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Originally Posted by aceventura3
You think he had or was motivated to have a nuclear weapons program, but even if he did, he was incapable or would not have been in power long enough to use any nuclear weapon he developed, and was therefore not a threat.
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He probably was motivated. Desert Storm basically took away all the power he thought he had. He went from a regional power to a toothless dictator who was really only able to terrorize his own people. So I'm sure he was motivated to try and get his power back.
But. He had neither the finances nor the infrastructure to wage conventional war, let alone nuclear war. At the very most (and this is stretching the realm of what's reasonably possible), he might have gotten some very low yield uranium but wouldn't have been able to enrich it enough for power (3% enrichment), let alone nuclear weapons (90+% enrichment).
He may have been a minor threat to Israel in that he could help to fund and supply small and medium arms to Palestinian or Lebanese extremist organizations, but he really didn't even do that. All he did was pay a few families of suicide bombers in order to try and rebuild his popularity among Arab neighbors. And it didn't work to do that.