Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Iran's Nukes
Iran is restarting its nuclear program, and by most accounts North Korea and Pakistan already have nukes. The world is getting more dangerous, is it not?
Or is it? After all, Americans no longer live under the threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of the U.S.S.R. China is much more open than it was twenty years ago. The issue nowadays seems more to be the security of nuclear secrets with dangerous regimes.
Despite the rantings of Charles Krauthammer, I doubt the leaders of Iran are eager to suffer total nuclear erasure as a response to their use of a nuclear weapon against Israel, Europe, or the United States. The professions of divine inspiration from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad don’t sound any less creepy coming from the mouth of our own president. That doesn’t mean either of them is insane. We have lived with nuclear weapons in the hands of oppressive regimes like China and the Soviet Union for decades. This is not much different.
I am similarly skeptical of claims these regimes might slip a weapon to a terrorist organization: the U.S.S.R. supported Palestinian terrorists for decades in the middle of the twentieth century and they didn’t. They realized what all nations realize: who’s to say the sale of a nuclear weapon couldn’t be traced before or after the weapon was detonated? Who’s to say that the terrorists, once acquiring the weapon, wouldn’t sell it to another organization? Who’s to say that terrorist buying the weapon isn’t a CIA agent or being watched by the CIA?
Those are a lot of questions to answer, and no government would be willing to stake its existence, and the existence of its nation, on the answers.
By all credible accounts, Hussein wanted to acquire weapons for the same reason the U.S.S.R., China, India, France, Great Britain, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran want them: as a deterrent. As a weapon of last resort should their nation be invaded.
That’s not to say that there aren’t risks that a nuclear weapon might be stolen or compromised by a low-level official that has been bribed. It’s just that these questions are ones of security, not government decisions.
The United States has a lot to offer to nations in the way of security assistance. The United States might offer aid to nuclear-armed nations with security concerns the same way it has offered that aid the former Soviet Republics.
In a New York Times story today, concealed on page 11, Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, acknowledged that, “As a matter of law, Iran has the right to do all the nuclear activities, including enriching uranium.”
Despite that, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are not eager to see Iran do that. Sanctions are possible, though Russia or China might veto them, and how moral are sanctions for a country that is doing what it has a right to do?
A more constructive approach seems expedient. How about working on an agreement to help safeguard their nuclear sites? Iran may be unwilling to reveal their locations or operations, but surely the United States or the European Union can offer assistance in the way of vetting personnel or security systems.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 3:22 PM 
