BEWARE A NUCLEAR IRAN!

    How many times have we heard the following arguments?  Israel has nuclear weapons, so why single out Iran? Pakistan got nukes and we lived with it. Who is to say to say that the United States or Russia should have the bomb and not other countries? Iran has promised to use its reactors for peaceful purposes, so why Demonize Iran?

    In fact the world has at least five reasons for singling out Iran to halt its nuclear development program – and it’s is past time that we spell them out.
    First, any country that seeks “peaceful” nuclear power at the same time it is completely self-sufficient in energy production is de facto suspect. Iran has enough natural gas to meet its clean electrical generation for two centuries. The only rationale for its multi-dollar program of building nuclear reactors – and for its spending billions more to hide and decentralize them – is to obtain weapons.
    Second, we cannot excuse Iran by acknowledging that the Soviet Union, communist China, North Korea and Pakistan obtained nuclear weapons. In each case, anti-liberal regimes gained stature and advantage by the ability to destroy Western cities. But past moral failures are not corrected by allowing history to repeat itself.
    The logic of this excuse would lead to a nuclearized globe in which wars from Darfur to the Middle East would all assume the potential to go nuclear. In contrast, the fewer the nuclear players, the more likely deterrence can play some role. And if Iran were to go nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and other Arab autocracies would follow suit in order to preserve the prestige and security of largely Arab Sunni Nations. That would ensure, again, that almost any Middle East dispute involving, Shiite-Sunni tension, from Lebanon to Iraq, might escalate to a nuclear confrontation.
    Third, it is simply a fact that full-fledged democracies are less likely to attack one another. Although they are prone to frequent fighting  -- imperial Athens and republican Venice, for instance were in some sort of war about three out every four years during the 5th century B.C. and the 16th century, respectively – consensual governments are not so ready to fight each other.  Thus today there is no chance whatsoever that an anti-American France and an increasingly anti-French America would, as nuclear democracies go to war. Likewise Russia, following the falloff communism and its partial evolution to an elected government, poses less of a threat to the United States than before.
    It would be regrettable should Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or Germany go nuclear – but not nearly as catastrophic as when Pakistan did so, which is what allows it today to give sanctuary to bin Laden and the planners of 9/11 with impunity. The former governments operate with a free press, open elections and free speech, and thus their war making is subject to a series of checks and balances. Pakistan is a strongman’s heart beat away from becoming an Islamic theocracy. And while democratic India is often volatile in relations with its Islamic neighbor, the world is not nearly as worried about its nuclear arsenal as it is about autocratic Pakistan’s.
    Fourth, Iran presents a uniquely fourfold danger. It has enough cash to buy influence and exemption from sanctions; it possesses oil reserves to blackmail a petroleum-hungry world; it sponsors terrorists who might soon be enabled to find sanctuary under a nuclear umbrella and to be armed with dirty bombs; and it has
 a leader who talks as if he were willing to take his entire country into paradise – or at least back to the 7th century amid the ashes of the Middle East. Just imagine the recent controversy over Danish cartoons in the context of Ahmadinejad with is finger on a half-dozen nuclear missiles pointed at Copenhagen.
    Fifth, the West is right to take on a certain responsibility to discourage nuclear proliferation. The existence of such weapons grew entirely out of Western science and technology. In fact, the story of global nuclear proliferation is exclusively one of espionage, stealthy commerce, or American and European-trained native engineers using their foreign-acquired expertise. Pakistan, North Korea or Iran have no ability themselves to create such weapons any more than Russia, China or India did. And any country that cannot itself create such weapons is probably less likely to ensure the necessary protocols to guard against their misuse or theft.
    

 

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