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.
No comments:
Post a Comment