Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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That's not how anybody in the world has ever behaved with nuclear weapons.
How do you know Israel made "back-channel threats" about nuclear strikes? If they actually had, why wouldn't Iran immediately go running to Russia for protection? If they went public with evidence of such a thing, international support for Israel's war effort would likely evaporate, including from the US. Nuclear powers as a rule basically never do that because it could easily set off a chain of events exactly like that.
Historically, rival states which both have nuclear weapons become extremely cautious about provoking each other. See India and Pakistan. In every such case, both nations become terrified of doing anything that could conceivably escalate to a nuclear exchange. No set of nations has ever dared see mutual possession of nuclear weapons as an excuse to attack each other harder.
You know, except for Russia. And the United States. And India. And Pakistan. And China. And North Korea. And France.
Well three days after that is when the Russian military flights carrying unspecified cargo started flying into Iran, so maybe they did.
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