Would Iran (or any other Islamic country) fire a nuclear warhead into Jerusalem and destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque?

Iran has no nuclear weapons and no ability to create them soon.

Pakistan would have no reason, there is no gain in attacking Israel.

Iran isn’t going to fire a nuclear weapon at anyone, even if they had them, and the reason why has nothing to do with any holy sites. They want nuclear weapons for the same reason that any other country does – so that no one will fuck with them. They know as well as any other nuclear nation that actually using nukes would be tantamount to suicide.

Iranians present at North Korean nuclear tests maybe they are testing by proxy.

@Call_Me_Jay And how do you know they don’t have something they managed to get their hands on? Seems like if they did, what you said is exactly what they, or anyone who is getting nuclear weapons, would want you to think.

It depend on how suicidal they wanted to be.

A couple of years ago, during the 2nd intifadah and the 2nd Gaza war, Hesbollah (from Lebanon) shot some conventional rockets from the lebanese border into Israel. That was at the same time that Hamas was shooting rockets into southern Israel from gaza.

The hesbollah rockets landed in Haifa, in various places in northern Israel, and a few near the airport.

The hamas rockets landed in various places in central and southern Israel. They didn’t do any serious damage, although they were annoying.

The important point is that neither Hesbollah nor Hamas shot rockets towards Jerusalem. Simple reason: their rockets were not all that accurate, and there was just as good a chance that the rocket explosions would have killed palestinians instead of Israelis. Or worse yet, the explosions might have hit Al Aqsa or the Dome of the Rock.

Then there would have been hell to pay.

So… to answer your question, I can’t see of a situation in which any country nukes Jerusalem, unless it was a nihilist that wants to blow up the entire Middle East.

@XOIIO
If you have nuclear weapons, you WANT the world to know.

@ragingloli

Yep. That’s the entire point of having nuclear weapons.

Unless you plan on using them for an actual strike that would be unexpected, not letting people know would be the best way to ensure that nobody has steered clear of high value targets, meaning you’d be more likely to kill more people.

The point of having nuclear weapons and advertising them widely is as a deterrent most of the time.

Actually using nuclear weapons ensures your own destruction. No one’s going to use them in a first strike capacity. Especially when you only have one or two and the folks who will be striking back have thousands.

I don’t see how this question would be discussing anything but a first strike scenario the way it has been laid out.

The question is whether they would or not. I’m discussing why they would not. If you wish to restrict the discussion only to the scenario that they would then there’s not much of a discussion to be had here.

@XOIIO @Darth_Algar The question is not about first strikes or retaliations and certain destruction, it is more a question of whether a religious group would be willing to sacrifice something that has enormous significance to them in order to further their cause and whether it actually has significance to their particular branch of Islam.

@rojo Then I think it makes it even less likely.

The only scenario where I can see Iran lobbing missiles at Israel is an American-instigated war with Iran. Just like Iraq, where Scuds were fired at Israel in a futile attempt to draw Israel into the war and make it Islam VS America and The Jews.

Now that isn’t impossible. The people who fueled the Iraq disaster are still active in the Republican party, and, as unbelievably stupid as it sounds, they do make noise about invading Iran.

But even if that happened, as @elbanditoroso mentions above, there are better targets in Israel .

And I am talking about conventional explosives. Iran has no nuclear weapons and will not have any, thanks to the agreement worked out with the US, the UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany

@rojo

Since when is Iran a religious group?

Iran is kinda a Shia theocracy.

Theocrats in power there certainly, but Iran isn’t exactly a huge extremist religious hivemind.

@Darth_Algar

True, thank you.

Persopolis is a great movie about real life in Iran, told by a woman who hates the theocrats.

Iran can be a great ally for us again if the conservatives in both countries are relegated to the fringe together where they belong.

A few years ago I use to chat pretty regularly with a dude from Iran. The majority of the population there is under 40 and, from what this guy’s said, does not share the same values as the older generations. They’ve love western music, western clothing, western media and they value social freedoms. Again, from what this guy would tell me, the authorities don’t really bother to enforce most of the religious laws in place aside from an occasional token arrest (don’t want to anger the young folks too much).

So yeah, Iran is a future ally and friend waiting to happen if we play things right.