Whatever the ultimate wisdom of possessing nuclear weapons, the idea that one country--specifically, a nuclear-armed country--can dictate whether another, non-nuclear-armed country may be allowed to develop such weaponry has always struck us as hypocritical at best. We are not naive; we realize that might makes right, and that a nuclear power will predictably claim certain prerogatives over less powerful states. Still, we wonder if this pre-emption is more trouble than it's worth.
Recently, the United States sought to assure Israel that Iran will not achieve "breakout" nuclear capabilities in the immediate future, and, further, that if Iran engaged in a "dash" for nuclear weapons, the US and/or Israel would have time to consider military options. The idea was to convince Israel to forego unilateral military strikes against Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program.
We have no desire to see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's finger on the nuclear trigger. But the more we think about it, we wonder why this thought scares everyone so much. Of course, Ahmadinejad's inflammatory, anti-Semitic, anti-American, Holocaust-denying rhetoric strikes most of the civilized world as somewhat, shall we say, unhinged. But since when is sanity a pre-requisite for nuclear club membership? Stalin was hardly a paragon of mental stability.
Israel worries that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat. Of course, Iran could say the same thing about a nuclear-armed Israel. Israel is a solid democracy with generally liberal values and has proven itself a trustworthy member of the international community--its questionable track-record when it comes to settlement-building notwithstanding, and the same cannot be said of the repressive Iranian regime. Again, though, there's a certain eye-of-the-beholder quality to this: Plenty of people both within and outside of the Middle East remain unconvinced of the Israeli government's fundamental beneficence.
Still, let's take the "existential threat" argument at face value; let's say that Ahmadinejad is sincere in his desire to wipe Israel off the map. Does this mean that the US--or even Israel--should launch a military attack, potentially setting off a conflagration that drags the entire region into war, just to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons?
No.
Bear with us.
When Pakistan went nuclear in 1998, everyone wondered just how long would it be until this at-best-semi-democratic country launched a nuclear attack on its hated rival India? Could India, itself a nuclear power, resist the impulse to launch its own pre-emptive attack? After all, these countries had fought three wars already and were in a state of perpetual hostility. It was only a matter of time before mushroom clouds bloomed over the subcontinent.
Except. . .they didn't. Even when the two countries went to war in 1999, they managed to refrain from launching nuclear missiles at each other. What went right?
Mutually assured destruction. Balance of terror. Phrases hardly conducive to peaceful slumber. Yet they do contain a certain dark logic. These concepts kept a cold war cold for some 50 years. We may fear that Ahmadinejad--as opposed to Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, or, more recently, Singh and Musharraf--is just crazy enough not to care about the vaporization of Iran that would follow immediately upon any nuclear attack on Israel, but we don't think this is likely for two reasons:
One, despite his presidential title, Ahmadinejad has limited authority in Iran; true power resides in the theocracy, and the Ayatollahs are actually a little more sensible about the issue of nuclear annihilation. More importantly, while nuclear weapons remain just an idea, Ahmadinejad can rant and rave to his petty heart's content; if Iran actually gets the weapons, though, he (and his bosses) will quickly realize that inflammatory rhetoric may be taken very seriously and result in unwanted martyrdom.
With great power will come great responsibility, whether the powerful want it or not.
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