Chirag

"...you cannot unlearn what you've learned..." IAEA's ⁦@rafaelmgrossi⁩ explains the UN's view on the sophisticated state of Iran's nuclear capabilities now v 2015 JCPOA-era program, & his view that bombing alone won't destroy nuclear capabilities. ⁦@FaceTheNation⁩

HOW TO END THE IRAN WAR, by Edward Luttwak (@ELuttwak) Since October 2023, Iran has launched more than 1,000 ballistic missiles against Israel — and many more against its Gulf Arab neighbours. It has also launched thousands of drones, sending more than 1,500 towards the United Arab Emirates alone. How did the Islamic Republic accumulate such vast inventories of expensive weapons? And expensive they are: drones would only be cheap, as the media keeps claiming, if their number were not so large, while ballistic missiles are necessarily expensive because of their size. Iranian Shahab-3 missiles weigh 16 tonnes, while Korramshahrs come in at 25. Just as with any other feat of accumulation, this too is the result of disciplined persistence. In the regime’s case, that meant allocating Iran's limited foreign-currency earnings to what really mattered: not waterworks against desertification, not gas pipelines to bring cheap gas to the cities, not desalination plants to overcome water shortages even in Tehran, but rather the production of very large numbers of long-range missiles to attack Israel and other countries. This enormous industrial effort has been underway for years, yet it was greatly accelerated by the transfer of $1.7 billion to Iran by the Obama administration. Officially, this was merely an overdue refund for cancelled military orders dating back to the time of the Shah. But the payment's first instalment — $400 million in stacked banknotes — was sent on 17 January, 2016. This just happened to coincide with the release of several Americans from Iranian captivity, and the coming into effect of Obama’s grand diplomatic achievement: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Read more below ⬇️ buff.ly/Veq9RW9