[lit-ideas] Re: Ought we to do something about Iran?

  • From: Teemu Pyyluoma <teme17@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 2 Feb 2006 00:57:55 -0800 (PST)

Everyone in this list lived through the cold war.
We've seen the projections for casualties, done safety
drills, watched Hiroshima documentaries, and in
general have a pretty good understanding of what
nuclear war means. Now watching for instance the
demonstrators in Pakistan celebrating their nukes, I
wonder whether the population in some third world
countries has any idea of the kind of havoc modern
nuclear weapons cause? Cynic in me thinks we will
probably need a couple megaton explosion wiping out
Delhi or Karachi to drive the point trough, as a
method of communication I would however much prefer
education. A Hollywood movie would be a start.

Given the choice of having your country invaded or
waging a nuclear war, any rational human being would
opt for invasion. Possessing nukes will not make Iran
safer. It would mean they have upped the stakes in
their would be conflict with USA from bombing raids to
nuclear strikes. It also risks Saudis developing
nukes, which leads to much more likely disaster
scenario. And there is the scenario of a terrorist
nuclear attack on USA, from Iranian perspective I
wouldn't bank on how ever is on the White House
resisting the temptation to just push the button. The
Iranian military probably realizes this, and I do
think they are being sincere in claiming that they are
not developing a bomb.

What troubles me most is that they turned down the EU3
package. The offer was basically free pre-prosessed
uranium, trade deals including a lucrative natural gas
pipeline to Europe, and EU easing on its demands for
them to modernize. I think this is what they were
after originally, and it was good realpolitiks from
them, but internal politics got out of control. It
seems no one is really at charge in Iran at the
moment, and that makes a bad situation much worse.

On economics, from an energy point of view nuclear
power makes no sense what so ever for Iranians, who
sit on one of the largest reserves of natural gas in
the world. It has become purely a national, let's show
our technical capability thing. Compare to US moon
program in 60's.

China to my knowledge did help Pakistan to get the
bomb, but that had to do with their balance of power
with India. Nuclear Iran is not in their or Russians
interest, and they will probably not block measures at
the security council. But Iran is not responding to
economic incentives, and a trade embargo would be
difficult given the shortage of oil as it is, so it is
not clear what exactly can the security council do.
This lack of peaceful options risks eventual war of
some kind. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell of
an invasion, but air strikes are a different thing.
 

Regarding world government, it may be a good thing or
maybe not, but for non-proliferation a world security
system will do. After cold war and Gulf part I, there
was a de facto recognition that no wars of conquest
would be fought without SC blessing. The Iraq
invasion, justified or not, changed this, and this
will hurt non-proliferation efforts.


Cheers,
Teemu
Helsinki, Finland

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