Call of Duty co-founder claims Activision pushed to make a game about Iran invading Israel

[Endymio]

Netanyahu has been claiming immanent [sic] Iranian nukes since the 90s. There are videos of him holding a cartoon bomb during a speeches [sic] to the UN and US.

YET said nuke never arrived...

Because the US and Israel have taken continual and persistent efforts to slow Iran's advancement. The Stuxnet virus was just one of many such efforts: it destroyed the vast majority of Iran's centrifuges and set them back years. Years later, an Israeli operation killed their head nuclear weapons scientist.

BTW, despite your mention of "the 90s", Netanyahu's appearance before the UN came in 2009. That appearance led to the signing of the JPOA, where Iran purported to halt these efforts. However, in 2018, the disclosure of papers stolen from Iran's archives demonstrated the regime was again working on the bomb -- this time in secret, deep-underground facilities.

Iran's political and religious leader of 36 years had publicly stated his religious beliefs were against nukes.

60% enriched uranium is useless for anything but nuclear weapons. Plutonium-producing reactors are useless for anything but nuclear weapons. Secret enrichment facilities -- deeply buried to prevent attack -- capable of producing HEU are necessary only for nuclear weapons.

Iran literally admitted when it signed the JPOA that it was abandoning its efforts to become a nuclear state.

March 2025, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard presented the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment to Congress: The Intelligence Community continues to assess that Iran is not currently building a nuclear weapon

Gabbard also noted this:

"...Iran's decision-making apparatus. Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons....."

 

[LordVile95]

Wrong on both counts. Iran has 488 kg enriched to 60%. Furthermore, from a perspective of time and unit-cycles expended, 60% enrichment is nearly all the work required to reach 90%. Iran didn't stop because they were having difficulties, but simply because they hoped to not provoke an attack on them.

And have you seen this?

Nor is 90% a hard requirement. Theoretically, any enrichment to the point capable of supporting a chain reaction can explode: it just requires exponentially more fissile material. On a practical basis, enrichment beyond 35% enables the creation of a crude working bomb.

Nope, you’ll just get a fizzle at best. The issue is getting it to go prompt critical which you won’t get at 35%. There’s not enough U235 for neutrons to reliably hit and cascade.

Any competent physics graduate can build a working nuclear bomb, given an adequate supply of HEU. It is, though, admittedly difficult to build a device compact and resilient enough to be mounted on a ballistic missile -- which is why it's so important to stop Iran from reaching that point.

Again nope. They might understand the theory of fission but don’t have the surrounding knowledge to actually build the thing. It’s not as simple as pack a ball of weapons grade fissile material into a container and pack it with C4.

Please, not the banal "dirty bomb" nonsense again. The only thing these weapons are good for is in frightening those ignorant of radiological basics -- NOT in doing any actual damage or killing people.

You don’t think a sufficient quantity of Cobalt 60 spread over a populated area would cause significant issue?

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Because the US and Israel have taken continual and persistent efforts to slow Iran's advancement. The Stuxnet virus was just one of many such efforts: it destroyed the vast majority of Iran's centrifuges and set them back years. Years later, an Israeli operation killed their head nuclear weapons scientist.

Yes Israel has wanted to destroy Iran for a long time. It's only recently that they got enough blackmail influence to pull us into a full scale war for them.

BTW, despite your mention of "the 90s", Netanyahu's appearance before the UN came in 2009. That appearance led to the signing of the JPOA, where Iran purported to halt these efforts. However, in 2018, the disclosure of papers stolen from Iran's archives demonstrated the regime was again working on the bomb -- this time in secret, deep-underground facilities.

Netanyahu had additional visits to the UN and MANY to the US to congress and presidents, but yes only some of them had cartoon bombs. But lets focus on the least important part of the argument.

60% enriched uranium is useless for anything but nuclear weapons. Plutonium-producing reactors are useless for anything but nuclear weapons. Secret enrichment facilities -- deeply buried to prevent attack -- capable of producing HEU are necessary only for nuclear weapons.

Iran literally admitted when it signed the JPOA that it was abandoning its efforts to become a nuclear state.

Gabbard also noted this:

"...Iran's decision-making apparatus. Iran's enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons....."

It's worth pointing out that when Libya agreed to completely abandon nukes we overthrew their country and when N Korea got nukes we left them alone. (and they promptly used those nukes and oh wait. nope only used a deterrent like every other country).

So we have established that you would be stupid to not at least have the threat of nukes. Brilliant policy decision by Obama. But of course Israel didn't like Libya either.

 

[Endymio]

Netanyahu had additional visits to the UN and MANY to the US to congress and presidents, but yes only some of them had cartoon bombs. But lets focus on the least important part of the argument.

The relevant part of the argument is your attempt to conflate where Iran's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs were in 1999 with where they were one month ago.

Oh -- still waiting for you to explain why, if Iran wasn't attempting to build nuclear weapons, why was it refining weapons-grade material ... useless for anything but a bomb.

It's worth pointing out that when Libya agreed to completely abandon nukes we overthrew their country

You mean when Obama stated he could legally start a war against Libya because he -- and he alone -- determined that Libya constituted "a threat to the security of the United States"? Funny how there was no Leftist furor over his remarks then.

...and when N Korea got nukes we left them alone.

That's a fair point. The difference is, by then, North Korea already possessed weapons of mass destruction -- 42,000 heavy artillery guns, all of them in range of Seoul, and capable of destroying the city within an hour or less. We had no effective means to prevent them. With Iran, we acted before it reached that point.