"Now, back to the Iran topic of the thread..."

Is no one here concerned that such an attack would cross a radiological/nuclear threshold that has remained closed since 1945? This would be regarded as WMD terrorism, were it even threatened against any but N.Korean nuclear facilities.

Iran is probably 10 years away from an operational nuclear deterrent. S. Africa came much closer, produced HEU and tested a Jericho-type IRBM, before apartheid collapsed. But no one proposed blasting tons of radioactive toxins across the African countryside.

Bourbon made a strong point above, that nuclear Israel and IRBM equipped Arabian Sunnis feel threatened by the emergence of another strong tribe. But the assertion that Iran's nuclear future is an existential threat to Israel or an imminent threat to the US is a specious casus belli for large-scale radiological warfare.

The question is not tactical, how to sequence letting the radiological war genie out of the bottle. The question is strategic, how that would end, who the winners and losers would be.