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The United States Just Might Be Iran's Favorite New Nuclear Supplier
Lasrick writes: Nick Gillard from Project Alpha points out that for more than 3 decades, Iran has purchased goods for its nuclear program largely from the shadows. With the Framework Agreement, that will almost certainly change: "According to the US State Department, one of the agreement's provisions creates a dedicated procurement channel for Iran's nuclear program. This channel will monitor and approve, on a case-by-case basis, the supply, sale, or transfer to Iran of certain nuclear-related and dual-use materials and technology." That is terrific news for US companies, because Iran is known to covet US-made parts required for their program, most of which are "dual-use."
The obvious solution then is to nuke Iran now, before we know they have their own. Because when Iran has what they consider a sufficient number of warheads, they will start WWIII. So either way we will have to nuke Iran; may as well do it before they can kill us too.
For the record, the United States is not the problem in Peurto Rico. They've held multiple referendums about independence, statehood, etc... They continue to choose the status quo each time, by a narrow margin. We've never even had the opportunity to address statehood in Congress because they've never gotten that far, and we can't force statehood OR independence down their throats. So maybe back off on that one.
There are two problems with this idea. The first is that EMPs, like other EM phenomena, disperse via an inverse square law. Anything high enough to be line-of-site to the ground in most of the USA would need to have an enormous explosive yield (even by nuclear weapon standards). There are some designs that try to channel more energy into the EMP than normal, but they're very complex to build (a good 10-20 years more R&D beyond the Fat Man / Little Boy style bombs).
The second problem is the delivery. Iran does not have a significant ballistic missile capability. Getting something into space above the USA would require launching something in a suborbital trajectory. A very high suborbital trajectory if it were intended to explode that high up. The size of such a rocket would be such that it would be pretty hard to miss on satellite observation. The time in the air would give the US a very long time to formulate a response and destroying it would be relatively easy (remember, the problem with strategic defence shields in the cold war was not shooting down a missile, it was shooting down the large number of real and decoy rockets that the Soviet Union was capable of launching).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You do realize that Shia doctrine is that Armageddon needs to be started and the Shias driven to near annihilation for the Hidden Iman to reappear? This is why people are scared of Iran getting nukes... They *want* to be annihilated.