Block 6
For the past few decades, Iran has been working to achieve nuclear material, enriched enough to be used in a nuclear weapon. Now, Iran has only been enriching uranium to 3.67% as of 2019, this grade of uranium is only put to use in nuclear power plants(Iran has a single Nuclear Power plant) and is permitted by the non-proliferation act. Then at a fairly rapid pace, in 2019, Iran started enriching its uranium past the 3.67%, and quickly by the end of 2021 had amounts of uranium enriched at 60%, the standard minimum percentage to be used in a weapon is 20%. With this all in mind, just in the past 2 days, 83.7% enriched uranium was discovered in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear facility. This raises tensions between the west and Iran to an increased level as all threats to Iran are blown off.
Tensions between the west and Iran have been growing exponentially over the past 4 decades, starting off with the Iraq-Iran wars and the damage caused to the U.S including a “rogue” Iranian pilot nearly sinking the USS Stark, then to the first major funding in the nuclear program in Iran and Iran’s 2015 false promises of discontinuing their R&D of creating weaponized nuclear weapons. Now reaching nearly 84% in early 2023 shows Iran will likely continue to pour budget money into their nuclear program, and keep limiting the internal welfare budgets, which the lack of internal public improvement, bringing the riots seen in Iran for the past few years. With all of the above in mind, the Iranian nuclear program has become an annoyance for western nations, and a serious threat to Israel. In addition to the Iranian nuclear program, it has been known for a while that Iran has been supplying Russia with weapons to use in Ukraine, and although the resistance is just another Friday in the west, the threat to Israel grows stronger every day, and the end of the Fridays is not in sight and has an ever fueled flow.
Translating the tensions between the west and Iran into bigger picture ideas, this tension is mostly made up of geopolitical wars to get control over certain groups in certain areas and just the overall threat to Israel and eastern European nations as a result of Iran being able to weaponize fissile material. In the mind of the U.S government, Iran continues to grow, and has had no significant enough setbacks, especially as Iran has found a few ways to avert the effectivity of U.S sanctions.
This map obviously able to change as Iran continues to grow is relations with assets in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria as it continues to create its sort of land crescent of allies/possible unofficial territories. Although practically impossible in the Gaza Strip and Yemen, Iran already has a foothold in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.