Iran nuclear issue open thread

I’m still deep in revising my Mozambique chapter. It’s just as hard as Rwanda was. My deadline to get the entire manuscript revised and sent back is Feb. 15. One week today.
Meantime I’ll leave an open thread here for discussion of the Iranian nuclear issue. Please keep it calm, reasoned, and facts-based.

21 thoughts on “Iran nuclear issue open thread”

  4. I really think Iran issue should be deal with far from any threat of war or regime ‎change or any sort of these uncivilized reactions.‎
    We should understand here if the key power states can not control the flow of the ‎nuclear hi tech equipments to another states a round the world, we will face same case ‎in years to come similar example like Iran and Iraq.‎
    What it needs is to take the compromise approach like the one with N. Korea when ‎USA agreed to start a long dialog and offered aid to S. Koreans to dismantle their ‎nuclear facilities.‎
    With Iran we need to listen and start dialogue without tensions, there is now talk but ‎is up and down talk this is done by pushing on Iran one side which in my view upset ‎the Iranians and any country will objecting the tread to some degree.‎
    There are many ways and things of compromise the Iranian with, one of them Israeli ‎nuclear power and the tread in ME, this case could be the starting point to defuse all ‎the case and could include Pakistan also if the Israeli agrees to talk about it, I think ‎this will be a part of a big and long peace process in ME.‎

  5. Iran is involved with Hezbollah (or Hizbullah) and with Hamas. Israel has to worry that either or both of these will get a nuclear warhead from Iran. This makes Israel behave differently.
    It’s hard to know what Iran expects to get out of having nukes. Clearly, having nukes is of no benefit to the US, England, France, Russia, China, Pakistan, Israel or India. There is practically no benefit. It is just a cost. Can you point out any benefits that have resulted from any of these countries having nukes?

  6. The notion of an “Iranian nuclear issue” is incomplete. There is no real “issue” about Iran’s development of nuclear energy facilities or even eventually acquiring nuclear weapons to achieve a peace-promoting balance of power in the Middle East.
    The real issue is presented by the US’s disruptive obsession that Israel be a nation of privilege, both from arms control and from adherence to UN mandates like 242. Americans have died, and if the past is any indicator of the future, more Americans will die, to foster this obsession.
    No one claims Iran is territorially aggressive. Israel has military inclinations that are fairly characterized as “rabid”. Both the US and Israel have for years threatened to destroy Iran, which they damn as “evil”. Not a small slight, after all, what does one do with “evil” – “eliminate it” of course, as in “deliver us from evil. Amen”.
    What is needed is equality of power, a balance of power, in the Middle East. That’s the real issue – how to reach it. If Iran is to be controlled, so should threatening Israel. No bombs for Iran, fine, then no bombs for Israel, too.
    So the crocodile-tears hysteria about Iran’s retort to “destroy Israel” presents no real “issue”. This feigned hysteria is nothing but a manipulation to work the US public up into a froth to the point where it will actually buy another “lemon” from the same used car saleslady (Rice) and salesmen (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) that teamed up to sell us the clunker called Iraq. The full price tag of the first clunker is estimated at 2 trillion, and predictions are that the second clunker Iran would go many multiples of that. The consensus I read is that while Iran may be weaker in the final military sense, the price of military attack of any level will change all our lives for the worse for many years. It may revive the hyper-nationalist violent character of our society that we thought we left behind after our extermination of the Native Americans.
    If the US public buys the Iran clunker, get ready to see more sons and daughters sacrificed to the idols of US imperialism and its adopted subtext Zionism. Have no illusions about there being money enough money left over for anything good happening to Medicare programs. Golly, we may even get to have gas-rationing coupons again!

  7. To the best of my recollection the modern state of Iran has never in its history attacked another country, yet suddenly it has become the greatest threat to world peace. Amazing!

  8. Israel has military inclinations that are fairly characterized as “rabid”. Both the US and Israel have for years threatened to destroy Iran, which they damn as “evil”.
    Golda Meir former Israel Prime Minister in 1973 war the Nuke weapons (Warheads) ‎was loaded to IDF Fighters waiting for a signal to drops the nukes, as I recall from some reports should be one on Cairo one on ‎Damascus and One on Baghdad…‎
    So not just Iran it’s all the Arab courtiers.‎

  9. Shirin
    To the best of my recollection the modern state of Iran has never in its history attacked another country
    More, Iran never had been sending a single solder in all the Arab/Israeli wars to fights ‎the Israelis.‎
    In Fact Shah Iran had good relation with Mosad although it’s hidden but he was in ‎good connection with Israelis.‎
    More over the Iran history tell us that the Iranians (The Furs) helped the Jews to free ‎them from Babylonians by launching savage war when they destroyed the Hanging ‎Gardens Tower in Babylon’s and that king his wife Alistair she was Jew, she is ‎one of the writer or some religious books related to her. ‎
    ‎attacked another country‎
    In other issue Iran attacked Iraq Shireen, also attacked Bahrain (UAE) and occupied ‎the three islands they are not Angels

  10. If you go to Buenos Aires, there is an empty corner where the Israeli embassy used to stand. Today it is a park with a plaque and a tree honoring each victim.
    It is a beautiful neighborhood and many people go there to reflect and meditate.
    Iran was behind the explosion, Argentina requested the suspects from Iran and were rebuffed. Argentina requested a suspect from Britain, and Britain expeditiously set him free to the satey of Iran.
    And you want Iran to have nukes?
    Iran with nukes is the ultimate suicide belt.

