A better reason for the anti-Synth plot, IMO...

[Edward Jellico]

The Zhat Vash must have some influence and power since they had an entire Romulan fleet behind them.

 

[The Wormhole]

The Zhat Vash must have some influence and power since they had an entire Romulan fleet behind them.

As a division within the Tal Shiar, the Zhat Vash are likely able to commandeer Romulan military assets (including ships) through Tal Shiar authority, which we have seen demonstrated in the other Treks, such as TNG Face of the Enemy and DS9 Improbable Cause/The Die is Cast.

Indeed, I would suspect the majority of officers and crew in the fleet believed they were on a Tal Shair mission and that General Nedar was herself Tal Shiar and knew nothing of the Zhat Vash.

 

[The Overlord]

The problem is the timing of the attack. Was there a reason why the Zhat Vash couldn’t have waited until after the Romulans were all evacuated before attacking Utopia Planitia? It’s not like there was any huge rush on their part to convince the Federation to ban synths. If there was, they would have tried to kill Data a long time ago. Or Noonien Soong before that. But they didn’t do squat until the absolute worst possible time for them personally.

I assumed the Zhat Vash was just willing to sacrifice 900 million Romulans to achieve their goal and from a PR perspective, it has the advantage to do it before the Federation rescue fleet is completed. If a Synth uprising not only killed 90,000 people on Mars, but also doomed millions of Romulans to die, it would make a Synth ban even more likely and make artificial life less popular across the Alpha Quadrant. Sure, that is not logical, but a group of zealots like the Zhat Vash are not logical.

 

[Sci]

Now that the Federation know that the Zhat Vash were behind the destruction of Utopia Planitia, would that not be considered an act of war?

The Zhat Vash must have some influence and power since they had an entire Romulan fleet behind them.

Others have already replied very well to these points. But I would further point out other complications:

• Upon whom would you declare war? The Romulan Star Empire no longer exists as far as we know. The Romulan Free State seems to desire better relations with the Federation, given that they invited UFP scientists to help them study captured Borg technology and that they allowed a Federation citizen to serve as executive director of the Reclamation Project.
• What if the Romulan Free State turns around and declares that they want to bring the Zhat Vash to justice, too? Would you declare war upon the Free State? Invade and occupy it?
• What, exactly, would be the objective of such a war? By what metrics would such a war be considered a success?
• How would you carry out such a war? Would you invade and occupy the Romulan Free State? What about the other Romulan states out there -- would you invade and occupy them as well?

The idea of the Federation reacting to the revelation of the Zhat Vash by declaring war is... Well, it reminds me a lot of the United States's responding to 9/11 by invading and occupying Afghanistan. And we should really know better than to think that kind of response is going to work very well or accomplish anything other than wasting resources and lives.

 

[Search4]

It was never stated that F8 and the other synths were built expressly to complete the fleet. And even if they were, so what? Let them build the fleet, let the fleet save the Romulans, and then destroy Utopia Planitia later.



So if my family needed a certain kind of medicine to survive or they’d be dead in a few years, and there was someone who could make that medicine for me, but because I hated that particular person I decided to kill them before they could complete making the medicine, effectively dooming my family to death, there’d be nothing really wrong with that?

Exactly what Shinzon was thinking in Nemesis. Another really stupid plot.

 

[Charles Phipps]

Eh, a billion Romulans is a small price to pay to cripple the Federation.