Let's Not Make the Same Mistakes in IranIn the current New York Review of Books, review of Kenneth Pollack's new book The Persian Puzzle goes into great detail about the Iranian nuclear situation:
By David Kay
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A21
Bush, Iran & the Bomb
By Christopher de Bellaigue
1 comment:
I just read de Bellaigue's essay in The New York Review. Going into the essay I had three questions that I was hoping he would answer, and he really didn't deal with any of them. They are:
1. However willing the Iranians were to bargain for trade concessions with oil at $30/barrel, are they equally willing at $45-$50 a barrel? Does not the European strategy hinge on Iranian desires for trade? What if the only thing the Iranians want is more nuclear technology?
2. Why does Iran need nuclear power? De Bellaigue sort of assumes it is all perfectly reasonable for the Iranians to want nuclear energy, but lots of countries that are huge oil importers see no need for nuclear power. Nuclear power has all sorts of problems -- it has become impossible to build a new nuclear plant in the United States, for example. Why does Iran need a nuclear fuel cycle if not for weapons?
3. If Iran were to obtain nuclear weapons, would it be deterrable? We are comfortable with nuclear weapons in the hands of democratic governments or other inherently conservative governments (such as the old Soviet Union or China) because those countries are deterrable. We could not let Saddam Hussein get such weapons because he had proven in a long history that he was not deterrable. Are the mullahs of Tehran deterrable, or not?
Of these questions, the third is the most interesting and essential to understand.
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