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Iran claims its nuclear program is purely for peaceful purposes, yet their President says that Iran will "wipe Israel off the map" (I can't find the exact news article, but I'm pretty sure I either saw it on the news, or read it, or made it up). After all, Iran is a Muslim country with strong sympathies towards Palestine, and Israel and Palestine aren't exactly on good terms. Israel also has nuclear capabilities, so it only makes sense that Iran would want nukes of its own to discourage an Israeli attack. Same thing with the aftermath of WWII. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were as much a way of prematurely ending a bloody war as they were demonstrations to the Soviet Union that the United States had the capability of bombing them back to the stone age. Of course, Russia got nukes, and the Cold War heated up, so to speak.

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I wouldn't trust Iran as far as I could throw them with those nuclear weapons.

Nukes always make international situations worse.

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a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear/military capability is the only solution, unfortunately. it will be horrible and probably invite retaliation, but under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.

we'll let canada handle this.

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Canada, nothing. We'll arm the Israelis and have them do it themselves.

Israel has proved that it has the political fortitude and ability to defend itself.

Unlike America, sadly.

I don't think Iran's going to nuke Israel; look how close the 2 countries are. On the other hand, though, us "white devils" in America had better be careful.

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This will not bode well for the world. I would never trust a country who has either called for the destruction of another country. While I would easily prefer a diplomatic solution to this, I am afraid that it is possible that military force may have to be used here.

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GENGHIS KHAN!!!!!

Israel is plenty armed already, don't worry.



they're not THAT close. to get from Iran to Israel you have to go through Iraq AND Jordan. and Iran wouldn't think twice about eradicating the Palestinians if it also meant destroying Israel.

I agree, if Iran builds nuclear weapons, they're not exactly....trustworthyl.
But it's kinda sad, the US can have hundreds of thousands, even millions of [s]nuclear bombs[/s]weapons, along with Canada, Russia, UK, and everyone else, but if Iran wants some, they can't have any. And who's the last country to start a big war? That's right. The US. The same country who has the most bombs.
So I think that we should either let everyone have nuclear weapons, or let no one have nuclear weapons.
Edit: Gar. Did I write that? My bad. I meant weapons, not nuclear bombs. It looks like I said that so much in my paragraph I just....just....arglblblblblbl *runs away*

The US DOES have nuclear weapons, but we wouldn't use them on people whose only crime is being born Jewish.

The US will never use nuclear weapons against civilians again (I hope).

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

first of all, Canada doesn't have nuclear weapons. second, the US having nuclear weapons is not the same as Iran having them; the US is a democracy and Iran is a theocratic dictatorship. democratic countries are automatically more trustworthy -- democracies never go to war with each other, for example, whereas dictatorships frequently go to war both with each other and with democracies. the government of Iran is psychotic, and while a lot of things can be said about Bush, if he gets too out of line there are methods in place to get rid of him (not the least of which being the fact that he can't be president anymore after the next election), whereas the mullahs in Iran have been in power for almost 30 years now and they're only getting more radical.

if we could get rid of all the nuclear weapons in the world at once, i would be all for it. the problem is that there's no way to force the dictatorships to abandon theirs, and therefore the democracies have to keep theirs as well and just try to make sure that no more dictatorships get their hands on any.

The bottom line Code J is using can be very misleading.

Yes, the U.S. invaded Iraq and therefore has been aggressive.
Yes, the U.S. is the only country to use nukes in war.
Yes, the U.S. has the most nuclear weapons in the world.

If that's all you knew, you'd think the U.S. was worse than Iran. You'd likely conclude that the U.N. should treat the U.S. as a terrorist nation, a rogue nation that must be invaded and Bush tried for war crimes. Right?

Let's ask a few more questions first.

Did the U.S. use nukes during the Cold War?
Did the U.S. use nukes in the 90's, or in response to 9/11?
Is the U.S. building more nukes?

The answer to these three questions is a very big no.

In fact, the answer to the last question is that the U.S. is destroying its nuclear stockpile. This has been the trend for the last 16 years--all new research is going towards maintaining what nuclear warheads remain, as well as dismantling them.

Over time the U.S. and Russia/Soviet Union agreed to a series of treaties to limit and reduce the nuclear weapons stockpile (SALT I, SALT II, START I, START II, SORT). We used to have almost 35,000 nukes.

Now we have about 10,000, but only around 5,000 are usable according to the START declaration for 2003. By the time both Russia and the U.S. fufill the SORT treaty we will have around 2,200 nukes each.


That you want everyone to have nukes is quite frightening. There are some governments who would use them without a care. Neither the U.S. or Russia are among those, and the fact that we survived the Cold War without a single nuke fired is a testament to that. (We did, admittedly, come close more than once)

That and the world has tried to police itself as far as nuclear proliferation goes. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act, proposed by Ireland and signed by most nuclear powers (including the U.S. and Russia) as well as hundreds of others, works to prevent development and spread of nuclear weapons technology.

