Cite?
Well of course they aren’t admitting it. The reactors they’re building are for peaceful civilian power. Uh huh, right.
Why not?
I’m not going to argue with you. I’m taking the side of UN which believes that Iran wants nuclear weapons. If you believe differently that’s fine. Yes, the UN has been wrong before. Yes, America has been wrong before. But I don’t think that we are this time.
I haven’t followed this issue much since last fall, but up until then, the UN inspectors believed they had no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Of course, wanting and actually having a program are different things, but I assume you mean that they are actively working to create a weapon, not just wishing for one. I’d just like a cite that the UN believes so.
Maybe stop invading its neighbours on entirely bogus pretexts, especially the ones with lots and lots and lots of oil?
Then, how about not surrounding it with hundreds of thousands of military inc. 2 fleets?
Then maybe start to think about the 50-year old policy of imposing imperial cultural, political and social pressure on other religions?
Ok, sanctions and the threat to nuke it.
The sanctions that the UN keeps putting on Iran. The facility that they tried to hide that we exposed to the world anyway. Seriously, it’s all been in the news. This isn’t some obscure trivia.
The facility at Qom was disclosed to IAEA by Iran and has been inspected by the IAEA. It wasn’t exposed by you. I’m not aware of any new sanctions either. At least up until September '09 the UN inspectors had no evidence for a nuclear weapons program. What have I missed since then?
The premise of this thread is absurd. What authority does the US have to deter Iran from making nuclear weapons? As Der Trihs said, it’s completely rational for Iran to want them. America has invaded two of its neighbors and stockpiles Israel with a huge amount of weapons. If you were a citizen of Iran, you would see things much differently.
For the love of all that’s sacred, what will it take for folks to drop the narrative and look at actual facts?
How, exactly, is it ‘rational’ to provoke the rest of the global community? How is it not rational to simply, ya know, stop exporting terrorism and implement the Additional Protocols? Who does Iran have to fear if it’s an ally of the US? I know it’s a nifty part of the narrative to simply repeat “two neighbors!!!” but one of them supported Al Quaeda and the other, gee, who’d a thunk it… deliberately went out of its way to make people think that it might just have WMD’s.
As for “ZOMG, Israel!” so what? Israel has waged a grand total of zero wars of aggression in its entire history and is currently at peace with the Arab nations that want to be at peace with it. Why would it be any different for a Persian nation? Or do you, perhaps, mean that since Iran continues to fund, train, arm and give safe haven to Hezbollah and Hamas that Israel might not take kindly to that? If so, again, the rational thing to do is stop supporting racist terrorist factions bent on genocide.
This is not rocket science.
And yet-a-freakin-gain yes, the citizens of Iran do indeed see things much differently than your narrative. They want democracy. They want warm relations with the west. They are more than happy to give up their nuclear program in exchange for warm relations and international aid. It is a particularly unsavory tactic to support the thugs who rule in Iran while pretending it’s about the people. It’s not. They’ve spoken and the clear majority want nothing to do with the narrative you’re selling.
The UN is considering another round of sanctions. This will be the fourth round site.
When there’s no reason to think that will make any difference.
The US.
Because one is a nation run by Jews who aren’t sitting atop oil reserves; the other is a nation of Muslims sitting on top of a bunch of oil.
Then they are in the wrong. They’ve been lied to so often by their leaders, that they have developed an inaccurately positive view of America in an overreaction the other way.
And “democracy” and “warmer relations with the west” are pretty much mutually exclusive, judging by history. We want dictatorships run by tractable tyrants; not democracy.
While I’ll agree that it’s rational for Iran to want nukes, it’s also rational for us to want them not to have nukes. Now, it would be wrong for us to act on that rational self-interest by, say, invading Iran, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we can do short of an invasion. Like, say, talking with them.
Why? We haven’t had a single reasonable explanation of that, just repetition of dogma. On one side we have Der’s standard Comic Book World with Lord Evil (played by the US) and Commander Virtue (played by anybody who opposes Lord Evil). But aside from its standard lack of nuance and general absurdity, it simply makes no sense. Israel might attack Iran even if Iran stopped attacking Israel (even though Israel has never attacked Iran) because, well, ya know, because of Lord Evil. And the US is such a threat to Iran even though Iran has attacked us, causing massive loss of life, and we retaliated by doing nothing at all, but since we’re Lord Evil we’re probably just biding our time. And…
But, seriously, how is it in Iran’s best interest to court, at the least, a regional arms race and at worst a preemptive strike? Who is going to attack Iran, and why, if they stop supporting terrorism and verify that their nuclear program is 100% peaceful?
