Young Writers Society

The news.

Iran is saying that they've finished enriching uranium. This uranium will, according to Iran, go to peaceful purposes, such as an Nuclear Reactor.

Unfortunately, Iran is run by an absolute lunatic, who has made several overt threats towards Israel. These aren't people on the street, but the leader of Iran!

Now, we learn they have enriched uranium, for use in nuclear reactors, or at least they claim to have it.

Let's just settle something: the difference between uranium used in reactor fuel and the uranium used in nuclear weapons is virtually none. That is, the uranium in a nuclear reactor, is weapons grade. The difference between the reactor and the bomb is the rate at which energy is released. With a reactor, the energy is released gradually, whereas the goal for a nuclear weapon is to make it release the energy all at once.

What's more, you can rig a reactor to be a "Breeder" reactor. Breeder reactors can create large amounts of plutonium, also used in atomic weapons.

Tell me if you can solve this problem: Iran Leader+Threat to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth+Enriched Uranium=?

Iran's leader is democratically elected, therefore he represents the people. Let's not forget that there have been plenty of threats made on both sides of this conflict.

Indeed - I totally agree with Bob. Your views of Iran's leader can be viewed almost parallel to what a lot of people think of George Bush and his administration.

Yep, I agree with Bob and Fire, especially the bit about George Bush. You've got to try and think on all sides of the argument. Not only that but just 'cause someone has the means to create nuclear weapons, it doesn't mean they will. After all, how many nuclear weapons do America have? It doesn't mean that America will use them (again).

More good news.

backgroundbob wrote:Iran's leader is democratically elected, therefore he represents the people. Let's not forget that there have been plenty of threats made on both sides of this conflict.

That's an evasion. Is it a good thing to have nuclear weapons in the hands of people who are willing to use them?

[quote="KayJuran]Yep, I agree with Bob and Fire, especially the bit about George Bush. You've got to try and think on all sides of the argument. Not only that but just 'cause someone has the means to create nuclear weapons, it doesn't mean they will. After all, how many nuclear weapons do America have? It doesn't mean that America will use them (again).[/quote]

If George Bush announces in a press conference that "England should be wiped off the map," would this not set of an alarm in England? ("Israel should be wiped off the map"- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)

Then, a couple of months later, Bush begins a press conference that says " "Like it or not, the English regime is heading toward annihilation," and also says ""The English regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Would England not be concerned? All I did to these statements was substitute "Zionist" with "English."

The difference between America having nuclear weapons and Iran having nuclear weapons is that America isn't likely to use them as a first resort.

We're talking about nuclear weapons here. The explosive power of smaller nuclear devices are measured in kilo-tons of dynamite.



This is Grable. Detonation:Artillery shell airburst, altitude - 500; Yield:15kt;

This was the first nuclear shell ever constructed and the effects are quite visible. The testing range had several vehicles set up nearby. A jeep was thrown 500 feet from it's initial location, just from the blast.

This would be enough to decimate a good portion of a city, and we have weapons in the Megaton range.

So, I suppose you could say that I'm not taking nuclear weapons lightly.

Well let's remember that Israel is packing these babies too. Therefore should Iran attack, they'd be placing themselves in danger, and this is what the Communist Bloc and the West both realized during the Cold War. However, since Israel has Nukes, and Iran doesn't, it's only sensible that Iran stash a few as well.

Now, I've heard tell Iran's president is a democratically elected lunatic, well what does that make Bush? Hadn't Bush threatened Iraq before invading? Insisting, even though inspectors came out empty-handed, and had no proof to show the public, that Iraq had 'weapons of mass destruction'? America doesn't need to use nuclear weapons as a first resort, because it's the world's leading military strength overall. What difference is a nuke to a massive war machine? The 'West' (which I, and probably many more people, see synonomous with the U.S) sees itself as the defenders of the world, it never makes a mistake, and always acts in the interests of the people. Well the Western leaders have the capability of draping this image over themselves, masking their true intentions. I say we don't question our own nations as much as we should, all we listen to is a group of people sitting at the country's political centre.
We'll know if they have nukes, and we only have to wait for the West to roll in their troops to know. If they didn't attack the Soviets during the cold war, it was because they knew they could strike back. The U.S. invaded Iraq because Bush knew Saddam had no 'weapons of mass destruction', therefore leaving him free to roll in with little damage done. (It's interesting though, isn't it? Why not invade N. Korea? There's an opressive regime, a place neading the ideals of democracy. Why attack Iraq? I'll say the obvious-easy oil. The money America is spending on its military could be used for far better uses...)

Well, first let me say that Israel having nukes is not relevant to the argument. Whether Israel has nukes or not has no bearing on whether or not Ahmadinejad and his Iranian government will actually USE nuclear weapons. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already prooven many times that he is bat$h** crazy, and will do ANYTHING, yes ANYTHING in his power to eliminate teensy weensy Israel, or has he calls it "the zionist entity". Let us also not forget that Iran actively sponsors terrorism. Hizbollah, a terrorist group sponsored by Iran and Syria, whose primary targets are Israel and the other western countries. The 1982 Beirut bombing, was carried out by them.
Let us also not forget that Ahmadinejad has stated on multiple occasions that Israel "must be wiped off the map" and other, definate smoking guns phrases. If this guy gets nukes, he WILL use them. On Israel first, America second, and who knows where next. But the bottom line is, he will use them.

