Iran, Germany, and the five permanent security council members have sent delegations to a a villa outside Geneva to discuss developments in Iran’s nuclear program. Given the weather’s going to be nice, I suppose there’s likely to be worse ways to spend a weekend. What prompted this? Iran’s new hole in the ground near Qom.
This particular hole in the ground is intended to be a duplicate of Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Enrichment is the process by which natural uranium – which is mostly uranium-238 – is filtered, and the concentration of uranium-235 is increased. You can either do a little filtering to make fuel for nuclear power plants, a bit more filtering to make fuel for research reactors (like Lucas Heights), or do a lot of filtering and get 80-90% pure HEU. Any idiot with a country engineering shop can build a bomb out of HEU once sufficient quantities are available, which is why it kind of bothers other countries that Iran is developing the capability to make the stuff.
So, given that Iran already has one enrichment plant, why did they build another one, and why has it come to light now?
To answer the second question first, it appears that the Western intelligence community found the site, figured out what it was. Once the Iranians knew the game was up, they decided to announce its existence. This piece by James Acton argues that this is against the rules of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which required the Iranian government to inform them of the decision to build a new facility as soon as the decision to build it is taken; the Iranians dispute this, saying that they had withdrawn from that particular rule, and they had the right to do so. Juan Cole, in a post on “myths about Iran”, argues that this isn’t a big deal.
So why did Iran build this facility? It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than that they wanted a secret facility that they could make bomb material with, should they choose to take that step. While IAEA inspectors visit their known enrichment facility, it’s pretty much impossible for Iran to make bomb material; if they kick the inspectors out, it will take them months to turn the low-enriched uranium they have into a bomb. With a second, secret enrichment facility, they could make bomb material on the quiet – or, as suggested here, have a safe place to enrich the fuel after kicking out the IAEA, should it ever come to that.
But it’s equally clear that Iran wants the option of a weapon because they’ve been repeatedly threatened by the regional nuclear-armed military superpower and the world’s global military superpower. Under the circumstances, wanting an effective deterrent is entirely rational. And until an Iranian government feels confident that those threats have gone away, the chances of getting Iran to change its mind on its nuclear program appear minimal.
Wanting an effective deterrent may be rational, but instead of being rational, Iran’s leadership have decided to sow a whirlwind instead.
There is nothing “rational” about Iran going out of its way to antagonise, as you describe them, “the regional nuclear-armed military superpower and the world’s global military superpower.”
A series of new nuclear reduction and non-proliferation initiatives have been taken up as recently as last week by the newly strengthened G20. The aim is to make nuclear “deterrents” unnecessary for anybody. Iran’s leadership are playing brinkmanship games when the playing field has just moved on. Iran are still playing by the old Bush-era rules when the USA, Russia, China and the rest of the world have just started to get serious about removing nuclear arms from the world’s strategic stockpiles. Even Russia isn’t prepared to wear this latest maneuver by the theocracy.
And if Iran’s leadership don’t change course, they really are going to have some new holes in the ground.
Mercurius, the US is going to go after Iran no matter what the pre-text, possessing a nuke, Sharia law, electoral fraud, support for Hamas…its not the excuse that’s important, its the dynamic behind why they are doing it, and that dynamic is having control over the world’s most oil rich region.
Religious fanatics, nukes and oil.
Sure beats lawyers, guns and money.
Thank you very much, Dr Oppenheimer.
“lawyers, guns and money”
What’s going on around here? Seems everybody’s come over all Zevon.
A completely nuclear-free world makes invasion of pariah states like Iran not less likely but more likely.
If Saddam had a nuke in 2003 he would still be in power in Baghdad today.
Love them or hate them, nations in possession of nukes don’t invade each other.
The greatest danger of nukes in the hands of pariah states is whom they might pass them on to.
Mercurius, the regime wants to survive.
They suffered a US-backed invasion by Iraq in the 1980s. They watched Iraq get invaded by the US for no particularly good reason in 2003.
Are they nuts for thinking they might be attacked?
“The greatest danger of nukes in the hands of pariah states is whom they might pass them on to.”
Or a repeat of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a non-nuclear Third World state…
It’s hard to come to any conclusion other than that they wanted a secret facility that they could make bomb material with
Er.
