commandos in Iran

[John Uskglass]

In any case, the whole "get enough weapons so nobody dares attack" system is flawed for very obvious reasons. Heck, just watch Dr. Strangelove

Hello?... Ah... I can't hear too well. Do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Oh-ho, that's much better... yeah... huh... yes... Fine, I can hear you now, Ariel... Clear and plain and coming through fine... I'm coming through fine, too, eh?... Good, then... well, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine... Good... Well, it's good that you're fine and... and I'm fine... I agree with you, it's great to be fine... a-ha-ha-ha-ha... Now then, Ariel, you know how we've always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the Bomb... The *Bomb*, Ariel... The *hydrogen* bomb!... Well now, what happened is... ah... one of our base commanders, he had a sort of... well, he went a little funny in the head... you know... just a little... funny.

Damned, let them have their nukes. The possession of nuclear weapons seems to be the only thing that defers the American government from invading countries with anti-western governments, so I can understand why Iran would want nukes in the first place, really.

Mullahs have publicly stated that they are willing to sacrifice tens of millions of Iranian lives as one could quite easily totally eradicate ISreal with three atomic devices, while Iran would take hundreds.

No dice.

 

[welsh]

Then again, if you were Iran, might you not build nukes?

Your neighbors Pakistan and India got them.
One of your enemies, Israel, has them.

You have been long a potential target of the Russians.

And you got the world's superpower breathing down your neck.

Then add the nationalist bonus points for testing a nuke.

Besides look at all the respect the North Koreans are getting because they keep wagging around their nukes like they got a new dick.

 

[John Uskglass]

That's insane Welsh. NK could quite easily kill twenty million people in an hour. You want to give the Iranian regiem; and the Iranian regiem is alot worse; you want to give them nukes?

Not to mention that because no one can touch NK there are reports of concentration and torture camps, not to mention human testing of bilogical wepons.

 

[welsh]

Not the point CCR (and you're not fooling anyone with the new name).

My point is that if you look at is simply from the US position you miss the point.

No one wants Iran to have the bomb, but from Iran's position it makes sense.

One, they do have serious security threats. It's not just regional- Pakistan, India and Israel, and Russia, but they are being threatened by the global superpower.

They also realize that they have high value targets worth being seize. Since the last war with Iraq their army is probably still a shambles and they have been under sanctions for ages.

And yes, look at NK. The acquisition of nukes by NK has given them prestige which allows them political weight. I mean would anyone give a crap about NK if they didn't have nukes? Hell if they didn't, they might even be part of South Korea by now.

Nuclear weapons are a form of insurance policy against possible invasion (one of the reasons the WMD argument for Iraq never made much sense- if Iraq really had them, the US probaby would not have invaded- this was one of the justifications for not occupying Iraq in '92).

But it also means that Iran would have more diplomatic power- not only vis-a-vis major and superpowers ("don't threaten us cause we got nukes too") but also symbolic power as a leader of the other muslim states- muslim country + nukes equals world leader.

Then there is the nationalist card. One of the reasons India and Pakistan risk an arms race is because India's BJP tested a bomb in order to gain nationalist support. Iran has been having trouble with divisions within its society. Having and testing a bomb might give them a short-term nationalist surge.