As such this is the main ingredient for another batch of Blow-back.

1. Every nuclear reactor has a unique fingerprint. The reactor that produced the bomb can be determined by the mixture of isotopes in the bomb fallout. If an Iranian nuke were set off, we would be able to tell where it came from pretty easily. All credible physicists, including the ones working on the Iranian nukes, know this.

2. Making a nuke isn’t difficult in terms of science, but is quite difficult in terms of money and engineering. While Iran may be able to build one, they really are not very likely to be able to build more than a few. Setting one off in a hostile situation will almost certainly ensure that Israel, the US, Russia, Britain or France (depending on the scenario) annihilates Iran. Given the reality of #1 above a terrorist use of an Iranian nuke is almost certainly not a reality. Much more likely is a “lost” Russian nuke for the terrorist scenario.

3. Iran, like Russia, China, Cuba and many other totalitarian states, can best be defeated through information sharing, not confrontation. I am always amazed that we fail to learn the lesson of the Cold War. Make the bad guys spend money that a centrally planned economy can’t afford and then tell the people of that country what idiots their leaders are. It worked in Europe and it will work here.

Since the U.S. decided to overthrow the Iranian government as a favor to the British Foreign Office in the 1950′s, the U.S. government has been threatening Iran unless it behaves like a client state. Look at a map of Iran, and you will notice that practically every country that borders it has a significant military presence. The U.S. government is making the same mistake it made with Japan in the 19th century. After being subjected to Americna gunboat diplomacy, the Japanese intellectuals concluded, quite logically, that if they either became an imperial power like the Western powers or to be looted and partitioned like China. They chose the former, and the result was the slaughter of millions of Chinese.

If I were an American official who cynically wanted to Iranians to acquire nuclear weapons, I would goad the Iranian government by threatening them in precisely the same manner as the Bush administration.

Philosophically: If the U.S. has the right to prevent other countries from building nukes, wouldn’t that suggest that other countries have some sort of claim on whether we can do the same? If a country isn’t posing a clear and present danger of attacking us, and we haven’t declared war on them, where would we get such an authority? As we saw in Iraq, bluster does not necessarily equal threat.

Personally: I agree with Eisenhower – “All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler…I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.”

Israel carried out extensive war games activities earlier this month with a range almost exactly equal to the distance between major Israeli air bases and the Iranian nuclear reactor at Nantaz. Twenty years ago Isreal bombed a similar site in Iraq, and mere months ago hit a reactor site in syria.
Isreal will strike Iran first which will prompt responses from Shiite militant groups as well as the Iranian government. At the first sign of distress on behalf of Isreal, or the mere mention of the word “Nuke-U-Lerr” by Iran, the US will enter the fray, guns blazing, shocking and awing some more muslims to the wrong side of the dirt. This will happen, watch.

I wholeheartedly agree. Unfortunately, now that he’s a lame duck, Dubya very likely doesn’t give a shit. He knows that the chances of him ever being held accountable for anything he does are pretty much zero. So why not try to roil up more problems with Iran and force his successor to stay in Iraq longer? It’s not like it’s his kids getting shot at over there.