Christians Doubting Bush

Iran's Nuclear Threat & Nuclear Deterrence

Update In 2007

Iran's Nuclear Threat

Because Iran's nuclear facilities, dispersed around the country and deeply underground for the most part, cannot be destroyed by conventional aerial bombing, there are only two ways to eliminate them: multiple nuclear bombings or a ground invasion.

The former is not an option because given the wind patterns, the radiation fall out would wipe out Europe. The latter used to be an option if we could have incited Saddam against Iran as we did in the 1980s, and then supported him from the air and/or with ground troops, but not any more.

The only way for us to invade Iran now is to reinitiate the draft to raise an army, but the country is in no mood for another war, let alone the draft. We know it. Iran knows that we know it, and is making a mad dash to become a nuclear power before things change.

If or when Iran becomes a nuclear power, it will fundamentally alter the nuclear equation. Every weapon invented in history has been used, and used to their fullest extent. The only exception has been the world's nuclear arsenal, and the key to this exception has been the deterrence of mutually assured annihilation. But underlying that deterrence is the assumption that getting killed for killing your enemy isn't worth it. Islamic fundamentalists, however, believe that getting killed while killing non-Muslims is a fast track to into the arms of 72 virgins in paradise.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's President has already stated that when Iran becomes a nuclear power, he will share the technology with the rest of the Muslim world. Once the Muslim world become nuclear powered, it will only be a matter of time before someone from Al Qaida or Hezbollah, if not a national army, decides to claim his virgins by taking out an American city.

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