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Iran's Nuclear Ambitions
selven wrote in with something a bit offtopic for Slashdot, but I figured it's worth a discussion today. He writes "Following Iran's revelation regarding its secret nuclear enrichment plant, western leaders are banding together against it, saying that it violates Articles 2 and 3 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and suggesting serious sanctions against the country if it refuses to back down on its uranium enrichment program. Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only and that it's not fair for the US to be criticizing them in this way while having thousands of nuclear warheads."
Especially when Pakistan, India, and North Korea just got told "naughty boy" then it was business as usual.
Mod parent up. It's never been about containment, but control.
Personally, I'm fully behind Iran getting Nuclear capabilities and spreading it around. Maybe when everyone has nukes, the first world countries might stop acting a little less like bullies.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I have yet to hear a coherent reason why Iran as a nation is not entitled to develop nuclear weapons.
May the Maths Be with you!
Let's hope the Obama Administration is much more skillful than the previous administration.
Right. I can hear it now.
Iran: "We are not evil."
O'bomma: "The United States is the most evil country that has ever existed. Nobody is more evil than we are, especially you, all because of George Bush."
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Not only that but now Iran is surrounded by enemies. The Arabs never loved them to start with and financed the Iran-Iraq war. Now Afghanistan and Iraq are in American hands and we know how we think of Iran. Let's not forget how we supported the Shah who is by all accounts much, much worse than the clerics who replaced him. Looking at it from Iran's perspective, I think Iran is pretty damn scared and feels quite threatened.
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Who is this "international community" you speak of? The Washington Consensus?
You imperialist apologists are nauseating. Please go back to bobbing on Glenn Beck's cock.
Wow. Talk about a runaway argument. Iran's developing nuclear weapons is a threat to Israel, so the only alternative the Israelis have is to prematurely attack, so it's the Iranian's own fault they got bombed. They are "demanding" to be attacked? This is the kind of logic best seen in wife beaters.
Simply having nuclear weapons is not the same as having them on a missile currently flying through the air towards Tel Aviv. There's a significant difference. Frankly, the Israeli first strike policy has in recent years become a belligerent one. Perhaps it works when you're bombing Hamas militia men in the Gaza strip, but international warfare is a different game. Israeli jets flying 2000km to strike targets in another country because they might be a threat sometime in the future is not going to go down well with most reasonable people in the world. Who would be the real rogue state at that point?
It's clear that Iran's goal in gaining nuclear weapons is to gain greater military influence in the middle east, including Israel. But we should all ask ourselves how it came to this point. Has everybody really been as diplomatic as they could have been? What is bombing Iranian sites likely to accomplish in the long term? Is Iran having nuclear weapons really that much worse than their current chemical and biological arsenals? Might we not in fact be better off with a mutual nuclear deterrent in the Middle East region, akin to the MAD policies during the cold war?
People need start thinking rationally about issues like this. This black and white, us and them mentality is taken too extremes these days by people that ought to know better. When did we lose our ability for reasoned debate?
May the Maths Be with you!
Any country who's leaders publicly and openly threaten another nation with annihilation have no business with weapons that are capable of human extinction until they prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that such a belief is no longer prevalent.
Iran hasn't done that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Ahmadinejad_and_Israel#.22Wiped_off_the_map.22_or_.22Vanish_from_the_pages_of_time.22_translation
Funnily though, the US has.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article647188.ece
it's in my head
that's such an american way to think. You really believe America is able to defeat Russia, alone? or China, alone?
I've no idea about China, but as for Russia - heck, yes, in conventional warfare, U.S. would roll over the wreck that is present-day Russian army in the matter of weeks. Just witness the mess that South Ossetian conflict was - Georgians were relatively poorly trained, but even to the extent that they were, they were trained by U.S., and supplied with U.S. weaponry - and the result is that Georgian casualty rates were comparable to Russian ones, and not the typical 1-to-10^n you see when e.g. U.S. goes to war.
That's why it's so important for Russia to maintain nuclear parity - there's simply nothing else to hold U.S. (and NATO in general) at bay
Israel probably has 50-100 nuclear warheads, likely for more than three decades. Yet in the numerous times that it was attacked by its neighbors, had its borders violated by suicide bombers and terrorist kidnappers, and having suffered tens of thousands of rockets launched from the West Bank and Gaza over the years, it has not used one.
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
Yeah, how can they dare to steal from us the canal we enslaved them to build!
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I don't think Iran is insane. It's governed by theocratic elite, but they are completely sane.
Actually, it might even do some good if Iran builds several atomic bombs and methods of their delivery. Maybe Israel will stop acting like a total bully then.
"Right, the pictures of the big bad Israelis bulldozing Palestinian homes make for such great propaganda that the inconvenient fact that the Palestinian authority actually bulldozes _far more_ Palestinian homes than Israel ever has (or that Israel actually bulldozes Israeli citizens homes built on disputed land as well) gets completely overlooked."
So? Probably Israel bulldozes far more Israeli homes than Palestine does.
Face it, Israel richly deserves what it gets. Instead of trying to create peace, it actively nurtures hate.
....in the face of world indifference and even hostility to its' continued survival,...
Israel's survival is guaranteed by none other than God Jehovah himself. Ancient prophecies foretell that these people, the Jews, would be scattered among the nations of the earth, to be regathered as a nation not too long before the return of Jesus Christ to earth. Innumerable attempts have been made by despots and dictators, both recent and ancient, to exterminate the Jewish people. They have been terribly persecuted and murdered, but God has never allowed their extermination throughout all these centuries. In 1948, the modern state of Israel was re-created and Jews from all over the earth have migrated there.
Israel today is a secular state, but nevertheless protected by God. Israel will not attack Iran or anybody else, but will eventually, once again, be attacked by a confederation of states which includes Iran. Isn't it amazing that such a tiny nation on such a small speck of real estate can make such big waves on the world scene? Doesn't it strike you as amazing, that an inconsequential city, such as Jerusalem, should make recurring headlines the world over?
Except for the backing of the United States, Israel stands alone in the world. Could it be that what Jehovah said about Israel in Deuteronomy 32:8-12 thousands of years ago is still true today?
All theory is gray
Israel was and remains at war with its neighbors (except Egypt and Jordan) since the day it was founded. The war was not started by Israel. This multi-generation conflict is not of Israel's doing, and whatever they do to defend themselves, including "stirring up shit", is perfectly just.
Nothing wrong with hurting your enemy. "Insightful" my behind...
Yeah, and while we are it, let's also abandon Taiwan to China, South Korea to the North, Eastern Europe to Russia (oops, that's pretty much done already) — what have I forgotten?
There is nothing Israel has done, that is not matched (with gusto!) by either its enemies or other countries, so that "especially" qualifier is a no-op...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.