I mean, if we’ve gone this long without knocking over any number of Arab regimes. Even the Saudis routinely thumb their noses at us, and we haven’t launched so much as a bottle rocket in their direction. So given that the Iranian people themselves do not want nukes, and that there would be no reason for hostility from the rest of the world if Iran just quit supporting terrorism and trying to export Khomenism, why is the rational path to nuke up rather than to just stop supporting terrorism and trying to export Khomenism?
It sure seems that several people here are willing to ‘fight to the last Iranian’. On one side we have the people of Iran, desperate for democracy, peace, warm relations with the west and more than happy to end their nuclear program and on the other we have folks enthusiastically supporting the tyrants who keep the Iranians down and supporting a path that, at best, will lead to sanctions and misery for the Iranian people if not military action. There comes a certain point where being willing to sacrifice the people of a foreign nation for your own politics is simply wrong, especially if it’s totally gratuitous. Yeah, even if they’re “only” Iranians. :smack:
That’s ridiculous. To just point out a few problems with your description of matters:
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They aren’t in opposition to America because they are “Lord Virtue”; you seem hung up on the idea that opposition to America or Israel by someone automatically means they like the other side. I don’t like any of the three. Iran needs to oppose America, because America is a predatory nation that will happily dominate or destroy them.
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Israel is pretty much irrelevant to this matter.
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America has repeatedly attacked Iran, directly and by proxy. We didn’t do “nothing at all”, we’ve constantly harassed, threatened and attacked them, including supporting an attempted conquest by their neighbor.
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We were their enemy before the regime you hate so much was even in office, and we’ve ignored equally bad or worse regimes. Their tyrannical nature, support for terrorism ( which isn’t even generally against us, anyway ), and all the rest is irrelevant. We. Just. Don’t. Care. We’ve never cared.
Because we don’t choose whether or not to attack someone according to whether or not they have harmed us or threaten to; we are concerned with whether or not we think we can profit from it, and whether or not they can fight back. And their religion and skin color. And it’s the rational approach to “Nuke up” because it demonstrably works. If they have nukes, we WILL treat them better, and we’ll never try an invasion.
We will. That’s what Iraq tried, and look what it got them.
I’d encourage you to reconsider this rather drastically 
Israel is always at the heart of anything to do with the region. More specifically, it has 150 or so nuclear warheads, a launch capability, hasn’t signed the NPT and is less than 1000 miles from Iran - so you’re talking minutes and not hours.
But it shows no interest in threatening their neighbors with nukes, or in even admitting they exist; it doesn’t negotiate with other people by publicly announcing that “we refuse to take the nuclear option off the table”; unlike America, which admits to nukes, has used them and rattles them at Iran. Nor does it have the world’s most powerful and expensive military; again unlike America. Nor has it recently conquered Iraq; yet again unlike America.
The Iranian government may not like Israel, but Israel is not a threat to it, much less to the survival of Iran as a nation. America is.
Please, you already gave us one silly Conspiracy Theory that you’re refusing to defend, don’t move on to yet another one so soon.
So, now we’re into believing that Saddam Hussein was conciliatory and actively cooperating with the UN and their mandates before America invaded? Not that I haven’t changed my opinion on the worthiness of the Iraq War, because I have, but good grief. What a load of BS.
And furthermore, I think its fair to note that it isn’t only the USA that’s concerned about Iran, its constant support of terrorism and its obvious designs on building a nuclear weapon…it’s pretty much the entire free world that opposes that outcome, as in the UN, a world-representative, governing body.
Why? Because Iran has shown time and again how irrational it can be, and the fact that their continual support of terror attacks against Israel and countries like Lebanon makes everyone else nervous about them having a nuclear weapon, because there are about zero guarantees that they will not either pre-emptively use it (likely against Israel) or fashion a low-magnitude variant of a nuclear weapon that can be given to a proxy group to use to absolve themselves of blame and condemnation.
Anyone placing Israel aside in this conversation is nuts. Of course its about Israel. When hasn’t it been?
Even if you stipulate, for the sake of argument, that the US is not an enemy of Iran, and further stipulate that the Iranians know that with 100% certainty, they still have enemies, or at least might potentially have enemies at some point in the future. And history has shown pretty clearly that nations with nukes fare a lot better than nations without nukes: Even if you never actually use them, it seems to get other nations to treat you with a lot more respect, and to be a lot more reluctant to act directly against you. Now, admittedly, there’s a sort of Prisoner’s Dilemma here, such that while any given nation in any given situation is better off with nukes than without, every nation would be better off if nobody had them. So you could say that there’s a sense in which it’s rational for a nation not to want nukes. But that depends on all other players of the game being rational, and with a game this big, with this many players, it’s just about guaranteed that some of them won’t be.
Or, put it another way: We clearly want nukes, since we have them, and haven’t gotten rid of them. Why is that, and why do not the exact same reasons for wanting them apply to Iran?