All this talk of Iran hitting Israel, carrier battle groups etc is nonsense.
The whole point of nuclear weapons is as a deterrent. No point having them if nobody knows you have them.
It's a defensive weapon!

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are joining the chat….

I don't know about that. If you were about to be hit by 10 B-2 bombers carrying bunker-buster munitions, you might think otherwise. Use it now or lose it.

Lots of things would be different if a nation possessed nukes, the Malvinas would still be under the argies control. Had Libya not given up on WMD, Gaddafi might still be around and of course Ukraine war quite possibly wouldn’t have happened. I understand the reasoning.

As far as Iran is concerned, if Trump is going to do it, then my bet would be at the end of Ramadan - so sometime before next Tuesday or Wednesday if he is really going to do it. If it goes the same way of the tariffs though, then the US attack will be on again, off again and on again and the poor old journalists inadvertently added to the latest chat group won’t know which headline to prepare.

In all seriousness, if it happens, I think it will be in the next few days.

Would the attack on Pearl Harbour have happened if the USA had nuclear weapons in 1941?

The only time nukes have been used in anger wasn’t defensive in nature.

It was a horrible calculation that had to be made but the figures at the time suggested 150k dead against probably 1 million more dead if the war continued. In that regard, it is semantics what you choose to call it but it certainly put a full stop to the war and has acted as a deterrence against further use of nuclear weapons to this day. So, maybe tactically it was an attack but strategically it was very defensive. Wise heads prevailed then though. Nowadays I worry about what is going to happen tomorrow or even later today.

The very interesting thing I read somewhere recently (I will try to find the reference) was that the Japanese were secretly attempting to open back channel war ending negotiations with the US immediately prior to the bombs being dropped. And the US knew that - having decrypted cypher messages. There was an implication (I think it might have been in the Oppenheimer biography) that atom bombing Japan would be proof of the technology working.

I don’t buy that. The technology worked as demonstrated by Trinity. The USS Indianapolis sat in port with the nuclear components onboard until dispatched only because Trinity was successful. The Japanese didn’t surrender even after two nukes, three days apart devastated their cities. They waited an additional six days after Nagasaki to surrender, the Russian declaration of war may have made the end even more obvious. I’ve seen the same reports pushed by those who believed the nukes weren’t needed as they play the role of revisionary historians.

Back to Iran, as others have pointed out, just because they may have the ability to make a few nukes now, having a workable delivery system is everything..and anyway, i have always seen nukes as a threat, or a bargaining chip, rather than anything that would actually be used.

Even the most die hard members of the IRGC know that if Iran uses a nuke on anything belonging to the USA, then its game over for them..I don't see anyone rushing to Iran's aid in that case...

To stay on topic - what are the US up to at the moment

Edit - to add the question

Is there anywhere to track what US assets are being flown into Diego Garcia?

Well, Diego Garcia is closed to non US aircraft until May 1st I believe. It could be a thinly disguised warning from Trump to Iran or it could be Trump doing what he did with the tariffs and playing 'We will/won't/will/won't attack Iran' games. If US is going to attack Iran, my money would be on early next week just after the end of Ramadan while Iran celebrates Hari Raya. It would show maximum disrespect by USA for Iran and that is something that Trump would probably get a kick out of.

You're not in the Signal chat? Good grief.

There you go ...




I should have just searched

Would the US have used them if they knew Japan could hit say, New York or Los Angeles with a retaliatory nuclear strike?
To get back on to Iran, if they already have the weapon, are they going to just hide it waiting for an attack? Why would they use it as a first strike weapon, knowing that a response would be swift and devastating?
If they have the weapon, they are going to make sure everyone knows it. If there has been a successful test, like North Korea (allegedly) we would have heard about it.
In conclusion, they don't have any sort of nuclear capability....yet.
Its possible the US has Intel that they are close. We shall see.

Didn’t the Trinity test prove that the technology worked?

It's quite a stretch to believe that the Roosevelt and then Truman Administrations would have been receptive to diplomatic overtures such as you have described, with the sounds of Tokyo Rose still reverberating in the Pacific Theater and the casualties of island- hopping still searing the public mind, right next to the Death March and Divine Wind (kamikaze).

Though I didn't read it completely, perhaps your source is Hiroshima: The World's Bomb (Andrew Rotter 2008)? The book's opening chapter(s) recount the development of aviation from its earliest and, iirc, the nexus of that development to efforts to build an atomic weapon.

Question for the class: what is the point of having stealth bombers and then telling people where you are moving them to?
Isn't their being unseen and undetected until the bombs fall part of their unique capability?

So is it just a provocation by America?

I recall during Desert Storm, that the B52 missions from Fairford were flight planned, with all the FIR crossing times displayed, even the Iraqi ones!
So the time on target times could be calculated to within a few minutes..
..A good job there wasnt FR24 and the internet in 1991!