Why a Nuclear Iran is a Threat to the USA

Recently there have been a lot of articles floating around about why a nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel. I prefer however, to focus on why a nuclear Iran is a threat to the USA. Here are a few reasons, though this list is not all-inclusive.

1. Israel may be the "little Satan" according to the Iranian government, but the USA is still the "big Satan". It is generally a principle in international politics that you don't want a government that calls you Satan running around with nukes. This is especially true if you have troops in the country next-door to said government's state: ie, if you have troops in Iraq.

2. America has many allies who rely on it for protection. Like it or not, Israel is considered a US-ally. If the US is seen as failing to protect said ally by allowing Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, then the US could lose other allies, since it will have proved to those allies that it may not be willing to protect them in times of need, just as it did not protect its ally, Israel, in the case of Iran.

3. The Arab states are terrified of the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and would probably reply by trying to obtain nukes of their own, therefore a) destabilizing the region, leading to increased violence, (and remember, this is a region where the US has troops, and a region the US relies on for oil) b) undermine the non-proliferation goals the US has been striving for since the end of the Cold War. It is generally a rule of thumb that the more nukes the more countries have, the less stable the world is, and the worse off all countries are.

4. Iran has an unstable government; Iran also has a government that is cozy with terror groups like Hezbollah and perhaps Al-Queda of Mesopatamia as well. The region has many terror groups. This leads to two possibilities: 1. The Iranian regime topples, and in the chaos, terror-groups manage to get their hands on the Iranian government's nukes. Or the terrorists stage a take-over of an Iranian government nuclear facility. 2. The Iranian government sells or donates nuclear technology or know-how to a terrorist group. Needless to say, all of these scenarios are dangerous for the US.

5. During the Cold War, there was the concept of MAD, Mutually Assured Destruction. The theory went as follows: If country A has nukes, but knows that country B has nukes, country A won't nuke country B, because it knows that if it does so, country A will nuke it back, resulting in massive deaths to the residents of country B. Meanwhile, country A is going through the same thought-process as country B, and therefore, neither country will actually use their nuclear weapons. Plug in "USA" as country A, USSR as country B, and the equation is solved. For further explication, watch Dr. Strangelove. The problem with MAD however, is that it assumes that both countries are rational actors, who find nuclear peace a price worthy paying to prevent the massive deaths of themselves and their fellow citizens. Iran however, may not be a rational actor; certain government officials certainly seem to be proponents of a radical Islam that supersedes rationality. Furthermore, the terrorist groups that may gain control of the Iranian government's nukes are not rational: Their motto is to kill civilians of the West, in the name of Islam, even if it means killing themselves in the process. A suicidal group won't refrain from using nukes because they fear destruction - on the contrary, they will pursue their goals despite any destruction that occurs in the process of doing so. MAD only works if the people in control of the nukes are not willing to die for their cause.

These five factors point to some of the dangers a nuclear Iran would pose to the US, dangers that are being largely underestimated and under-reported by the mass media.

Israel, Peace and Gaza: Fragments

1. It is time to acknowledge two basic facts about the Arab-Israeli peace process: 1. Peace has traditionally been done piece-meal 2. Hamas and the PA are two separate governments, representing different geographic areas, and different constituencies, with different cultures.

Peace with Arab states has traditionally been done piece-meal, state by state. No one expected Israel to make peace with Egypt and Jordan at the same time, because they are two separate states. Rather, peace was made -successfully- with each state separately. To demand that Israel wait to make peace with Egypt until it was ready to make peace with Jordan, would have been ridiculous, and prolonged a cycle of violence.

The same approach should be taken to peace between Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, pursuant to fact 2: Namely, that Gaza and the West Bank are de facto separate states already. One of those states, Gaza, continues to condone violence and not recognize Israel's right to exist, while the other state, the West Bank, is making tentative steps towards providing security, and recognizes Israel's right to exist. Thus, to force Israel to make peace with the West Bank only when it is ready to also make peace with Gaza, is merely to prolong a cycle of violence, and is extremely unfair to both Israeli and West Bank Palestinian civilians. Once Israel makes peace with the West Bank, the West Bank can vote on the status of its relationship to Gaza. Once Israel makes peace with Gaza, a referendum can be held in both states for citizens to decide whether they wish to fuse or remain separate political entities. Yet this decision should be left up to the Palestinians themselves. To impose a bi-state (as opposed to tri-state) solution is imperialist, for it is to impose the vision of Western leaders on the region, rather than leaving the decision to the residents themselves. This vision ignores the realities on the ground, realities that were created by the Palestinians themselves, when, in a democratic election, the Gazans chose to vote for Hamas, and the West Bankers chose to vote for Fatah.

The Environment

1. Evolutionary theory claims that species adapt to their environment; perhaps humans are unique in that they also try to shape their environment so that it adapts to their needs, through the use to technology, tools, science, etc. This leads to a relationship in which we both shape and are shaped by our environment. Humans are unique in another way too, however: We are perhaps the only species that actively works to destroy our environment, by over-foresting, destroying rainforests, and drilling for oil in dangerous places, without proper precautions or cleanup plans in case of leakage.

Part of this has to do with the way we are wired: We tend to pursue immediate gratification over long-term goals. Immediate gratification means profit from environmentally harmful practices, despite the long-term dangers: Ultimately, we need a healthy environment to survive. Oil-profits won't do any good when the health problems caused by a damaged environment set in. And as for rain-forests, well, we need trees to provide us with the oxygen that allows us to breathe. Could there ever be enough trees cut down to severely lessen the amount of available oxygen, to the point where there is not enough for the human population? I hope not. But this is a question that industries should be asking themselves before they take the axe.

Part of the problem is that environmental protection demands that we overcome the way evolution wired us (instant gratification-prone) in order to pursue on of the goals that evolution imbued us with: survival of our species. Perhaps this is part of the reason meaningful environmental reform has proven so difficult to implement.

2. The environment and socialism: The US is an extremely capitalistic society, and offers less social programming than EU countries, which also tend to have more environmentally friendly laws than the US. Coincidence? I don't think so.

The companies that damage the environment tend to be companies that put their workers in danger (think of the recent deaths of West Virginia coal-miners and BP oil-workers), that damage resources in the third world, or resources of lower-class people in the Western world, but leave the resources of the wealthy intact, especially since the wealthy tend to be able to afford to pay for better resources than the masses. (One example of this would be bottled water.) Furthermore, the resources being harvested often deprive local people of livelihoods or homes, such as in the case of fishermen affected by the BP spill, or Brazilian Amerindians deprived of homes and livelihoods when the rainforest is cut down.

This damage is all done for the sake of profit. Who is that profit going to? The shareholders. But the major profit of course, is going to the major shareholders - ie the upper class. Thus, environmental damage is the result of capitalistic values that believe that profit is the altar upon which all other considerations must be sacrificed. These values serve an upper class that for the moment can afford to buy itself a healthy lifestyle despite the health damages it inflicts on others, and, empowered by profit, is too reckless to consider the day when money might not be enough to buy health in an ozone-free, tree-free, wildlife-free, world, full of pesticides, fumes, pollution and fossil fuels.