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Well, Israel is armed. They've got nukes, and if we don't do anything, they will. Iran wants Israel wiped out. Israel knows this, and I don't think they'll sit idly by and wait for nuclear apocalypse.

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After reading and considering all of your imput, I suppose you all are right. I just guess nuclear weapons in general is what bugs me. It just seems dumb that even though we have thousands of nuclear weapons and when one country wants to build one we automatically start thinking of even invading them. But, yes, I really didn't think/research about the subject as long as I should've.



Well, I guess the way I said that sounded kind of wrong. I, in no way, like nuclear weapons, and don't think they should even be around.

I don't know, I can't see how Iran is an immediate threat to Israel. I just put that "wipe Israel off the map" line as simple postering - a way to curry the favour of Arab states and Islamic hardliners. The existance of Israel, after all, is a wound to Arab pride, not to Iran. I really don't see the motive, and I don't think that Ahmadinejad is the kind of guy who'd go into a expensive war for the sake of jihad.

Besides, there may be the possibility that Ahmadinejad is exaggerating his nuclear capabilities.

The actual answer to that question isn't so much a NO as a "Not yet, but we are in the design stages."



http://www.sltrib.com/nationworld/ci_3678364

I'll toastpaint that for now.

Before I continue, let me state that I think that Iran with nukes is risky at best, and disastrous at worst. However, I think one can understand a couple of reasons why they might want them.

First, I wonder if they are doing this to get respect. In a sense, you can imagine that it feels like it is at the kid's table. We can have nukes, but you guys don't get to. They want to be treated like a major power, and for some reason they think owning nukes is the way to do that.

Second, they hate Israel. Israel is widely suspected to have nukes, and in this thread people have said they do. I bet they feel a lot like the USSR did when we had nukes before them. Their greatest enemy has them out-armed, so they dang well better catch up. They want to bomb Israel off the map, they say, but I think it's more likely they would rather not be defenseless against possible future Israeli aggression.

I'm not saying that Iran should have nuclear weapons, as the consequences could be very grave, but I can kinda see where they might be coming from.

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i disagree with you son sme points, democracy is not automatically more trustwothy, simply because for all its fine talk about people's power, we're really at the mercy of the majority in elections, and once that's over, we're at the mercy of majorities of senators and whatnot that often do not act in the interest of their constituents.

i do agree with your point about if nuclear arms could disappear, but unfortunately they won't and america is not the police force of the world. as a large country we have a duty to protect certain people just because of our wealth, but the largest reason the middle east community despises us overall is because we tried to meddle there in the first place. it has to do with our overthrowing of Mossadegh in the fifties, and reinstalling the Shah shortly after the country had finally begun to elect democratic leaders. going in there and fighting more is going to create more ill will and more terrorism just like our last/curret pre-emptive war. has EVERYBODY already forgotten how poorly that's still unfolding?

i don't think nuclear arms are necessary for anybody, but they exist, so the idea of complete disarmament is impossible. i dont think the answer is to wipe em off the map, and i know that they know they will get wiped off the map if they start invading neighboring countries. remember when people freaked about india and pakistan having nukes. they still have 'em, and they still are in dispute with each other, and they haven't used 'em. the truth is that nuclear arms are more of a symbolic possession now than a true threat because everyone knows that if they were to be deployed everyone else would deploy theirs too.

i don't know how to fix this easily because there is no easy fix, but sending our too-small and too-conventional army into Iran is suicide, in terms of American life and diplomatically as well.

I thought Congress canceled the bunker buster development and withdrew all funding for it:



And even then, a bunker buster is (from what I understand of them) nothing like other "mini nukes." The U.S. used to have nuclear artillery shells designed to wipe out entire divisions in the field ...



Bear in mind, Racer, that if Israel attacks anybody the entire Middle East will go to heck in a handbasket.

The reason the first Gulf War was so successful was that the coalition--or the U.S. specifically--asked Israel NOT to join the attack. Even when Saddam tried to provoke a response by firing Scuds their way.

If Israel had assisted with the invasion all the Arab states that were helping with the first Gulf War would have pulled out their support. Some might've even attacked Israel in response. The situation would have spun wildly out of control.

Nuking Iran will almost assurredly cause all of the Middle East to turn on Israel in force ... to say nothing of what the rest of the world will think. Not even Bush would support a nuclear weapons strike on Iran, especially in the current situation.

In many ways Israel is in the same state as Iran or North Korea would be. The moment they attack anyone--especially with nukes--they are going to get plastered. A conventional attack would provoke a multinational response; nuclear attacks will result in many of said attacker's nations hanging from a rope after being tried for crimes against humanity, because such an attack would be completely unprovoked.

I think the leaders of Israel know this. Or I hope they do. However, if both Iran and Israel have nukes, then we're going to have a standoff like India and Pakistan. That's not good.

