It seems the Bush administration is planning to threaten Iran with bombing attacks on its nuclear research and development facilities, painting the possibility of the Iranian regime developing a nuclear weapon in the next 5 to 10 years(opinions differ) as the most serious threat to the US security in the world today. This threat is taken to be the possibility that the Iranians will ship such a bomb to “terrorists” who will find some means of delivering it to the US and exploding it. Sound familiar. As the propaganda machinery cranks up to scare the people of the US into supporting a manifestly illegal and thoroughly irrational action once again, I think it worth examining the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, and the role it played in the 50 years of cold war between the Russians and the US. This was a time when there was no question of the existence of nuclear weapons on the other side, and no doubt about the intention of each side to use them, at least in so far as formal policy options were concerned. And yet they were not used, as each side recognized that to do so would, under the best of for-seeable circumstances, lead to their own destruction, even if a surprise attack were launched first. There is no such symmetry between the US and Iran. The US has the capacity to destroy Iran utterly, and is threatening to use it. The Iranians, even if they developed a bomb, could not use it first against the US, even by terrorist proxies. They would be committing suicide as a nation. To do so just for the privilege of killing a lot of Americans would be irrational. in order to justify implementing their policy of preemptive war, it will be essential for the Bush administration to define the Iranian leadership as insane, meaning that the Iranians will not give their survival and that of their nation the highest priority,. There is a much more realistic interpretation of Iranian mind set and intentions, assuming that the Bush administration claim that the Iranians intend to develop a bomb is true. This was made clear by a memo from Donald Rumsfeld circulated to the cabinet in the early days of the first Bush administration, which is cited below.

“The collapse of the Soviet Union has produced centrifugal forces in the world that have created new regional powers. Several of these are intensely hostile to the United States and are arming to deter us from bringing our conventional or nuclear power to bear in a regional crisis.”

In other words, the threat from Iran is that it would use a nuclear bomb to deter an attack on themselves. And indeed they might. If they had such a weapon they might get it somehow into a US city, (they can fit in a large suitcase) announce to the world that it was there, and that they would no longer accede to US threats. And while this would be far from the force balance of the Cold War, it should suffice to protect them from threats of bombing in a cause that very few Americans would agree was worth the loss of a US city. This is the situation that the Bush regime describes as “nuclear blackmail”. That is, the Iranians asserting the right to self defense in an effective way. In the Cold War, it was called stability.

A bomb would have to be tested, and it takes a great deal of time and equipment to make the material for even a simple one. Even given Bush administration policy of denying the Iranians an effective defense against attack, it is not clear why, with an occupation going badly in Iraq (87% of the population wants the US to leave according to recent polls, about half to leave immediately), and with the certainty of inflaming public opinion against them even further in the Muslim world, it is in such a hurry to attack Iran. Could it be an effort to return to the glory days of popularity after 9/11 when their bellicose policies intimidated the world and played well at home? Could it be to install a client regime in Iran more friendly to US exploitation of their oil? Could it be to complete the encirclement of Russia, which still retains the power to destroy the US at the push of a button, and has a population that may be suspected of preferring some version of the previous system, with all its ills, to the capitalist kleptocracy they have now? Hard to say what the Bush administration hopes to accomplish. Its certainly not protecting the US from another non-existent threat from a relatively powerless country. Could it be the Bushites that are insane?

This version written on or about April 19, 2006; posted May 16, 2006