Now I see where you are coming from. Thanks.
As radical as Ahmadinejad appears to be, I don't believe that once Iran
joins the nuclear club, Ahmadinejad would become trigger-happy with Iran's
nuclear weapons. I am sure he is aware Iran is surrounded by neighbours
bristling with nukes and I believe this awareness will make him a responsible
fellow.
Below is an interesting analysis by Gwynne Dyer on the ame subject.
gwynnedyer.com
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12 January 2006
Nuclear Iran?
By Gwynne Dyer
When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed last
Tuesday that Iran had broken the seals on its nuclear research facility at
Natanz, many people reacted as if the very next step was the testing of an
Iranian nuclear weapon. In the ensuing media panic, we were repeatedly
reminded that Iran's radical new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declared
just months ago that Israel should be "wiped off the map." How could such
a lethally dangerous regime be allowed to proceed with its nuclear plans?
But talk is cheap, and not to be confused with actions or even
intentions. Ahmadinejad was quoting directly from the founder of Iran's
Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, but neither during Khomeini's life
nor in the sixteen years since his death has Iran made any effort to wipe
Israel off the map, because to do so could mean the virtual extermination
of the Iranian people. Israel has held a monopoly on nuclear weapons in the
Middle East since shortly after Ahmadinejad was born, and now possesses
enough of them to strike every Iranian AND every Arab city of over 100,000
people simultaneously.
Ahmadinejad's comment was as foolish, but also ultimately as
meaningless, as Ronald Reagan's famous remark into a microphone that he
didn't know was open: "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today
that I have signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin
bombing in five minutes." Nobody doubted that Reagan wanted the "evil
empire" to be wiped from the face of the earth, but nobody seriously
believed that he intended to attack it. Russia had nuclear weapons too, and
the US would have been destroyed by its retaliation.
Ahmedinejad was not joking about wanting Israel to vanish, but he
was expressing a wish, not an intention, because Iran has been thoroughly
deterred for all of his adult life by the knowledge of those hundreds of
Israeli nuclear warheads. And Iran would still be deterred if it had a few
nuclear weapons of its own, just as Mr Reagan was deterred from striking
the Soviet Union even though the United States had thousands of the things.
So why would Iran want nuclear weapons at all? Mostly national pride,
plus a desire to keep up with the neighbours.
Iran's neighbours include almost every nuclear-armed power on the
planet. Right on its borders, or just one or two countries over, are
Russia, China, Pakistan, India and Israel, plus US forces in Iraq and
Afghanistan, so many Iranians think their country should have nuclear
weapons to protect it from nuclear blackmail. They also want to be taken
seriously as a regional power, and share the widespread belief that nuclear
weapons are a ticket to the top table. Yet despite ample resources and a
large, well-educated scientific elite, the regime has failed to develop
nuclear weapons during 26 years in power.
For Iran, nuclear weapons fall into the class of "nice to have"
rather than life-or-death necessity. Israel cannot invade it, and even the
United States would be reluctant to do so: it is a very big, mountainous
and nationalistic country. In almost any regional conflict, Iranian
nuclear weapons would make it more likely to be a target for nuclear
attacks, not less. So the Iranians have chipped away at the task of
building the scientific and technological basis for a nuclear-weapons
programme in a desultory way for several decades, without ever getting
really serious about it.
That is still the pattern. When the IAEA demanded that Iran explain
certain irregularities in its nuclear power research programme three years
ago, the regime did not respond like North Korea, which immediately
abrogated its membership in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and went
all out to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible. Instead, Iran
voluntarily allowed the IAEA to put seals on its nuclear research
facilities while it investigated the discrepancies in Iran's earlier
reports.
Now it has removed those seals, although the investigation is still
not complete, and plans to resume its research on nuclear power. This will
also enhance its capacity to work on nuclear weapons eventually, but that
can't be helped.
The current US campaign to impose United Nations sanctions on Iran
is doomed to fail, because it is not breaking the law. As a signatory of
the NPT, it is fully entitled to develop nuclear power for peaceful
purposes, including the technology for enriching uranium, even though that
also takes it much of the way to a nuclear-weapons capability. In any case,
it is practically unimaginable that all the veto-holding powers on the UN
Security Council would agree to impose sanctions on a major oil-producer on
the mere suspicion that it ultimately intends to break the law.
And there is no need for such a dramatic confrontation. Iran has
never been in a great rush to get nuclear weapons. Even if the CIA is
unduly optimistic in assuming that Tehran is still ten years away from a
bomb (and the spooks usually err in the pessimistic direction), there is
still plenty of time and room for patient negotiation, and no need for the
current histrionics.
gwynnedyer.com |
