Gorilla is still not clear what precisely we have to fear from Iran.
It seems inevitable that Iran will develop a civilian nuclear capability and that this capability could lead to the production of nuclear weapons.
While we intend to negotiate with Iran to convince them or bribe them or otherwise cajole them not to do this, in reality we have very little leverage, short of military force or a sudden and radical shift in the Iranian interest calculus, to make this happen.
An American attack on Iran, directly or by proxy, could be disastrous. A regional war might well ensue, leading to the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used if Israel, which certainly has them, decided its existence was at stake.
On the other hand, so long as we aren’t directly involved, a regional war could be a good thing.
Non-proliferation is a noble goal, but our hypocrisy on the question makes it essentially a non-starter. We don’t allow international inspections of our nuclear forces, neither does Israel, neither does India, neither does Pakistan, neither does Russia, neither does China.
It seems unlikely that Iran will ever agree to such inspections unless we do or unless they believe there’s more to be had by allowing inspections to go forward.
Our approach seems to be “if you’re a sensible, stable government, no matter how repressive, we think it’ll be ok for you to have nuclear weapons”.
On the other hand, “if you’re a government led by a reclusive nut job or a group of medieval mullahs, you can’t be in our club”.
What then might work? Ironically, nuclear proliferation is the only sensible national security policy.
It’s far better for Iran and the United States to have nuclear weapons than it is for us to allow the Israelis to attack Iran or spend another fruitless year on negotiating with Iran (or negotiating with the Russians about Iran).
If Iran does develop nuclear weapons, it’s likely that everyone else in the region will be hankering for them, and we can’t do much about that other than decide, as we did with India, to make a buck on it.
The mullahs may be nutty, but it’s unlikely they’ll risk national annihilation by using nuclear weapons.
If Iran does decide to fire away, America will finally have an oil price that makes alternative energy economically viable.
We can at last treat the Middle East in the same way we’ve always treated Africa.
Of course, if everyone who has the cash or the science can proliferate, we might have more to worry about than what some fifth-rate nation like Iran might do.
And then we might grow up.
