Without wanting to downplay the seriousness of Iran's nuclear program, this is incorrect on two counts. Firstly, Iran has not enriched to weapons-grade - the highest levels it has gone to is just under 20%, which is still LEU (Low-Enriched Uranium).
Secondly, there are other uses for weapons-grade HEU other than weapons - for example, Brazil enriches to weapons-grade to produce fuel elements for its nuclear submarines (HEU is used in naval reactors so that they can be more compact). Iran doesn't have naval reactors, though.
Some people would argue that Iran with weapons grade uranium could reasonably increase the chances that 50,000 Americans will die in the next 10 years by more than 1 in 10,000. That suggests the US could reasonably kill 5 Iranians to deal with the threat. However, Iran would respond to such action which suggests a more limited response such such as planting a virus is reasonable as long as the US can get away with it.
PS: That's how these people think, rare events vs lot's of deaths = covert and deniable action.
I think a nuclear armed Iran would greatly decrease the probability of Americans being killed by Iranians.
The logic is simple: nukes bring a country into MAD (mutually assured destruction) mechanics. Most likely Iran would use Israel as a hostage since it would not have the ICBMs necessary to attack the US directly. It would be like North Korea and Japan, only "Japan" would be nuclear armed.
I consider invasion of Iran by the US the most likely vector for Iranians killing Americans. MAD should prevent this, like it does in North Korea.
(I don't buy neo-conservative anti-Muslim ideology around suicidal leaders for a second. NK is far worse in this respect, IMO; that whole country is being led on a suicidal basis.)
>MAD should prevent this, like it does in North Korea
I thought MAD only worked with rational players. Do we know the people who would hold the levers would be rational? We (the west) don't seem to have the same feedback network (i.e. spies) we could depend on as we did with the USSR. That and we had the "red phone" thing. Dunno if that was more gimmick than actual tool.
>I don't buy neo-conservative...
We don't know what the control structure behind such threat there would be. Can one person cause a launch, conversely, can one person override a launch order?
Yes, I believe that leaders who are able to control a country are rational players.
(I think nuclear weapons are probably the greatest ever contributory factor to world peace in absolute terms. I'm certain that the 20th century would have been far, far bloodier throughout its span had they not been invented.)
>>Yes, I believe that leaders who are able to control a country are rational players.
Maybe you should read some history about some of the kings we've had in Europe? (Or of some of the African dictators over the last century. Same thing, different name.) [Edit: Just consider this; because someone is rational doesn't mean they stay rational.]
Then please check "the resource curse" on Wikipedia.
In short, oil countries don't become democracies. It is too lucrative for leaders of countries with lots of natural resource income to oppress the population and steal the money. (Norway was a democracy long before the oil.)
Do you really want to condemn the Iranians to a religious dictator until the oil is gone?
Edit: Instead of the word "Iran" and "they", how about you use a more relevant term like "torturing and terrorist junta"? The (upper class!) Iranians I've known around Sweden were, more or less, as west oriented as any Scandinavian.
The (claimed) risk isn't that Iran would use nuclear weapons against the US in any official capacity. The risk is that Iran will simply leak nuclear weapons to a proxy terrorist organization (i.e. Hezbollah, Hamas, etc.) If you accept the US government's claims that Iran has used state sponsored terrorism as a political and social tool, then it follows that a nuclear armed Iran is a large risk to the United States.
I never said the claimed risk was that Iran would use nuclear weapons against the US - you seem to be attacking a straw man there. I believe the risk is that Iran would use nuclear weapons against Israel in retaliation to an attack on itself.
I don't buy Iran arming terrorists with nukes either. Both the US and USSR have used state sponsored terrorism as political and social tools, but never armed them with nuclear weapons. Without extremely plausible deniability, the repercussions of MAD would reach through if such weapons were ever used.
I think Iran sees nuclear weapons as its ultimate defense against continuing belligerent and threatening rhetoric from the US. And from my perspective as a neutral observer, it's hard to disagree with them. I think it's inevitable that Iran will get nuclear weapons, and the sooner that reality is dealt with on a rational basis, the better. If anything, the US should be bargaining with Iran to get a quid pro quo in return for acceptance of nuclear armament.
This is silly thinking. The only thing that a MAD based stalemate is better than is a nuclear holocaust. Otherwise it's worse than every other option.
The Cold War was better than WWIII but it wasn't something to be cavalier about, over a hundred million people died due to the oppression in communist countries, and a far larger number of people's lives were irrevocably damaged by over a half century of tragedy. Even if a nuclear armed Iran likely won't end in a nuclear war that doesn't give license to simply pretend as though the prospect of a nuclear armed Iranian regime is anything other than a huge step backward for the world.
I think well over 100 million people would have died if the US could have attacked the USSR in conventional warfare, if nuclear weapons had never been invented; actually, I think the USSR would have overrun Europe, the US would have been driven back, and communism would have had even more victims to feast upon.
A nuclear armed Iran is inevitable, IMO. The only means of trying to stop it - bigger and bigger threats, short of invasion no-one has the stomach for - seem to me to only guarantee this, because they reinforce the motivation for getting there.
Less than 100 million people died in WWII, and Russia had fewer allies after WWII than Germany did. Civilians killed totaled from 40 to 52 million, including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine. Total military dead: from 22 to 25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war.
Let's put this in perspective. At the end of WWII America was producing 50% of the WORLDS manufactured goods. Russia had fewer allies, a vastly inferior conventional Army, and infrastructure from WWII all the way to it's fall. America has had sufficient nuclear weapons to be concerned about a large scale invasion and never really geared up for a large scale war. So, America had basically no reason to attack Russia or fully mobilize as long as the rest of the world did not become communist they had little interest in what happened.
However, after WWII Russia was paranoid with good reason. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_War_II_Casualties2.s... Close to 13% of their population had just died and they had little interest in being so weak that a country could decide to attack them while in the middle of a war with several other countries.
I had a discussion with a friend of mine who is a postdoc in Nuclear Physics and he said that the type of reactor Iran chose to build only makes sense if you are trying to make a weapon... Something to the effect of better/more standard nuclear power is easier/cheaper/more efficient than what they were doing.
...or energy production. But, yeah, let's just say they're going to make a nuclear weapon, so that we can be "justified" when we invade them for their resources.
Look, you can say that Iran has a right to have nuclear weapons (I would prefer they didn't).
You can say that the US only cares because of oil (I'll agree with you), though you only mean Iranian oil while I mean Iran's pressure on the gulf states and their oil trade.
But you can't legitimately say that Iran is not working on a nuclear weapons program. Too many secret facilities, too well protected, for their program to be merely civilian.
