Welcome again to everybody, and happy anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam . Make yourself at home and pay your respects to Ho Chi Minh. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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The US and Iran have been doing this dance of negotiated symbolic strikes and retaliations for at least 10 years now. It’s a testament to Iran’s security that they have never considered those strikes an existential threat until now. They could let the US walk away with some domestic PR victory while securing their diplomatic goals like they’ve done every time. The fact that they’re not doing that indicates that it no longer seems like a safe bet, and I think it’s fair to assume the very recent example of Maduro being kidnapped mid-negotiation is a really bad look for the US foreign delegation.
Those two claims are dubious, there’s lots of satellite imagery of the facilities for both enrichment and stockpiling, and there’s no evidence that they’re actually that close to nuclear warheads, which aren’t even a red line in their negotiations.
It caused the death of some 3000 people according to Iran’s official lists and forced them to turn off the internet in many large cities across the country. I wouldn’t call that almost no damage.
Edit:
Image of the enrichment sites, in case anyone wants them for whatever reason.