Dec
22
Is It Time to Pop The Iranian Nuclear Pimple?
December 22, 2009 | 2 Comments
Oil is abundant again; some reports have it that OPEC alone has 6 million barrels a day of spare unused oil capacity. Iraq, which has some sort of exemption to sell all it can, and Venezuela, which is selling on the cheat are pushing the price lower along with the U.S. Federal Reserve expressing some attention is due to the low value of the dollar driving oil lower still more. Meanwhile Iran’s leaders are busily setting up the nation’s citizens for joining the ‘Armageddon Club.’
It’s hard to imagine a country voluntarily joining the Armageddon Club willingly. This writer and many of the site’s readers remember air raid drills, bomb shelter construction booms, mutually assured destruction – about 40 years of underlying terror and fear with a military industrial complex bleeding the nation the whole way. Nuclear weapons do little; they frighten others making the owner a target. History shows now, it’s not a real smart choice.
The energy supplies of the world are changing. Much more is yet to come. The value of Iranian economic threats is meaningful but have little contemporary importance. Yet somehow having a nuclear weapon seems to be a means to move the fulcrum of power away from the Iranian leaders so their lever has more length.
It really doesn’t, rather the threatened will likely move to destroy the fulcrum itself. One can fairly expect Israel to blast the nuclear fulcrum up pretty thoroughly someday soon. One can hardly blame them, the Iranian leaders painted targets on their chests as well as pushing out the fulcrum. Not real smart guys, they might wind up with a shattered stick held in cold dead hands.
Meanwhile, history can misguide. Many Islamic fundamentalists and extremists are in love with Germany’s failed National Socialist Party views. One might think they’d get to the end point; the ‘Thousand year Reich’ didn’t make it two decades. Instead it ended in burning rubble and deaths not just of millions, but the theological premise itself. That was followed by the Stalinist period in the old Soviet Union, which itself later fell apart, Yugoslavia, and even communist China realized that some freedoms must be answered, at least in part. Theocratic nationhood and suzerainty over others is a failed dream that seems to end in disaster – falling at the end on the innocents being lead more than anyone else.
Some say that the U.S. is to blame, which is in part a truth, yet the facts are the Nazis and its Axis allies were busily working towards a nuclear weapon. At that point in history, the ‘soft west’ had recovered from its weak character, and simply used the atomic bomb not just once, but twice. The evil of the dream, a thousand year reich, lording over all it could survey, was answered by a rising western character, delivering total destruction.
The election in the U.S. of the most leftist President possible is now marking a low point in western character. If it weren’t for the race matter of President Obama being of African American ancestry, the polls would be worse. He’s still getting a lot of charitable and guilty support. But the election itself, whether the race point is included or not is marking a western low point, how far it will bounce back is the matter that has meaning.
For Iranians that should mean the noteworthy threats such as closing the Strait of Hormuz will be answered. The answer will mean many more Iranians will suffer than anyone else, perhaps by an order of magnitude or more. The Strait may well close, but it won’t stay closed and the price to Iran will be grave, indeed.
For all the landmass of the planet, Iran is a really small place. On the scale of nuclear weapons, including both fission and fusion types, a few short minutes can see the whole nation paved in fresh radioactive glass, with everything alive vaporized or carbonized. The power exists in single ships at sea, a couple of missiles, or a few planes. It’s something to be thinking about in Iran.
But at the core of our humanity, the thoughts of our consciousness and our intellectual sensibility, it’s the people of Iran that we must concern ourselves with. The people of Iran would be the main collateral damage. Its up to them to get the brakes on the leadership, and it may not be possible. No outside support can do it or even make much difference.
From outside Iran the view looking in, there doesn’t seem to be much hope, the Israeli answer seems most probable. If Israel does move, and succeed, the people of Iran might have a short, but much better and new chance to recreate a nation. If Israel doesn’t or fails . . .
We must consider the safety of the rest of humanity, so putting the people of Iran at extreme risk. We can hope the infective pus of the Iranian leadership can be broken out from within, or perhaps pricked out by an Israeli move, that the friends of Iran can help treat it and clean it up. But we must prepare our own character for the worst, the people of Iran fail and the danger grows for spreading the infection, forcing an answer to destruction with destruction.
The other lesson from the past century overlooked by Islamic leaders is that during the First and Second Great Wars of the twentieth century in Europe it was Christian vs. Christian with a death toll numbering tens of millions taking up about a decade in all and having spread world wide. The noteworthy result is even more devastation and death can take place now in just minutes – and we are vividly aware of that fact. It’s not just about weakness or softness in character. Social character is very malleable, it can change very fast indeed, after all, we are free to think what we like here – a fact that should tremble the knees of any intelligently thinking aggressor.
Life is a like a skin enveloping the Planet Earth. There is but an infective pimple growing in Iran, it will break out somehow or another posing the question – will it be healed from within, helped along by a pricking, or need a cauterization by fire?
However it goes, oil prices will spike, for a little while or longer and almost everyone in the west will survive and prosper. One wonders if things go on long enough, badly enough will there even be an Iran or anyone there left alive?
Lets all try to focus; it’s the infection that deserves attention. Comments are encouraged.
Comments
2 Comments so far
Iran is not crazy for wanting a nuke. The rational argument is for defense.
They have an ongoing beef with Israel, as do all the middle-east Muslim countries. And Israel is a nuclear power. But it is also a small country, and one nuclear bomb on that country would have a greater relative effect than several bombs on Iran. So mutually assured destruction (MAD) is the ruling theory.
MAD theory insists that first among decision-criteria is the question: “What’s the worst that could happen.”
For Israel, one hit on their territory would cause moderate destruction, but lingering effects and the increased possibility of additional strikes suggest that non-fanatic Jews might elect to bug out. That leaves fanatics in a poisoned land, in charge of 200 nuke bombs. Aii-yi-yi !
In such an exchange Iran would be hit several times, and that nation would be badly hurt. But Iran is a classic nation with an ethnic organizing core and a long history. They don’t have safe havens to which they can escape. So they would stay and suffer and recover…and never forget.
Does all this sound unstable and horribly violent to anyone?
Finally, the US must remember that much of the non-western world is not happy with our behavior over the last couple of decades. If there is a nuclear exchange centered about Iran, we will be considered enablers. The reaction won’t be pretty. I don’t think such a war would spread; rather, the reaction (fuelled by overflowing and deep-seated anger) would be diplomatic and economic. It would be very painful…perhaps catastrophic to the US. It would definitely not be in the best interests of the average American citizen.
Do I think whipping up a nuke or two is the best choice for Iran. Actually, no. But I do understand the reasoning behind their direction.
many countries in the world have nuclear weapon and they are not going to use it against at least their neighbors-as they realise that it can be danger for themself. but iran is not famous with its care about its own citizens, but its hatred to israel is well-known. i think russia usa and isreal (france and china also support this position) have to do everything in oder to prevent such situation