Perhaps I’m misunderstanding your argument, xtisme, but are you saying that since a keen eyed Iranian would notice some differences between their situation and for example Iraq, and the fact that you haven’t yet invaded them, they shouldn’t feel threatened?
I don’t think the fact that they haven’t been directly invaded yet counts as a strong argument that it won’t happen. The Bush regime was quite overt with their hostility towards Iran, and if your armed forces were not already tied down in some other conflicts, it’s not that unlikely that some strike might have taken place against Iran.
Iran was put on the evil empire list. That puts them on the defensive. They are as aware as we of stories that Israel is going to blow up their nuclear research . You would build an expensive facility underground to protect it if you were them. It is logical and not necessarily nefarious. Most countries have underground facilities. We sure do. We have lots of them. Is that because we are doing illegal things there? It must be ,because it is a sign of guilt to many people.
I would rather chance living in a world with a nuclear Iran than start wars and invade countries on the mere hint of that possibility. Ultimately, I believe that countries want to choose how they want to live and be able to defend themselves against attack. A nuke allows Iran to do that. There’s a lot to be said that no nukes have ever been used in a terrorist attack, despite North Korea and Pakistan having them. The knock on Iran is that its been developing nuclear material for years, but despite the annual flare up of tensions in the Mid-East, no nukes have been used on Israel at all.
Then I think the best thing to do is to figure out what we did during those off years and do that, instead of this talk about bombing or invading. We have to start treating people as we would like to be treated, and that is not threatening bombs if they don’t do what we say. As far as I’m concerned, Obama should make an unequivocal announcement that military options are off the table (lets face it, political talk holds about as much water as a net). Doing this would show the Iranians that we are at least willing to save them face and give something up in exchange for disarmament talks. If it is true that Iran really fears invasion, this should placate some of those who are yelling the loudest.
But you are proposing that idea as if the Iranians are Americans. Basically, they should give up every advantage and card at the table to assure the US that they’re not bad, and give in to our demands without us giving anything in return other than we’re not going to attack them. Its a pretty sorry bet for Iran.
We have to treat them as equals and consider their motivation equally valid. They should not give us any access or anything until we give them assurances that we won’t invade them, and as far as I’m know, that hasn’t happened yet. Lets face it, so far all we’ve caught them doing is building secret nuclear plants. It is not logical to assume they are absolutely going to turn them into nuke factories. What capabilities they have are completely capable of being a simple civilian nuclear power plant; its just that 1) they were doing it in secret and 2) they could use those plants to also make bombs
With the outcry over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is no wonder they did it in secret. We don’t believe them when they said its for civilian use, so why shouldn’t they have done it in secret? Nobody would believe them either way, so might as well hide it. There is no avenue that they could have followed in which the US would say “Ok, its for civilian purposes, carry on”. Why should they have inspectors crawling around in a perfectly normal nuclear plant if its not for weapons? We are assuming guilt before there is evidence for it and that is wrong
At some point, we have to stand back and realize we cant police everyone, and a 1% chance of some terrorists getting their hands on nukes is better than the 100% chance of the US or Israel attacking a country developing it.
I wanted to ask why we treat the high possibility of an Iranian invasion as ok but the small possibility of Israel attacked as worse. Of course the answer is obvious: the US is friends with Israel and not Iran. Personally, if Iran is invaded, I would feel just as bad for their people as I would if Israel was attacked. Innocent people being caught up in international politics and war is bad no matter if they were our ally or not
Iran said they will allow inspectors in to the new plant. Sounds pretty suspicious. Of course if they asked to inspect our nuclear facilities we would be horribly offended at the slight to our sovereignty. We not only make nuclear weapons but have used them .
They have allowed inspectors into their other facilities as well. Their current sites are inspected and their processed uranium is under observation of the IAEA.
Of course the double standards are obvious, but they have signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty which is inherently unfair in that way, and it requires inspections as part of the safeguards for non-nuclear countries not to obtain nukes. Nonetheless they have signed the treaty and should follow it, or else revoke it.
A little humor there. There are people who will not be satisfied whether they allow inspectors on their homeland or not. Being open and saying they will let them in should remove suspicion. it will not. Some will think. hmm if they are allowing inspectors this must be a dummy plant and the real one if still hidden. You can not win.
That’s good news but given all the starts and stops we’ve encountered over the last few years, I want to wait until inspections are done before declaring any kind of moral victory.
It won’t matter to the conservatives though. Like they did to Hans Blix in Iraq, they will simply refuse to believe any inspections that doesn’t have discovery of nukes.
