russ_watters said:
No prob - the question of whether or not they intend to acquire actual nuclear weapons is obviously much more complicated. It requires sifting through the rhetoric to decipher their real intentions, which can't ever be an exact science.
So the relevant questions then become:
1. What do you (or Bush, or the UNSC, or Israel's new leader) think the odds are that Iran will acquire or will attempt to acquire nuclear weapons?
2. If they acquire nuclear weapons, would they be willing/likely to use them?
3. Based on the above, would it be prudent to stop them?
4. If yes, how far should we go to stop them?
1. Considering Israel, Pakistan, and India have nuclear weapons, I'd say the odds were good that Iran would attempt to develop nuclear weapons. It'll take a few years, but once they're able to create fuel for nuclear power plants, the leap to nuclear weapons is almost more a matter of quantity than a leap in technology - if they also develop a means to deliver nuclear weapons.
2. If they developed nuclear weapons and a reliable method of delivering them, they would use the threat of them. They'd be unlikely to actually fire them, but having nuclear weapons would give them greater freedom to act in the Middle East region - the possession of nuclear weapons would prevent other countries from punishing them with military force.
3. You don't stop knowledge or technology. You slow it down. Any action to slow progress needs to be accompanied by some other long term solution. This is another benefit of acquiring nuclear power. A country becomes a 'partner' in international relations that has to be bargained with instead of a third world country that can be pushed around. The major powers use trade agreements that benefit the new nuclear power enough that the new power can't afford to wage war against the major powers, anymore. It's almost like striking it rich and getting to sit next to the owner of your old company at the elite country club.
4a. A few 'pinprick' strikes, even at particularly key locations, just slows the pace of progress. The hardware has to be replaced, but the knowledge and experience have already been obtained.
4b. Instead of buying off the new power, you install a new, friendlier government. Installing a new shah has gone out of fashion. Installing a democracy is the new rave, in spite of the fact that the new Middle East democracies seem to put a spotlight on the cultural differences between the Middle East and the West.
4c. Buying them off with increased trade would do a better job of reducing differences between the cultures. Al Jazeera has commercials, the same as American TV, and McDonalds, Coca Cola, et al, can slowly rot Middle Eastern culture from within* (sounds cynical, but, from Islamic fundamentalists point of view, this is the big problem with the West, regardless of the rhetoric about Israel, etc).
Aside from the problems inherent in option 4, the 'who decides' part is the most unsettling of all. I don't relish having the Bush administration decide or implement anything of this magnitude. It would be better if either the UN took the lead or the problem were pushed along to the next President.
------------------------------------------------------------------
* - How often has a foreign country stepped in, taken a local product (such as a favorite drink), and turned that country's own local product into a national, profitable product, or even a product for export?
I know Coca Cola tried this in Russia with one of their traditional drinks, but Coca Cola had to come up with one version of the drink for the whole country. Traditionally, there had been a lot of variation in the drink from one locality to the other, so Coca Cola's version didn't get very high reviews from locals - most thought it was a poor imitation of their locality's particular version.
Most used to have problems even getting that far, since it usually seems more efficient to make an already existing product more appealing to the new market since the foreign company may have little insight into the new market's culture. It's hard to believe multinational corporations still haven't made much progress in this area, but you don't hear much about it.
