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I've often wondered and worried about this.

It's easy to be anti using nukes against another nuclear power that can completely destroy your country in retaliation (e.g. Russia), it's not so common when the enemy is a non-nuclear power who your simulations show would defeat you in a conventional war leaving you humiliated, weakened, and looking both for the whole world.

In such a situation it's obvious the option there if you'd lose in a conventional war is to deploy nuclear weapons. When you're the US you already have far too many of them for deterrence needs, they're decaying, after Ukraine your credibility is in question and nuking a smaller power that can't do the same back would send a message to the whole world: it doesn't matter if we can't defeat you conventionally, if our interests demand it we will obliterate you using nuclear weapons to maintain our empire and hegemony.

It won't cow China or Russia, it will cause them to build up even more capabilities and become alarmed but both already are to some degree by US saber rattling and actions in Ukraine as well as talk of actions in the SCS. But it doesn't have to, the point then is it cows smaller regional powers to not dare to challenge the US, to know there is ZERO HOPE, (hope has been killed so to speak) of resisting if the US deems there to be a strong enough imperative. That you either bend over and submit at our sanctions or you pray you're not important enough to war over because if the US goes to war and you're important enough and you start defeating them, they'll just nuke you. That's the message it sends. That you cannot win against the US unless you're a nuclear power and to nuclear powers it signals the US may be run by mad men who would even use nukes against them knowing they might be destroyed in the counter-attack.

For some countries becoming a nuclear power is possible but not for most. It's a time-consuming and expensive process to not only develop multiple, dozens of nuclear warheads but the capability to deliver them as payback intercontinentally to the US via ICBMs. It's also a process you cannot hide and once the US knows they might be tempted to nuke you to stop you from getting any further to say nothing of sanctioning and blockading you as they have done with the DPRK.

The thing is, what was stopping this from being done before was the US image, the propaganda narrative of this liberal/progressive shining city on a hill type place contrasted against "authoritarian" "dictatorships" of bad-places(tm), that it would look incredibly bad. But with Trump they've made a turn, no more of that, no more DEI, traditional values, traditional values and so on. Naked strength. And this I think is tied back to Ukraine, which was the moment they learned all that work, all that propaganda wasn't enough to get the global south on their side at which point some faction (which I believe has power now) said basically well we need to revert to the old ways of hard power and intimidation and open gangsterism then, hence allowing Musk to tear down the edifices of this old way of trying to shape the world, to bulldoze them in favor of this new policy, this new naked oppression and power.

More than that I'm afraid that Russia's constant threats of having to use their nuclear weapons against the west if they got directly involved, of outlining a policy where if a defeat is imminent they reserve the right to use them IF such a defeat was in a war of strategic importance necessary to the survival of the nation. I'm afraid their successful usage of this has only emboldened US planners to think and plan along similar lines and logic, the precedent is there so to speak for them. For the US defeat in any war against an important regional power like Iran would be a danger to the survival of their nation-empire so under this rational they could easily justify it using this kind of thinking. The west will never miss a beat to weaponize the desperation of a weaker country (Russia compared to US+NATO) to advance the conversation, the window of the acceptable in their interests.

And it makes sense from a cold calculating point of view. Most countries are not nuclear powers, those that are will not intervene and get in a direct war with the US to protect non-nuclear power countries who are not immediate neighbors and vital to security and interests (e.g. Vietnam and Korea for China, Ukraine, Georgia for Russia).

I honestly worry about Yemen, compared to Iran that at least has some strategic importance to Russia and some economic importance to China in the B&R, who would be outraged on any grounds but moral ones if Yemen was nuked by the US or the zionists? Not many major powers and it would be awfully tempting to make an example of them, perhaps even to use it to send a message to Iran before hitting them with nuclear weapons that they're serious and will use them.

Fact is also the US and the zionist entity smell blood in the water. Iran has been routed, they are on the back foot and have suffered major strategic defeats. Their influence and power is at a multi-decade low. They've lost Syria and Assad, Hezbollah is dazed and somewhat weakened with Lebanon pounded and their supply lines through Syria now cut meaning Hezbollah is weakened after being decapitated. Hamas can't be in a great position, there's a question I'd say of how much ammunition and weaponry they may still have for a prolonged war and sad as it is to say the zionist entity has basically won the battle, they've won US support to take and colonize parts of Gaza, they've destroyed large parts of it, they're trying to squeeze out the remaining Palestinians and I have doubts the Sunni Muslims in the region actually would do anything but some protests and flag burnings, nothing to topple the US regimes that rule them or cause the US to think twice in other words.

So the US wants to inflict the final blow on Iran and lock down hegemony and control of west Asia as part of an ability to cut off the belt and road, to encircle and blockade China as well as control that vital crossroads. Trump would accept their fealty, their subjugation to the US, their renunciation of ties with China, their pledge of obedience to the zionist entity, their in other words removal from the chessboard as an impediment to US control of the region.