The claim is that Iranian ownership of nuclear weapons would “vastly increase” the already substantial risk of an accidental nuclear catastrophe. Only luck has spared us so far, journalists claim. We in the West have had forty years of unremitting propaganda against Iran, much of it misleading.
Contrary to propaganda Iran is an educated, sophisticated country. And actually stable. It is not ISIS. Persians are very capable of safeguarding nuclear weapons. Were you were an ayatollah sitting in Tehran, surrounded by countries armed with nuclear weapons, you too would feel vulnerable. They suffered shameful bullying by the West, had the corrupt Shah foisted on them, and then suffered huge losses at the hands of the aggressor, Saddam Hussein, egged on by Mr. Rumsfeld. One way of beginning to stabilize the Middle East is actually to allow the Iranians to have nuclear power, and weapons, provided they agree to be safety-checked like everyone else. Outrageous? Good! blog like this should encourage readers to think.
No one mentions “balance of power” any more. This old idea used to work well, but there is no balance of power in the Middle East at the moment. Saudi Arabia, with its Wahabi extremists, is not a long-term partner anyone should want. We support the nuclear capabilities of Israel and Pakistan, a failed state that should never have been a separate country, and then complain about the instability in the region. Iran have the disagreeable Revolutionary Guard, it is true, but they will no more deliberately start a nuclear war than India or Russia. They are not stupid.
Tomorrow I will continue these observations to avoid this being too long. Meanwhile see my comments.
Why Iran is paranoid about encirclement, and why it is plain stupid not to recognise their problem.
“During the eight years between Iraq’s formal declaration of war on September 22, 1980, and Iran’s acceptance of a cease-fire with effect on July 20, 1988, at the very least half a million and possibly twice as many troops were killed on both sides, at least half a million became permanent invalids, some 228 billion dollars were directly expended, and more than 400 billion dollars of damage (mostly to oil facilities, but also to cities) was inflicted, mostly by artillery barrages. Aside from that, the war was inconsequential: having won Iranian recognition of exclusive Iraqi sovereignty over the Shatt-el-Arab River (into which the Tigris and Euphrates combine, forming Iraq’s best outlet to the sea), Saddam Hussein surrendered that gain in 1988 when in need of Iran’s neutrality prior to the 1991 Gulf War.
“Three things distinguish the Iran-Iraq War. First, it was inordinately protracted, lasting longer than either world war, essentially because Iran did not want to end it, while Iraq could not. Second, it was sharply asymmetrical in the means employed by each side, because though both sides exported oil and purchased military imports throughout, Iraq was further subsidized and supported by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, allowing it to acquire advanced weapons and expertise on a much larger scale than Iran. Third, it included three modes of warfare absent in all previous wars since 1945: indiscriminate ballistic-missile attacks on cities by both sides, but mostly by Iraq; the extensive use of chemical weapons (mostly by Iraq); and some 520 attacks on third-country oil tankers in the Persian Gulf-for which Iraq employed mostly manned aircraft with anti-shipping missiles against tankers lifting oil from Iran’s terminals, while Iran used mines, gunboats, shore-launched missiles, and helicopters against tankers lifting oil from the terminals of Iraq’s Arab backers.” from The
Reader’s Companion to Military History, edited by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker. 1996)