Dear Glenn,

The popular historian and political commentator Gwynne Dyer has a new book out called "The Mess They Made". In it, he has a chapter entitled "Iran's Putative Bomb" wherein he lays out all of the (fairly obvious) reasons why Iran is no nuclear threat to anyone - least of all the US or Israel - and why the US might attack Iran anyway. He argues that Iran has been developing nuclear technology for a very long time and quotes from a NYT article from 1995, wherein certain "experts" state that Iran is making faster progress on its nuclear program than expected and will have a bomb within 5 years. Of course, we're still waiting and these claims about an imminent Iranian bomb go back about 20 years. As Dyer points out, Iran may want to be a "threshold" nuclear power (like about 40 other states in the world right now) but there is little evidence that it is actually developing nuclear weapons. Indeed, all of its nuclear activities have been legal and within the parameters of the NPT.

As Dyer argues, Iran's biggest sin is to have successfully rejected and defied the US. It is the US that is pathologically fixated on Iran, to the point that the US cannot make reasonable compromises or approach Iran with anything resembling rationality. Only Cuba elicits so much American hysteria and bile, for basically the same reason - it has successfully defied the bully, so it must be punished.

If the US does attack Iran - which does remain a highly probable, if absolutely insane - scenario, the results will be catastrophic. Iran will be smashed, but US power in the Gulf will also be broken and what little remains of the US standing in the world will be destroyed. Then, Americans will have to ask the clear question of what is wrong with their system that it enabled the inmates to take over the institution and could do nothing to stop them. Along the way, Americans may want to reconsider the incredibly unhealthy and enabling relationship wtih Israel that has been a major factor getting the US into this mess.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine

Dear Scum (and I don't mean that in a derogatory way at all!)

The problem with the scenario you lay out is that it requires Iran to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. Why would Iran do that? It knows that such an attack would be absolutely suicidal - Israel has already (via Shimon Peres) threatened to destroy Iran if it were attacked with nukes, and it certainly has the capacity to do so. If, somehow, Israel was destroyed and did not manage to get a single nuke off in retaliation (a virtually impossible scenario, given that Israel is now believed to have ballistic missile-capable subs) the US would destroy Iran itself, citing the obvious and intolerable danger that it poses.

Iranians are not suicidal. It is in Israel's interests to portray them as suicidal madmen, because that is the only way that the first-strike idea makes any kind of sense, but it is not true. The Iranian leaders who control foreign policy and the nuclear program are the same as they were a few years ago, before Ahmadinejad, when Iran was widely portrayed as led by "moderates" and was holding out an (ignored) olive branch to the US.

The real threat that a nuclear Iran poses to the US and Israel is that it would be much harder to push around. The threat of bombing Iran, which American politicians are joking about and which Israel is encouraging, would be off the table. A nuclear Iran might well lead to an arms race in the region, but it would also render immaterial the enormous conventional military advantage that the US and Israel have over any local states. That is what the US and Israel are afraid of - a nuclear Iran changes the power equation, makes their militaries much less useful, and becomes a regional power whose interests must be taken into account. In short, the ability of the dominant Western state and its major client (though calling Israel a "client" of the US is probably stretching things) to continue dominating the region would be at end. Of course, it's sacrilege to think that the local people of the region might actually have a say over their own fates.

I should also point out that it is not at all clear that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Iran probably wants the technology to become a "threshold" nuclear state but, as I mentioned in my last post, about 40 countries in the world are at that stage. And Iran certainly has the right to develop its own nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Being a country that is liked by the West is not a condition of the NPT.

A few months ago, Jacques Chirac stated the obvious truth that Iran was not a threat to anybody - he pointed out that if Iran tried to use nuclear weapons (which it does not have) against anyone, it would be destroyed. Chirac was widely condemned and denigrated. Yet, there is no question that he was right. The real question here is why it is so hard to state the obvious and enormous logical problems with this assertion that Iran - nuclear or not - is an "intolerable threat". The answer, I think, is the one I have given. This has to do about destroying the one major regional state (other than Syria) that is not in the US' pocket, that, indeed, is actively opposed to US domination and control.

Finally, in the case of Iran, the US history of being humiliated by Iran during the hostage crisis plays a big role in why Americans are so insane when it comes to dealing with Iran. An awful lot of Americans want to avenge that slight and cannot conceive of dealing with the Islamic Republic because of it.

Sincerely,

Shaun Narine