The True Reason US Fears Iranian Nukes

They Can Deter US Attacks

In the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen expresses surprise that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “starting to make some sense” and “wax rationally”. Cohen specifically cites this statement from the Iranian president last week:

“Let’s even imagine that we have an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. What would we do with it? What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American bombs with one bomb?”

Iranian President Mahmoud AhmadinejadCohen’s surprise notwithstanding, numerous Iranian leaders, including Ahmadinejad, have long made the same point. And it’s a point so obvious it should not even need to be made. No rational person takes seriously the claim that Iran, even if it did obtain a nuclear weapon, would commit instant and guaranteed national suicide by using it to attack a nation that has a huge nuclear stockpile, which happens to include both the US and Israel. One can locate nothing in the actions of Iran’s regime that even suggests irrationality on that level, let alone suicidal impulses.

That Iran will use its nuclear weapons against the US and Israel is rather obviously the centerpiece of the fear-mongering campaign against Tehran, to build popular support for threats to launch an aggressive attack in order to prevent them from acquiring that weapon. So what, then, is the real reason that so many people in both the US and Israeli governments are so desperate to stop Iranian proliferation?

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