear weapon to completely fail because 1 tiny mechanism or process is wrong. This is part of the reason why developing them is so difficult - it's an extremely complicated device that requires extremely high end materials and the highest level of expertise to create. A nuclear weapon 'dropped' without it being properly triggered isn't going to do anything, other than be a localised hazard because the nuclear material is a radiation risk. A nuclear weapon intercepted and destroyed would essentially create an airborne dirty bomb, which is just the spreading of the radioactive elements through the conventional explosion.

That's easier said than done though. Intercepting missiles isn't easy and it gets harder the faster and more advanced they are - if you're going to invest in a nuke you're probably going to put in the effort to make the delivery vehicle as advanced as possible 

It should be said that Iran probably doesn't have a nuclear weapon. They're almost certainly now developing one, because why wouldn't they? Trump putting them firmly back in the cold took away most of their reasoning to not bother, a move Israel actually was happy about because they essentially want Iran to be completely impotent and they like the self fulfilling prophecy of Iran becoming an open threat to justify that position. A nuclear weapon is Iran's ultimate '**** off' option, with it they rebalance the Middle East towards their position and have a big stick everyone must listen to.

[meregreen]

2 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

The worrying thing about the effectiveness of the Iron dome is that it won't take very long for the likes of Iran to realise that it's very difficult to kill Jewish people in Israel, but perhaps easier in London, New York, Singapore, Moscow etc.

That would be a very short route to getting nuked.