Does South Africa have nukes?
Edit: as in, do we think they do.
We're the only country, AFAIK, that has voluntarily decommissioned our nuclear weapons.
I'm from Mozambique, and lived in the country for a bit. And it doesn't seem that outlandish.
I know there has been an increase in the terrorist or terrorist-like activity in the country (and the region). Some of it is not reported by mainstream outlets. Honestly, the secret African wars grossly underreported.
Perhaps South Africans can chime in here?
It seems pretty outlandish, but not because of any lack of terrorist activity in the country, though what has occurred here has been small-scale and doesn't seem that well organised. What makes it outlandish is that our government isn't particularly positively inclined towards the US in the first place. We're part of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which is like our G7. Nothing about this seems like it would really end up doing helping our attitude towards Iran. All it feels like it would achieve is screwing us, by making the US treat us worse. I don't see us running to break sanctions and start buying Iranian oil in the aftermath, especially given the leverage the US has over us in terms of trade agreements that our economy really needs. Then, when it comes out that it was Iran, our diplomatic support for them isn't going to improve. Sure, we're not the diplomatic powerhouse we were with Mandela and our former position as an advocate for human rights, but IIRC we're currently rotated onto the UN Security Council. It just seems all kinds of dumb to threaten things when we probably have better diplomatic relations with Iran than a lot of other countries.
www.theguardian.com
