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 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html