In Part-1 I have argued that, despite warnings going back at least five years, Iran is probably still around 20 years away from developing their own nuclear arsenal—assuming they can stick with it and overcome outside obstacles put in their way.
Part-2 here is more of a conversation than an argument, and it goes thusly:
Now Bush is insisting that Iran’s real intent is to build nuclear weapons that “threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust” –and to make sure that doesn’t happen, he seems prepared to bomb the crap out of Iran, quite possibly with tactical nukes.
Sounds weird doesn’t it, when you really think about it? The trouble is, this is how Bush and the neocons seem to operate—peace through war, stability through chaos.
Entirely absent from this administration’s public rhetoric is any notion that the Iranians might actually need a nuclear power plant to deliver electrical power for the future.
Unless the “Stan’s: surrounding Iran. Iraq etc can be profitably exploited for their assumed potential, and unless the Arctic and Antarctic can similarly be tapped for their suspected reserves we have in essence reached “peak oil” already.
The piggy bank of sweet, sweet crude is being emptied at an exponential rate. Oil producers such as Iran will have a vested interest in holding on to some of their oil for their own future, and using what financial resources they have now to develop an alternative for their young and demanding population. Nuclear power is a very obvious way to go.
But the Bush administration doesn’t seem to acknowledge this possibility or perhaps---they do, but see a different outcome. If Iran gets ordinary domestic nuclear power AND holds on to whatever oil they have left, they can affect the global supply, of which the US is the largest consumer. A possible price increase apparently may not be the biggest issue, but availability is very important. The more Machiavellian elements in the Bush administration (of which there are many) may construe this as a fairly long term blackmail strategy—after all it’s probably what they’d do too.
Then there’s the Israel argument.
Ahmadinejad, Bush and Ehmud Olmert all talk the talk but do they walk the walk. Or put another way, “who’s the meanest son of a bitch in the Valley?”
Well Bush invaded Iraq for no good reason other than he could, and Olmert bombed Lebanon to rubble for no reason other than he could too—until he ran out of bombs basically.
What’s Ahmadinejad done? Captured a bunch of Britons in disputed waters, and then let them go. Probably poked his nose into Iraq—and why the hell not? And Ahmadinejad doesn’t have the executive power afforded Olmert nor assumed and abused by Bush—his authority his tempered by the Supreme Council, and he’s not that popular with the public these days either. Id he had nuclear weapons at hand, it wouldn’t be him giving the order to launch (except for show).
Now supposedly all it takes is for a zealot or a paranoid idiot to be able to press the button as it were and hello Armageddon! But though there have been some close calls (in previous and existing systems I should add, not imaginary ones), no nukes have ever been used, never ever, for the simple fact that they are too damn destructive—and not just in terms of blowing things up.
What if some other nut in Iran, once they’d finally gotten some nuclear missiles (that no-one else knew about) decided to nuke Israel. You wouldn’t want to do it with 1 missile, it would have to be all or nothing. So Israel gets totally nuked, to the great satisfaction of the anti-Semites. Then what? The muslims have to wait a 1,000 years for the radiation to die down before they can take back the holy Muslim city of Jerusalem? In the meantime, what reaction can they expect from Israel’s friends---the US, the UK, France? All nuclear powers themselves. Even if they didn’t react with nukes, they’d still have the conventional resources at that point to pound Iran into rubble—and they’d have the will to do it too.
No, the biggest threat to the Middle East stability and the only person and nation capable of delivering a nuclear holocaust is…George Bush and the good old US of A.
Because in his black and white world, he decides who is evil and who must be punished. And he knows who is weak and he attacks them to feel strong. And he’s just emotionally stunted enough to take everything personally and, if he can’t get what he wants then no one else can either. Bush is really a psychotic surrounded by psychotics—clearly demonstrated in everything he and his cheerleaders have said and done in the past six years. And they are fully capable of going the extra yard, just to “prove” their point.
The Iranians in power probably aren’t that crazy, going by their record. Bush and Cheney however are. And they think they can get away with it, because haven’t they always? Having lost so many fights so far (without acknowledging the fact of course, but knowing it), they are tempted to look for just one more fight to wipe out their miserable record and re-establish their “manhood”, and Iran is a big-enough, but weak-enough and accessible-enough a target to serve that purpose (not so North Korea for example, and Syria is too small).
India and Pakistan, bitterly opposed on so many levels, both took thirty years to get their nuclear arsenals. They’ve never used them. Iran is not a special case. Utterly ignorant of history, utterly devoid of intellect and totally devoted to his existential imaginings Bush is the biggest threat to the region—he’s proven that already. Nuclear threat's are in practice a myth.
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