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@ Peter Todd
2025-06-15 23:22:31
Probably the most effective thing Iran could do right now to "win" – assuming they do not in fact have nukes – would be to load hot nuclear material onto their ballistic missiles to create dirty bombs. If they're lucky, neighboring countries will recind their support in allowing Israel to shoot down missiles in their airspace. And the radiation contamination could be an effective weapon even on the missiles that get intercepted. If their lucky, the ensuing mess might be enough to horrify the world into pressuring Israel to negotiate some bullshit peace agreement.
Of course, it's probably too late to actually do this. Unless you have people willing to die, handling nuclear material hot enough to be a real threat is very challenging. And Israel has already killed off most if not all of Iran's top nuclear scientists. And finally, dirty bombs really aren't that effective as it's hard to get something dangerous enough to actually be effective rather than a mere psychological threat.
But... Iran's regime is in deep trouble right now and is highly likely to utterly lose this. So dirty bombs may be the best of bad options for them.