Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
Israel, Iran Exchange Missile Fire
Israel and Iran are in a bizarre aerial war, trading missile barrages and hoping for the best when they launch them. Each is incrediblyh useful to the other. Rather than focus on the fact that their economies are in need of help, that their kids need better education, job opportunities and some kind of future, they get to distract with the bogeyman down the block. Now that their cold war has heated up again, there is a sense that this is going to go on for a while because of the internal politics of each. If this were merely a matter of geopolitical power politics, an accommodation is possible. The beauty of the current situation for each regime is that the other does not want an accommodation any more than they do.
Thanks to its Iron Dome and web of Arab and European supporters, Israel is getting the better of this one. The idea of the Netanyahu government has been to destroy the Iranian nuclear research program to ensure that the ayatollahs do not build an atomic bomb. If the regime collapses, that is a bonus. Israel is threatened by Iranian proxies like Hezbollah, and if Iran cannot supply them, those threats become less scary.
The ayatollahs have built a nice little terror empire for themselves that is slowly falling apart. Iran used to be able to use Syria, Lebanon and much of Iraq as its playground. When the Assad regime fell in Syria, this was all disrupted. It was like the British loss of India writ small. Once the crown jewel was gone, the rest had little reason to stick around. Hezbollah receives a fraction of what they used to get because trans-shipment is so difficult now.
Meanwhile on the diplomatic front, there is Donald Trump convinced that he can sort this out in a matter of minutes, his usual modus operandi. Having already failed to bring peace to Ukraine and Russia, he is hell-bent on fixing this so he can get a Nobel Prize like President Obama had. His pettiness knows no bounds.
Iran claims that it needs to be able to enrich uranium for its nuclear power and medicine needs. One is certain that there are some withing the regime that would like to enrich uranium to weapons grade.levels. This requires a little udnerstanding of the enrichment process.
Enrichment just means concentration. U235, the fissile isotope of uranium, is about 0.711% of all uranium on Earth, its natural concentration level. For running a power plant, 3-5% is needed. That means enrichment gets rid of the nonfissile isotopes to increase the proportion of U235 in the sample. For medical purposes, enrichment to 20% or so in necessary. Weapons-grade stuff requires 80-90% purity. The trick is that once one can reach 20% there are no real engineering issues in going to weapons grade uranium.
It is for that reason that the Trump administration, and the Netanyahu government, want no enrichment at all for Iran. That is not in keeping with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which guarantees nuclear access to all nations. Not that Iran cares because it has begun the withdrawal process.
The fact is that nuclear weapons require two things to make a city go away. One is sufficient U235 to make it go boom`. The other is the will to use it. Removing the will to use it is as effective, or more so, than limiting enrichment.
Once again, the leaderships in both nations benefit from having the other around and acting in a hostile manner. Without the external threats, both would have to address the failings of their misrule. This is not about to end, and it could become worse.
© Copyright 2025 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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