Why do some countries feel they’re entitled to hold nuclear weapons and others can’t?

[Changingplace]

Considering the USA is the only country ever to have used a nuclear weapon on war, why do some countries consider themselves entitled to them and others not?

Especially considering the more recent instability of the US, much as I might not agree with the politics of countries who don’t hold them/are stopped from developing them, surely they’re within their rights to be able to defend themselves in the same way as anyone else?

Thing is now Iran is highly likely to try and get nukes through some backdoor and who can blame them? Ukraine has paid the price right in front of our eyes.
So this idiocy of Netenyahu’s regime has probably simply spurred a situation that could likely have been contained otherwise.

What would have happened if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons?

Would Russia have invaded?
Then what - Ukraine fires at Russia, Russia fires back..

At what point would the UK ever use its weapons if we were attacked conventionally?

Looking at the precedent so far, Russia would likely have invaded some other country and not Ukraine.
And that plays well for the Irani regime due to the current state that Iranis find themselves in.
All thanks to the buffoon corrupt regimes currently settled in Washington and Tel Aviv.

@cakeorwine Absolutely. 1984- Ukraine agrees to hand over its nuclear warheads to Russia (!), in exchange for "security assurances" from US, UK and ... Russia. 2014- Putin decides that actually, the Crimea is actually part of Russia and always has been, and invades Ukraine.

I think after that, you'll never get a country that has nuclear weapons to give them up, unfortunately.

Obviously, the world would be better if they didn't exist, but they do. Allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons would be madness IMO, not just for Israel, but for the whole of the middle east, and indeed Iran itself. I would like Khamenei to have access to nuclear weapons even less than I would like the Taliban to have them, if only because I think it would be unlikely they would be able to maintain them or get them to work.

I don’t believe we can stop Iran now, short of physically invading the place. I mean Israel initiated this attack and they cannot back off.
So what I suspect will happen is Iranis pretending to be following all rules and availing themselves a nice nuke or two from the back channels via their supporters.

i do not think it is a question of if now. Only a question of when. And this is all murderous Netanyahu’s doing (as well as his half-wit supporter that is unfortunately the current U.S. president).

Also, physically invading Iran is not possible for either USA or Israel. As they say, Irani terrain is Afghanistan on steroid and I would not want even one drop of British blood spilled for Trump and Israel’s ambitions.

No one should have them but many do and there isn't a chance in hell they'll give them up.

The fewer countries with nuclear capability the better.

The nuclear warheads nowadays are 5/10 times more powerful than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It's terrifying.

Bring back CND!

Ban the Bomb!

That’s a different thing to the thread though. I can’t stand Starmer’s boots on the ground planes in the air rhetoric. It’s largely nonsense for polling, although I notice he’s given up photo ops lately on that front.

But on the question of the thread should we just let anyone have nuclear weapons I’d say no. The threat is too great to the U.K. I feel concerned when there’s many posts on mn re Iran having those weapons.

totally agree with this.
No new countries should be allowed to have them and anyone suspected of having them, such as Israel, should be thoroughly investigated and made to give them up. From there on, the next steps should be to strip the rest all at the same time (some utopia land I am living in I know!). But that is at least it should work in theory.

With these types of mega-nukes, Iran attacking Israel will literally obliterate the whole country and then its neighbours, and Israel attacking Iran will impact Pakistani regions, which is a nuclear power itself so will likely react with equal force.
It is just madness all around that Netenyahu and Trump have started with this attack, making sure Iranians now buy it via some back door. I hope the MAGA are happy now.

I really hope not, I have friends here in the UK who are Iranians who fled the country because of Khamenei and his IRGC henchmen. If the Iranian regime does get hold of them, then god help the ordinary Iranians, frankly. The North Koreans have been suffering for decades because the Kims got nuclear weapons which has left them in an unchallengeable position.

I get why people hate Netanyahu and the Israeli government, but they are not the only ones who will suffer if Khamenei gets nuclear weapons.

