One perplexing aspect of this nuclear dilemma is how serious the religious edict in Iran against nuclear weapons was and is. It does seem genuine, on one hand, and yet on another Iran has been a rather shrewd player in arming sometimes extremist allies across the region against its enemies. I’ve heard some say that Iran hovering for years at the nuclear weapons threshold was more about winning concessions from the west. Nevertheless, from Iran’s perspective, that deliberate delay strategy might have been fatally costly given that its government’s very existence is now threatened by Israel because of a lack of a nuclear deterrent

The counter to this is that Iran could have — emphasis on could — built up such a massive ballistic missile arsenal and impenetrable latent nuclear weapons program that this in itself is almost as effective as a nuclear deterrent against Israel. The evidence of this is the unprecedented damage that their missiles have had on Israeli society and infrastructure, all of which has been reinforced by Israeli military efforts to censor the reporting on the seemingly large-scale damage of these missile barrages. Still, a functioning Iranian nuclear weapons program might have deterred this fighting from ever happening in the first place — or it could have actually led to nuclear war 🤷

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Ben Gvir is a clown. Sadly a dangerous clown with a seat at the high table.

I hear you and agree to a certain extent, but I think it’s more about psychological morale of the population. Ben Gvir, for example, just berated Israelis for watching Al Jazeera not long after being caught on camera screaming at another israeli offical who admitted they did not know the missile strikes would be so damaging

I think the censorship has more to do with the sensitivity of some of the targets rather than an attempt to save face.