So, the point of having nuclear weapons without being prepared to use them? Absolutely zero. When Grif talks about 'people who are willing to use them' that has to include the US and Israel: after all, why would you have them at all if there were no circumstances in which you were willing to use them? Unless there was a situation in which they would conceivably be deployed, they would be useless even as a deterrent. The only difference is that Iran has already been pushed nearly to that position, whereas the US is relatively secure - this shouldn't turn into a "we get them because we won't use them" argument, it should be a warning to the West that we've pushed Eastern countries so much that they're willing to risk invasion to possess any form of effective military equipment. Fanatics do not spring into government positions from nowhere - they are created by the actions of others; it's time to take heed before our 'foreign policies' turn the whole world into martyrs and extremists.

In all honesty, if Iran wanted a nuke it could buy one on the black market, or certainly buy the uranium et al. to make one. If we're really worried about them having nukes, we've got some serious work to do to stop it - what this little spat is about is a power play, and Iran trying to prove that it has and will exercise its sovereign rights as a country: calling the West's bluff, in effect.

I have to disagree with you Bob. In most cases that can be cited: (Russia v USA, Pakistan v India, Israel v Arab world N.Korea v NATO, etc) the potiential for nuclear deployment,(as in possession of nuclear arms)can be, and often is, a great deterrent for action. Thus having Nuclear Weapons, in most cases, is a deterrent to would-be invaders to stay out. However, most countries' presidents/PMs/leaders, etc are not bat$h** crazy, and calling for a legitimate country to wiped off the map. Say what you will about Dubya, even if he is stupid, he is not crazy enough to call for the destruction of any country, not even Afghanistan where the terra-ists were trained, or Saudi Arabia where they came from. THAT is the difference between Iran and everyone else. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes Kim Jong Il look like a pussycat.

And to your comment about "dictatorships dont spring up for no reason", let me just again, respectfully, disagree. Sure, they don't come out of nowhere, perhaps, but they do not spring up merely because of "oppression" whether percieved or not, by the west. There are many other reasons. For example, cultural and sociological reasons. Many people theorize that a major reason that Islamic-majority nations, especially in the Arab world have no REAL democracies is because the religion of Islam doesn't make the same separation difference that Judaeo-Christian thought does between the spiritual and the mundane. To them, Allah is sovereign not just over Heaven, and the laws of religion (in other words, what men and women must to do be good enough to get into heaven) but also over the mundane, real-world political life of human biengs. Im not saying I agree with it, but it is a theory. I do, however, believe that there is more than one reason for demagogery and dictatorships, and a large part of that reason is culture.

On August 2, France, Britain and Germany announced that they might cut off negotiations with Iran and pursue punitive sanctions if the country followed through on its threats to resume its uranium enrichment program. The announcement came a day after the Washington Post reported that American intelligence agencies believe the country is a decade away from producing a nuclear weapon-an assessment that differs with earlier timetables cited by Bush administration officials, who estimated that Iran was only five years away from such a weapon. Responding to the Post story, State Department spokesman Tom Casey dismissed the divergent timetables, noting that both the United States and Europe have concluded that Iran’s nuclear ambitions pose “a threat for the entire international community.”

But are nuclear arms in the hands of Iran’s rulers really a threat to international peace and security? To answer the question properly, one has to locate it in its political and ideological context.

Every power structure has to rely on an underlying implicit threat, i.e. whatever the oficial democratic rules and legal constraints may be, we can ultimately do whatever we want to you. In the 20th century, however, the nature of this link between power and the invisible threat that sustains it changed. Existing power structures no longer relied on their own fantasmatic projection of a potential, invisible threat in order to secure the hold over their subjects. Rather, the threat was externalized, displaced onto an Outside Enemy. It became the invisible (and, for that reason, all-powerful and omni-present) threat of this enemy that legitimized the existing power structure’s permanent state of emergency. Fascists invoked the threat of the Jewish conspiracy, Stalinists the threat of the class enemy, Americans the threat of Communism-all the way up to today’s “war on terror.” The threats posed by such an invisible enemy legitimizes the logic of the preemptive strike. Precisely because the threat is virtual, one cannot afford to wait for it to come. Rather, one must strike in advance, before it is too late. In other words, the omni-present invisible threat of Terror legitimizes the all too visible protective measures of defense-which, of course, are what pose the true threat to democracy and human rights (e.g., the London police’s recent execution of the innocent Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes).

