Could Trump’s Attack on Iran Start a Nuclear War?
In 1983, nuclear explosions devastated my hometown, Kansas City, Missouri, in the made-for-TV film The Day After. The movie frightened me when I first watched it circa 2000. Not so dated that the mind couldn’t compensate, inky mushroom clouds spliced with real nuclear test footage still proved frightening. But the sight of charred bodies and noise of frantic Geiger counters were not as effective as watching places from my ordinary life burn beyond my ability to recognize them.
Here we are again. A serious political event has occurred, renewing my lifelong fascination with the conundrum of the atomic bomb. How might this recent offense provoke a limited, or worse, full-scale nuclear war? What would that look like today, forty-two years after The Day After, and more importantly, to whom?
In case you missed it,
Trump says bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities this weekend was a “spectacular military success,” adding Iran’s nuclear facilities were “totally obliterated.” He believes a handful of bunker busters finished off Iran’s nuclear capabilities. As if he can bomb an idea out of existence. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
CNN says that even before Sunday’s strike, “voices inside the Islamic Republic have been calling for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against exactly this kind of overwhelming attack.”
The Iranian government likely wants nuclear weapons for the same reason nine other countries possess them. Nuclear arms make one a formidable adversary, a true force to be reckoned with. Few know this better than our own government, which built the first atomic bomb in a paranoid race against a supposed German counterpart. The United States enjoyed its nuclear supremacy for four short years. In 1949, the Soviet Union detonated their own bomb (a crude reproduction of the American device—allegedly, courtesy of the Rosenbergs). Thus began the Arms Race, and if Sunday proves anything, it’s that many are still in the running, especially Iran.
“It is possible that U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, coupled with Israel’s sustained bombing of Iranian political and economic targets, could cause the Iranian government to collapse, or agree to President Donald Trump’s demand for ‘unconditional surrender.’
But it is more likely that Iran could race to build nuclear weapons.”
Tensions are higher than usual
MSNBC estimates that Iran possesses enough uranium to build ten bomb cores. Such weapons need not be the state-of-the-art kind of hydrogen bombs in the US’ arsenal. The first atom bomb dropped on civilians in 1945 simply fired one chunk of unstable uranium into another, and boom. Just two percent of that bomb’s uranium underwent fission. .7 kgs (~1.5 lbs) of U-235 was all it took to incinerate Hiroshima in a 15-kiloton fireball. Someone could easily smuggle a similar-strength rudimentary bomb in a suitcase, car trunk, etc., into a major American city, and boom.
Tom Clancy wrote about this exact scenario in The Sum of All Fears, which got made into a film. Ben Affleck was in it. You know, before.
Iran could also detonate a nuclear weapon on their own testing grounds as a show of force. The US Army considered a similar tactic in 1945, but President Harry Truman wanted results. Eighty years later, we are all still dealing with the fallout. Tensions are rising as the Iranian government decides how it will respond to Trump’s attacks. While construction of the bomb may have briefly been hindered, media outlets assume the process has been driven deeper underground.
In the meantime, the captive populations of both nations await signs of further escalation. Iran may close the Strait of Hormuz, threatening world oil supplies. They may launch attacks on any US troops already on the ground there. Terrorist cells could take an interest in US targets. Furthermore, the attack could aggravate Iran’s allies, spur weapons development in other terrified countries. NATO might intervene, get Europe involved, and before we know it, we’re back on the dead-end road to Mutually Assured Destruction.
Who’s afraid of nuclear war? The thin line separating forecast from fate
This is how the Arms Race starts up again: somebody gets cocky, and the world pays for their arrogance. Since 1945, ours has been a hostage situation, and eighty years of holding humanity at nuclear gunpoint could end in squeezing the trigger. If you live in a major city, near a military base, industrial center or energy plant, odds are there’s a missile pointed at you.
That does not mean you are the one in imminent danger. Articles about the reality of our nuclear situation become fear-mongering when they fail to emphasize that point. Regarding who’s next in line to suffer most from this current conflict, civilian Americans are bringing up the rear. Most English-speaking films about nuclear war burn half their runtime building up to the attack scene because the conflict must first escalate to that point. Meanwhile, thousands if not millions suffer. How many people become collateral damage while we go about our lives at home?
RELATED: The 5 Best Ways to Prepare for World War 3
The Day After burst my impervious American bubble with nuclear missiles directly to the nation’s heartland. This film, as well as its British counterpart Threads (1984), brought the consequences of a countervalue strike into the home. The final step and most extreme response, countervalue differs from counterforce by striking not military but civilian targets. “The targeting of cities with nuclear weapons…are the requirements for mutually assured destruction and make up the core of the theory of deterrence.” (Samuels, 2005). Or, as Carl Sagan put it, “The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.”
Right now, the globe’s nuclear nations remain in a standoff. Anything can happen. But how every piece of fiction about nuclear war ends—and what they get right—is that eventually, the chickens come home to roost.
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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