  11. Timothy L
    we may even get to have gas-rationing coupons again!
    Who knows, may be, if 80% of the oil comes from ME, with those cartoons may be ‎trigger more tensions and wars as recent, one of the European officials asked the ‎Vatican to launch religious war like Crusades against Muslims nations/countries!!!!‎

  14. Paul Pillar, who managed the writing of all NIEs on Iran from 2000 to 2005 as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told IPS that all of the NIEs on Iran during that period addressed the Iranian fears of U.S. attack explicitly and related their desire for nuclear weapons to those fears.

    “Iranian perceptions of threat, especially from the United States and Israel, were not the only factor,” Pillar said, “but were in our judgment part of what drove whatever effort they were making to build nuclear weapons.”

    Pillar said the dominant view of the intelligence community in the past three years has been that Iran would seek a nuclear weapons capability, but analysts have also considered that a willingness on the part of Washington to reassure Iran on its security fears would have a significant effect on Iranian policy.

    Pillar said one of the things analysts have taken into account is Iran’s May 2003 proposal to the Bush administration to negotiate on its nuclear option and its relationship with Hezbollah and other anti-Israel groups as well as its own security concerns.

    “It was seen as an indicator of Iran’s willingness to engage,” he said.

    Analysts: Fear of US Drove Iran’s Nuclear Policy
    By Gareth Porter
    http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_21060.shtml

  15. The problem is that Iran is a devoted supporter of suicide-bombing; especially of Hezbollah and Hamas. If the threat of a nuclear warhead in the hands of Hezbollah or Hamas did not exist, then the mere ownership of nukes by Iran would not be such an issue.
    Further, Iranian leaders repeatedly say they want to wipe out Israel. The combination of this genocidal intent with the possession of nuclear weapons is too much. We can experiment and see if Iran really will murder millions of people, or we can prevent it.
    Pakistan is Islamic and has nuclear weapons and it is not as huge an issue as Iran. It’s the combination of policy and weapons that make it so important.
    Iran has never invaded anybody — fine. But now they say they will. Not so fine.
    In practical terms, the leaders of Iran are, in effect, crazy, and you just don’t let crazy people play with deadly weapons.

  16. “Other suggestive evidence is cloaked in similar uncertainty. Contained in a laptop computer stolen by an Iranian citizen in 2004 are designs by a firm called Kimeya Madon for a small-scale facility to produce uranium gas, the construction of which would give Iran a secret stock that could be enriched for fuel or for bombs. Also on the laptop — obtained by U.S. intelligence — were drawings on modifying Iran’s ballistic missiles in ways that might accommodate a nuclear warhead. Beyond the computer files, an imprisoned Pakistani arms dealer recently offered uncorroborated statements that Iran received several advanced centrifuges, equipment that would vastly improve its nuclear knowledge.”
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR2006020702126_pf.html
    Wow, lets go and bomb Iran, then “we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.”

  17. “It’s time to express admiration of personalities who have not been cheated by the Iranians. That’s why I have nominated two Americans for the Nobel peace prize for 2006. One is an independent researcher who never gave up his quest to uncover the truth, the other a government official. Separately, but on parallel tracks, they have been alerting us that tremendous threat to peace is in the offing.”
    One is Kenneth Timmerman
    the other John Bolton
    http://www.jinsa.org/articles/articles.html/function/view/categoryid/2170/documentid/3307/history/3,2359,2167,2170,3307

  18. “and you just don’t let crazy people play with deadly weapons.
    Posted by WarrenW
    we’ve let Cheney and Bush do it……

  19. Those suicide bombers should follow the US’s fine example of morality and build drones to drop bombs on people, or get airplanes to do it, on people they don’t like who never attacked them.

  20. Chaps (and chapesses)
    we might all take heart from this article from the Jordan Times.
    http://www.jordantimes.com/fri/news/news3.htm
    As you will see if you read further in the paper King Abdullah is in Washington so there might be something in the story.
    There are some interesting implications here. I expect Helena will take us through the logic of nuclear deterrence when she gets back on line.

  21. Susan – NC
    You are making light of a very very serious issue. Neither Bush nor Cheney are at all likely to use nukes. The current Islamist government of Iran is already on record as wanting to wipe out a whole nation. Not change the government, wipe them out.
    In the future, please take issues of mass death more seriously.

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