Classic power functioned as a threat that operated precisely by never actualizing itself, by always remaining a threatening gesture. Such functioning reached its climax in the Cold War, when the threat of mutual nuclear destruction had to remain a threat. With the “war on terror”, the invisible threat causes the incessant actualization, not of the threat itself, but, of the measures against the threat. The nuclear strike had to remain the threat of a strike, while the threat of the terrorist strike triggers the endless series of preemptive strikes against potential terrorists. We are thus passing from the logic of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) to a logic in which ONE SOLE MADMAN runs the entire show and is allowed to enact its paranoia. The power that presents itself as always being under threat, living in mortal danger, and thus merely defending itself, is the most dangerous kind of power-the very model of the Nietzschean ressentiment and moralistic hypocrisy. And indeed, it was Nietzsche himself who, more than a century ago, in Daybreak, provided the best analysis of the false moral premises of today’s “war on terror”:

Nietzsche wrote:No government admits any more that it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest. Rather, the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one’s own morality and the neighbor’s immorality; for the neighbor must be thought of as eager to attack and conquer if our state must think of means of self-defense. Moreover, the reasons we give for requiring an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest just as much as our own state, and who, for his part, also keeps an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and a cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are now ranged against each other: they presuppose their neighbor’s bad disposition and their own good disposition. This presupposition, however, is inhumane, as bad as war and worse. At bottom, indeed, it is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because as I have said, it attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a hostile disposition and act. We must abjure the doctrine of the army as a means of self-defense just as completely as the desire for conquests.

Is not the ongoing “war on terror” proof that “terror” is the antagonistic Other of democracy-the point at which democracy’s plural options turn into a singular antagonism? Or, as we so often hear, “In the face of the terrorist threat, we must all come together and forget our petty differences.” More pointedly, the difference between the “war on terror” with previous 20th century worldwide struggles such as the Cold War is that the enemy used to be clearly identified with the actually existing Communist empire, whereas today the terrorist threat is inherently spectral, without a visible center. It is a little bit like the description of Linda Fiorentino’s character in The Last Seduction: “Most people have a dark side … she had nothing else.” Most regimes have a dark oppressive spectral side … the terrorist threat has nothing else. The paradoxical result of this spectralization of the enemy is an unexpected reflexive reversal. In this world without a clearly identified enemy, it is the United States, the protector against the threat, that is emerging as the main enemy-much like in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient-Express, where, since the entire group of suspects is the murderer, the victim himself (an evil millionaire) turns out to be the real criminal.

This background allows us to finally answer our initial question: Yes, nukes for Iran-and Noriega and Saddam to the Hague. It is crucial to see the link between these two demands. Why are Timothy Garton Ash, Michael Ignatieff and other internationalist liberals-who are otherwise full of pathetic praise for the Hague tribunal-silent about the idea to deliver Noriega and Saddam to the Hague? Why Milosevic and not Noriega? Why was there not even a public trial against Noriega? Was it because he would have disclosed his own CIA past, including how the United States condoned his participation in the murder of Omar Torrijos Herrera? In a similar way, Saddam’s regime was an abominable authoritarian state, guilty of many crimes, mostly toward its own people. However, one should note the strange but key fact that, when the U.S. representatives were enumerating Saddam’s evil deeds, they systematically omitted what was undoubtedly his greatest crime (in terms of human suffering and of violating international law): the aggression against Iran. Why? Because the United States and the majority of foreign states actively helped Iraq in this aggression. What’s more, the United States now plans to continue Saddam’s work of toppling the Iranian government.

As to Iran and nukes, the surprising fact is that the MAD logic still operates today: Why hasn’t the tension between India and Pakistan exploded into an all-out war? Because both sides are nuclear powers. Why have the Arab states not risked another attack on Israel? Because Israel is a nuclear power. So why should this MAD logic not work in the case of Iran? The standard counter-argument is that in Iran, Muslim fundamentalists are in power who may be tempted to nuke Israel. (Iran is the only large Arab state which not only does not diplomatically recognize Israel, but resolutely denies its right to exist as a state). Is, however, the Iranian regime really so “irrational”? Isn’t Pakistan, with its nuclear arms and its secret services’ ties to al-Qaeda, a much greater threat? Furthermore, two decades ago, Iran was brutally attacked by Iraq (with active U.S. support), so it has every right to feel threatened.

The last trump card of Western liberals is that nuclear weapons would help sustain the anti-democratic rulers in Iran, thus preventing a democratic revolution there. This argument got a boost a few months ago, with elections in Iraq and Palestine. Was perhaps Paul Wolfowitz correct after all? Isn’t there a chance that (Western) democracy may work and take roots in the Middle East, and that this unexpected process will change the coordinates of the entire Middle East? Isn’t the ultimate unresolvability of the Middle East conflict the fact that the anti-democratic Arab regimes need Israel as the figure of the Enemy that legitimizes their rule? Consequently, isn’t Bush merely accomplishing the work of Reagan? In the same way that Reagan was “naively” convinced that democracy would undermine Communism and that Communism would fall, thus proving all the skeptic specialists wrong, perhaps Bush will be proven right in his “naive” crusade for the democratization of the Middle East.

It is here that one approaches the crux of the matter: Such an optimistic reading relies on the problematic belief in a preestablished harmony between the global spread of multi-party Western democracy and the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States. It is precisely because this harmony can in no way be taken for granted that countries like Iran should possess nuclear arms to constrain the global hegemony of the United States.

Indeed: welcome to Nineteen Eighty-Four: make your people feel threatened, and they will follow you anywhere.