I think you're assuming that the Iranian regime has the support of the Iranian people. Obviously, I have biases because I have Iranian friends who had to claim asylum in the UK, but I haven't seen any evidence that the Iranian government has support or much popularity.

This is what we assumed about Afghanistan, didn’t we?
It will be a classic case of FAFO just as we eventually did in Afghanistan. Tell me again who is in charge in Afghanistan today and how many British soldiers were killed or maimed in that god forsaken war we fought for the U.S.?

Irani terrain is more complicated and far less tribal.
Also, their oil is a huge incentive for other players to intervene. Iran is most definitely not producing the weapons it is currently using. Who is supplying it all to them?
Who is supplying weapons to Israel? Back to my question thread: whose military industrial complex is reaping the benefits of this madness and why are Lockheed Martin shares up?

You don’t get why people ‘hate’ Netenyahu?
I probably hate my very most neighbour who I have to live with, I also ‘hate’ Coldplay.
I certainly don’t just hate Netenyahu’s regime. They are war criminals committing genocide. The word hate does not begin to cover what they have done.
And probably that is why they initiated this attack: they realised how much support they had lost so wanted to open a new frontier to distract people.

Did you read the article? Did you see the bit about how the author is totally against the destruction of Gaza by Israel? And the bit about how the Iranian nuclear threat is also a threat to ordinary Iranians?

This one:
Hang on, are you saying that Iran ISN'T trying to manufacture nuclear weapons?
Back on page 2, so you can go and find the context.

You also ignored my remark about skating close to the blood libel.

The situation is completely different to Afghanistan. The average Iranian is not particularly religious. The educational standards are far higher, and many people do not want to live in a country run by fundamrntalist despots. I'm on my phone and unfortunately too useless to add links to my posts, but please google some of the sites run by Iranian dissidents. Young Iranian women get arrested for not wearing hijab, and then are raped and murdered in custody. Peaceful protesters are accused of being terrorists, have no way of defending themselves in court, and are hanged in prison.

The Iranian government is a terrible, despotic regime that murders its own citizens. Please don't fall into the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" trap .

I'm not suggesting there is going to be some miraculous uprising resulting in immediate democracy in Iran btw. Despots can be at their most dangerous when they feel weak. And, bluntly, Khamenei is in his eighties and I doubt he would want to go down in history as the man who let a strictly Islamic country be handed over to what he considers to be the enemies of Islam (despite the vast majority being Muslim themselves).

Sorry for missing this. I don’t think I know enough yet to say for sure if they were or weren’t.
What we now know for sure is that this is top of their shopping list now.

You misread my post, I said that I do get why you hate him, not that I don't.

I am not falling into any trap, including the one that says regime changes lead to all things rainbows. The last time West induced a regime change in Iran, the long term result was this current regime precisely, replacing a democratically elected PM. Same in Afghanistan where precisely how many times we have tried to introduce a regime change?

Also, how can anything induced by the actions of war criminals such as Netenyahu’s regime be a good thing? How often do leopards change their spots?

Thank you for this post. I hope people read it and do as you recommend.

Khamenei is hardly the issue here. The issue is Israel taking a unilateral decision to attack Iran right when the world was beginning to demand them to handover Netenyahu and his cronies to the ICC.

Again, whose weapons are being sold? Who is making money off of all this? Whose land grab is now going unnoticed? And how can we trust their intentions when they have well and truly shown how inhuman they really are?

It's difficult for me to address your points because you seem to be replying to things I haven't said.

Sorry for the typo! I understood your point.
My point stands though: hate is a small word for what Israelite regime has done in Palestine. Hate is a very small word for it.

I still don't think this thread has answered the basic question - why do some countries feel entitled to hold nuclear weapons but they don't think that others should have them?

We can talk about specific countries - but what about the general question.

What is the point of a nuclear weapon and what power do countries with nuclear weapons have over those who don't have them?