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but a democracy doesn't only mean free elections. that's a big part of it, but it also requires rule of law, concern for human rights, and freedom of expression/dissent. it's all of these things taken together that makes democracies more trustworthy. and, as i said, democracies never go to war with each other.



the Shah was actually very popular and, while not democractically elected, was a relatively benevolent dictator. i think it's a dangerous fallacy to say that the reason the Middle East hates the West is because of interference. that's not the reason. they resent our very existence.

That's simply a poor excuse that permits governments, such as ours (on occasion) and others to act in imperial ways. I'm serious here, Iranians have been screwed over so many times, you have no idea! from the moment they began to blossom into a true country, they have been stymied by other countries, and not only america. I don't solely blame america for their anger at europe and the west. For example, Iran was actually split up by Russia and Great Britain into areas of influence. Iran was an independent country, and under russian law, north Iran was technically part of Russia, simply because they WANTED it to be. and Iran has had trouble with their own leadership over the years, too.

the whole "they hate our way of life" line is a total cop-out that refuses to accept any responsibility (and i'm only asking for a little acceptance from americans, not the entire burden) for the current situation. Various places in the middle east have their own reasons for their anger, and certainly the actions they make in response aren't correct. But, Iran specifically is rather justified. not only did America depose a freely elected government in the fifties, but we also reinstalled dictatorship when the revolution happened in '79.

so democracy can be under a dictator? no, i'm sorry, that's simply not what it means. just because we don't like someone's government does not make it not democratically elected. Hugo chavez is a leftist leader, but he won fair and square (TWICE!) and it is Venezuela's right to self-determine regardless of how Americans feel about that. Democracy literally means rule by the people but now we accept it to mean representative government under an elected leader. it has nothing to do with how benevolent somebody is (which by the way: overthrowing an elected leader and installing a dictator? you can't honestly argue that is a positive action!).

all tension and argument aside, you should try reading a book called The Modern Middle East: A History by James L. Gelvin because very few people get much more than a mention of middle eastern civilization in history classes and it is a helpful academic book with no agenda whatsoever (besides, i suppose, education) that simply presents middle eastern history.

i agree with a lot of what Trev-MUN said, too and the whole point aobut israel's inaction during the persian gulf war is an excellent point. and i also agree with the point trev makes about attacking iran (particularly nuking) and i would extend that to say that if we attacked iran even with conventional weapons they would probably try to whack Israel pretty badly, and it would spin out of control in that manner.

and even if they (Iran) tried to evacuatee all palistinians and bomb the isralis it would be hard to evacuate a whole country with out the other half of its inhabitants catching on.

well, they do hate our way of life. not the people, mostly. the Iranian people would prefer to live in a more Western style, which is exactly why the more radical factions (the mullahs, etc) are so violently opposed to the West -- because it represents a threat to the religious way of life that they believe everyone should live by.



i didn't say that it was a democracy under the Shah, i just said that it was better under him. he was a dictator, but as dictators go he was pretty good. obviously a democracy would be superior, but the problem is that elections do not equal democracy. just because you have elections, it doesn't mean that your country is democratic. there's much more to it than just that.

Who says the Iranians would try to evacuate (or even warn) the palastnians? I'm sure that the powers that be in Iran would gladly nuke their own people if it meant getting rid of the Israelis. Such antisemitism. Perhaps someone should buy these jerks a history book. Turn it to the page that tells about what we did to the last guy that tried to kill off all of the Jews.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

Keep in mind, too, the Palestinians aren't exactly the same people as the Iranians. The Iranians are predominantly Persian and Azeri, and the Palestinians are Arab.

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I'd hate to not take Iran seriously and have a major "event" on our hands in a few years.

Especially considering the fact that Iran has pessimistically been deemed 5 years from a nuclear bomb, and optimistically 12 years, and in some cases even unable to make one, I think that there is still time to solve the issue diplomatically. Assuming that elections are held fairly, there's also still time for Iran to elect a liberal (liberal by Islamic standards, mind you) head of state such as Mohammad Khatami (who spoke out against nukes) before the creep they have now.



Has anybody seen this news story? Apparently, Iran cutting off their oil would put gas prices at $11-$12 a gallon. That would result in riots and somebody nuking Iran. All I can say is that this worries me. Much more than North Korea did back in 2002 and 2003.

I don't think that's going to happen. It's more of a scare tactic, used to "justify" raising prices this summer. I don't trust George Soros any farther than I could throw him.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

It's not the petrolium supplies that are our main concern. The US has plenty of petrolium reserves to last us a long time. I'm with SR on this: it's a scare tactic intended to make us consumers feel they are justified for charging outrageous prices for gasoline.

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I know, I know, I merely put that as speculation. But then, there's Ahmadinejad, "Oil has not reached its real value yet!".

aye-yae-yae....

Check this out. If that isn't a clear declaration of "hey, we're gonna build nukes" I don't know what is.

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