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| Is Iran's current intent to make nuclear weapons? |
| Yes, and that's bad |
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45% |
[ 15 ] |
| Yes, and that's good |
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3% |
[ 1 ] |
| Yes, but I don't know how I feel about it |
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6% |
[ 2 ] |
| No, let's everyone get off their backs already! |
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6% |
[ 2 ] |
| No, but I still think they should play nice... |
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9% |
[ 3 ] |
| Not sure |
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30% |
[ 10 ] |
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| Total Votes : 33 |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Fri Oct 02, 2009 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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Which of these assertions is untrue?
1. Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.
2. Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
3. Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
4. Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map?"
5. Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
6. Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
7. Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
8. Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
9. Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/01/cole/ |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
I definitely agree that Israel giving up its nuclear weapons in return for the allowance of peaceful, constantly on-going inspection of Iran to ensure it remains free of nuclear weapons would be a great deal for everyone involved, if it could be worked out.
Israel doesn't really need nuclear weapons so long as it has Western allies, especially if giving them up were to ensure Iran lacks them as well. |
Why should Israel be penalized for Iran's truculence? This sets a horrible precedent. |
It's not a penalty unless Israel suffers because of it. Nuclear weapons are only as valuable as the security they offer; if that security can be obtained through other ways, nuclear weapons hold no especial defensive value.
| TheUrbanMyth wrote: |
| Iran has no business demanding that ANY nation give up its nukes. THEY broke the treaty, so we reward them by trying to pressure Israel to give up its nuclear missiles? |
I'm not trying to pressure anyone to do anything, nor suggesting it. All I said is that I think it would be a reasonable trade-off for Israel. You're correct that Israel probably wouldn't play ball, though. |
But how does Israel obtain security? Giving up nuclear weapons only means that they are way out-numbered when it comes to conventional[/ forces. That is the "especial defensive value" that nuclear weapons have to Israel. But you're not suggesting that the Arab nations should disband their armies, are you? Therefore it's a penalty as Israel loses a powerful deterrent and gains nothing by it.
If it WERE a reasonable trade-off for Israel, they probably would play ball. But I think your definition of "reasonable" is probably quite a bit different from Israel's. If you lived in a region surrounded by enemies who've attacked you in the recent past and who've said at various times that they plan to destroy you...your definition would probably be pretty similar to Israel's. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Which of these assertions is untrue?
1. Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the U.S.
2. Belief: Iran is a militarized society bristling with dangerous weapons and a growing threat to world peace.
3. Belief: Iran has threatened to attack Israel militarily and to "wipe it off the map."
4. Belief: But didn't President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threaten to "wipe Israel off the map?"
5. Belief: But aren't Iranians Holocaust deniers?
6. Belief: Iran is like North Korea in having an active nuclear weapons program, and is the same sort of threat to the world.
7. Belief: The West recently discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapons plant in a mountain near Qom.
8. Belief: The world should sanction Iran not only because of its nuclear enrichment research program but also because the current regime stole June's presidential election and brutally repressed the subsequent demonstrations.
9. Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/01/cole/ |
Ha ha, Juan Cole calling an opposing opinion about the Iranian leadership 'racism.' So true to form.
Still, most of what he says is true, even if he remains one of the most obnoxious commentators on the region. But the last paragraph is a mess.
| Quote: |
Belief: The international community would not have put sanctions on Iran, and would not be so worried, if it were not a gathering nuclear threat.
[Juan's Belief]: The centrifuge technology that Iran is using to enrich uranium is open-ended. In the old days, you could tell which countries might want a nuclear bomb by whether they were building light water reactors (unsuitable for bomb-making) or heavy-water reactors (could be used to make a bomb). But with centrifuges, once you can enrich to 5% to fuel a civilian reactor, you could theoretically feed the material back through many times and enrich to 90% for a bomb. However, as long as centrifuge plants are being actively inspected, they cannot be used to make a bomb. The two danger signals would be if Iran threw out the inspectors or if it found a way to create a secret facility. The latter task would be extremely difficult, however, as demonstrated by the CIA's discovery of the Qom facility construction in 2006 from satellite photos. Nuclear installations, especially centrifuge ones, consume a great deal of water, construction materiel, and so forth, so that constructing one in secret is a tall order. In any case, you can't attack and destroy a country because you have an intuition that they might be doing something illegal. You need some kind of proof. Moreover, Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC. |
The whole point is that the Qom facility WAS secret, and the centrifuges are in a number insufficient to produce nuclear material usable for nuclear power. As Juan should admit, that'd be a danger signal.
What an apologist.
Last edited by Kuros on Mon Oct 05, 2009 10:33 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Oct 05, 2009 8:35 pm Post subject: |
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A very "sane" Op Ed in the Times today by HDS Greenway.
| Quote: |
Opinion pages are shouting the alarm. And it�s not only voices from the black lagoon of the Bush-Cheney era. We seem to be painting ourselves into a corner of worst-case scenarios when it comes to Iran.
I would like to see some of the assumptions questioned more thoroughly. Why would a nuclear Iran necessarily set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East? The conventional wisdom is that the Sunni Arab powers fear the power of Shiite Persia, and would immediately reach for their own bomb should Iran produce one.
But Israel�s Arab neighbors did not rush to get their own bomb when Israel was building up a nuclear arsenal........ |
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06iht-edgreenway.html?_r=1&ref=global
DD
http://eflclassroom.com |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 6:03 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
I would like to see some of the assumptions questioned more thoroughly. Why would a nuclear Iran necessarily set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East? The conventional wisdom is that the Sunni Arab powers fear the power of Shiite Persia, and would immediately reach for their own bomb should Iran produce one.
But Israel�s Arab neighbors did not rush to get their own bomb when Israel was building up a nuclear arsenal........ |
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06iht-edgreenway.html?_r=1&ref=global
[/quote]
Probably because said Israel's Arab neighbors believed that America would restrain Israel (if for no other reason than American thirst for oil).
After all America has a powerful carrot/stick to wield (the 3 billion in yearly aid) and a veto on the Security Council. It's in America's interests to have a peace/ceasefire in the Middle East in the long run.
But America has no such counterbalancing hold over Iran, thus leading the Sunni Arabs to seek their own counterbalance in the form of an atomic bomb. |
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Reggie
Joined: 21 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2010 5:56 am Post subject: |
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One thing I found out the other day is there's an Iranian guy around here that works at the nuclear plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. I don't know much about the guy, except that he's Iranian and when his American wife died in a freak accident, her sons who lived far away were pissed off because they wanted to have a funeral for her, but he buried her quickly in accordance with Islam before they could even make it into town.
It surprised me that an Iranian national would be working at one of our nuclear plants, especially that one. One of my relatives worked there during WWII and helped make the bombs we dropped on the Japanese, and it makes me wonder just how far our educational system has fallen that we have to hire Iranian citizens to work at our nuclear plants. |
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