Though it may not be apparent by the level of readers, nor by the comments, there has been a ground swell of people asking, nay pleading for me to explain United States Foreign Policy. “We are desperate to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear technology, and its not like they are three year olds.” *yawn* Well you would be surprised.
So here exclusively to this post will be the exact policy of the United States, as I see and understand it, concerning Iran. It is my hope that we will be able to smite, I mean convert, er form a coalition of mutual understanding on this issue. Nuclear technology is to be a right of passage that is achieved through scientific understanding, by a government that is either held accountable to its people, or through Party Leadership. It is expensive and research dependent and accidents can happen, example Chernobyl, don’t worry Ivan we can barely see the third ear and second nose. It is because of these inherent dangers that the National Interest decision must be made; Is it easier to deter a power from using nuclear technology once they have it? Or to keep new powers from obtaining the technology to start up their own nuclear program?.
Due to the possibility of “accidental” launches, nuclear accidents, and possibility of proliferation to other groups, the United States has decided to prevent new powers from eating the apple from the tree of Knowledge. (Reference to the Bible, for all you heathens)
To drive this concern even further, is the fact that nuclear weapons, after WWII have become more of a theoretical threat than actual ones. The devastation that the first generation of these weapons have only been expanded upon through the years, thus making them too destructive to be used by any reasonably sound government official. An example of this would be during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Soviet soldiers had medium ranged weapons pointing at the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, and the very sobering death count which would have resulted, made Kruschev stand down. Mostly because if the U.S. was to get nuked he wanted it to be his decision, not by some illiterate peasant from Siberia. It is somehow refreshing to know that even communists have a disdain for the poor.
What we have with the “country” of Iran, an altogether different situation. The government is contradictory to its own constitution, and that being the least concern of its legitimacy, produces an apathetic voting public which allows a small religious conservative percentage of the population the power to elect a President like Ahmendinajad and hold him to little or no accountability. Not at all like our system of electoral governance. *wink*
This lack of accountability, as well as the vast amounts of rhetoric that Ahmendinajad spouts off about the holocaust and the need to destroy Israel, is not exactly comforting to see them obtain the means to follow through on these threats. The other principle is the United States looking to keep Iran from becoming a hegemonic power in the region. If anyone is going to tell the Middle East how to run their “countries” it will be us.
The difficulty has been that historically, Iran has been one of the dominate powers within the region. There is a reason it is termed the Persian Gulf, after-all rather than the Arabian Gulf. Other factors that make Iran an enigma is the lack of military advantages that are offered to an invading power. The first of these would be its terrain, which is very much able to sustain guerrilla style insurgent forces. The second of which is that it is much larger than Iraq, which would require a much larger pacification force. The third would be the population is much larger than that of Iraq as well.
We must then turn our attention to the personality of that population, for only then can we truly gauge the level of resistance that would exist both pre-and post invasion. While every nation believes it is the greatest, except Canada they are just interested in hockey cause I guess someone has to, the Persian/Iranians have one hell of an almost sound argument. The borders of Iran have loosely been the same since the Bible was written. So since like since the world was created for our friends in Kansas.
Iran has been the big boy on the block, hailed as the cutting edge of culture and technology and having people cater to their will. It is from this that we see the root of the distrust and rocky relationship that exists between Iran and the United States. One had been the epitome of power and the other now is. The resentment at the loss of this position combined with a fierce desire to reclaim this status.
Having a virtual baby on the International scene telling them they cannot have nuclear weapons, won’t exactly endear them to us. With such bad blood existing between the two countries there is little communication besides the rhetoric expressed by the leadership. If by some very strange circumstances we were no longer to consider the government of Iran an enemy, or even to learn that they have no desire to use the nuclear missiles or to provide these weapons to terrorist groups that they have provided for in the past, perhaps this policy will change. Until then we still have nuclear technology, and no Iran you can’t have any.
