The Iranium Reaction: When Does All-Out War over Iran's Nuclear Weapons Begin?

Palestinians flee Khan Younis in Gaza, August 16, 2024. Photograph: Anadolu

We’ve heard for decades that Iran is just a year from having a nuclear bomb. Subterfuge and nuclear pacts may have slowed that advance down, but with no sanctions left in place for a few years now and extremely limited inspections, Iran should have already gotten there. Word on the street this weekend was that Iran is now just two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.

We might want to take that with a grain of salt, given all the past words that went unfulfilled; however, it seems likely to me that, by now, they probably are just weeks away, given how intensely they obviously want nuclear weapons to have pushed it this hard for this long at such cost to the nation. So, could these reports increase the likelihood of a major war between Iran and Israel now that things are so close to all-out war between them anyway as a means for bringing a final military solution to Iran’s nuclear threat?...

Here is the latest on Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon:

Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant has told US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin,

Time is running out…. Now is the time to realize the commitment of American administrations over the years to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.

The UN’s nuclear regulator agency agrees on the timing.

The director general of the UN’s nuclear agency has reiterated that the brutal Islamic regime of Iran has “never been closer” to developing a nuclear weapon, an achievement that may be just “weeks” away, the Jerusalem Post reports.

So does the chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Program at Georgia Institute of Technology:

“It is, of course, a huge concern,” Biegalski said. “They are clearly staging themselves to reach their goal in one or two weeks without having any significant international sanctions against them….”

The race to the finish line now focuses, not on getting enough weapons-grade enriched uranium, which Bielgalski says they already have more than enough of, but in the final stroke of perfecting a detonation device:

The globally renowned US-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has warned that Iran is spending massive academic research resources on nuclear bomb detonation, the Jerusalem Post reports.

So much for the lie that they were enriching uranium solely for medicinal purposes. That claim was always ludicrous because no medicine requires the high level of enrichment that Iran was already known to be performing.

During an interview with the JPost on Wednesday, ISIS president David Albright said: “If you look at Iranian ‘academic’ studies related to computer modeling, their capabilities are quite significant and relevant to working on codes and simulations that you would need to perform to weaponize a nuclear bomb.”

Sitting on the cusp of major war

So, if Iran does launch a major reprisal against Israel in the event that Gaza cease-fire talks fail—as it has promised it will do—will that reprisal over the recent assassination by Israel on Iranian soil be the Iranian reaction that tips the balance for the US and Israel and perhaps other Western allies to decide its time to wipe out the nuclear threat in Iran once and for all?

How close to D-day will Israel and the West let Iran get if they are given an excuse for all-out military destruction/seizure of Iran’s nuclear facilities now by a major Iranian incursion into Israel? Have Israel’s assassinations inside Iran been intended to provoke that kind of response from Iran in order to galvanize Israel’s allies into finally doing away with Iran’s nuclear threats because they know Iran is now only weeks away from having the power to annihilate Israel, as it has often threatened to do?

Foreign Minister Israel Katz said earlier Friday in a joint meeting with his British and French counterparts that he expected support in “attacking significant targets” inside Iran if the Islamic Republic strikes Israel.

A Western attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear power, of course, is fraught with its own enormous perils because you cannot just blow nuclear reactors up or nuclear weapons storage sites without creating nuclear catastrophes in the process. You likely need to seize them and perform a lengthy shutdown, and how do you do that while under fire from Iran’s own military? Does clearing Iran’s military out of the way mean regime change?

Elsewhere on the warring globe

Putin’s invasion has suddenly taken quite an unexpected turn against him. Ukraine, has now cut off the exit routes from an area inside of Russia that it has seized, which are also Russia’s only resupply lines in that area, intending to keep Russia’s military from returning to the Ukraine front and to entrap those particular forces inside of Russia and destroy them as Ukraine seizes that land, claiming it will keep taking more until Russia returns Ukraine’s invaded lands.

The potential encirclement of its forces in the area adds another challenge to a Russian Army caught off guard by Ukraine’s startling incursion over the border on Aug. 6. The operation has injected a new sense of optimism to Ukrainian forces that had been backpedaling for months elsewhere along the front line.

The retail apocalypse

Speaking of apocalyptic events (and getting back to our main economic themes), how is that retail apocalypse in the US coming along?

Well, if you look at store closures in the US last year, the landscape shows a broad sweep of destruction:

The devastating losses this year are about to become even more systemic as Macy’s, one of the largest remaining mall anchors in the nation, ramps up its closer speed with another 150 stores set to go down.

Neiman Marcus and JCPenney have both filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and fellow chain Sears now has only a dozen stores across the country - after boasting over 4,000 stores as recently as 2012.

As a result of these major closures, which Macy’s will be piling on top of,

The number of malls has already fallen by nearly half to 593 in the last eight years, according to NBC business, but those that have survived are already showing the shape of things to come.

And the retail apocalypse that I started warning about more than half a decade ago, just keeps on spreading destruction.

In some areas it has been creative destruction, forcing positive changes. Some malls have been able to survive by repurposing themselves into large entertainment centers with bowling allies, movie theaters, laser tag, arcades, breweries and bars and a lot more restaurants. Some others have converted into housing. Some have become warehouses, such as Amazon fulfillment centers, and one even just became a hockey training center. However, many are just boarded up and rotting because no one wants to invest the money to repurpose them as their locations have become less ideal under America’s changing demographics now that fewer people work outside their homes and some have moved aways from cities.

So, the sundown of brick-and-mortar retail has been every bit as horrendous as I said half a decade ago it would become over time, but the ability of dinosaurs to adapt and fill in with other purposes has gone better than I expected, though many areas have been left devastated because loss of an anchor store or two meant loss of the mall, and loss of the mall meant loss of business to everyone around the mall.

It’s a mixed story of adaptation during an apocalyptic period and extinction.

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