Given that Israel (nuclear armed) is continually threatening to bomb the Nantaz facility and that Iran has offered to purchase enriched uranium for their reactor (so much for non-cooperateion, eh?), I’d suggest an easier conclusion is that Iran wanted an insurance facility where it can enrich unranium for energy.
Erm, offering to purchase enriched uranium five days after your secret facility is busted doesn’t sound much like cooperation to me.
Elaine: it’s not big enough to supply a commercial reactor.
If you’re trying to enrich uranium for energy supplies, you build one pilot plant with crappy centrifuges until you get it right, and then you build a full-scale plant with decent stuff.
Then they should take a leaf out of Gaddafi’s book. That turd is going to be floating around long after all the others have been flushed…
Not at all. They’re nuts for being, well…nuts.
Gaddafi’s daughter was killed by a US air raid.
A nuke in the hole may have saved her.
That aside, Gaddafi is the Paganini of despots. The rest are off-off Broadway compared with him.
Mercurius, there’s a difference between odious, which the Iranian regime most certainly is (though considerably less so than any number of other regimes which we are quite happy to coexist with) and irrational, which they do not appear to be.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise that the Iranian regime are the rational Holocaust-denying, homosexuality-denying, uprising-crushing, Millenarian theocrats.
I’ll be sure to keep my eyes out for the irrational ones. I’m sure they’ll be clearly distinguishable.
Robert: But it’s equally clear that Iran wants the option of a weapon because they’ve been repeatedly threatened by the regional nuclear-armed military superpower…
? Do you refer to something other than threats by Israel relating to the potential nuclear weapons facility? ‘Cos if that is all you are referring to, the solution to the threat is staring them in the face.
It’s worth repeating that the West is not even trying to stop Iran from having nuclear power per se. From The Guardian last year:
“Iran would consider suspending uranium enrichment if the country were guaranteed a supply of nuclear fuel for its power stations, a senior Iranian diplomat said yesterday.
Western officials responded cautiously to the remarks, pointing out that Iran had already been offered a legally binding fuel supply in a multinational proposal put forward in 2006, and renewed in June….
A negotiating group representing the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany offered Iran help in building a nuclear power industry, including a guaranteed fuel supply, in 2006, on condition Tehran halted enrichment. A team led by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, presented a slightly modified version of the offer in Tehran in June.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/03/iran.nuclear
I agree with both of you I think.
Iran’s nuclear policy is one of the only rational ones they seem to have.
Scott Ritter in the UK Guardian – well worth a read mate…….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/25/iran-secret-nuclear-plant-inspections
The facility in question, said to be located on a secret Iranian military installation outside of the holy city of Qom and capable of housing up to 3,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium, had been monitored by the intelligence services of the US and other nations for some time. But it wasn’t until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence “scoop” provided by the US, but rather Iran’s own voluntary declaration. Iran’s actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama’s hurried press conference Friday morning.
Beware politically motivated hype….
Rather than representing the tip of the iceberg in terms of uncovering a covert nuclear weapons capability, the emergence of the existence of the Qom enrichment facility could very well mark the initiation of a period of even greater transparency on the part of Iran, leading to its full adoption and implementation of the IAEA additional protocol. This, more than anything, should be the desired outcome of the “Qom declaration”.
Calls for “crippling” sanctions on Iran by Obama and Brown are certainly not the most productive policy options available to these two world leaders. Both have indicated a desire to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran’s action, in declaring the existence of the Qom facility, has created a window of opportunity for doing just that, and should be fully exploited within the framework of IAEA negotiations and inspections, and not more bluster and threats form the leaders of the western world. etc, etc, etc.
My own opinion is that all countries with nuclear enrichment ability and weapons are immoral, lying, violent, inhuman meglamaniacs.
Why would the US want enough weapons to destroy the world over and over again?
Ditto Russia and China!
Why would Israel want up to 400 nuclear bombs? Ditto Pakistan, India, France, UK, etc, etc.
It’s time these politicians were treated in psychiatric institutions rather than given the run of the world.
Guys, it’s not the number of centrifuges that matters. It is the quality of the finished product (including potential neutron poisons, etc). Also a lot of work has to be done when higher concentrations are reached to avoid some horrendous criticality accidents. I wouldn’t quite go as far as Roberts comment about farm engineers but basic, functional weapons are relatively easy (unless you’re North Korea who seem to have a fizzle fetish).
Mervyn – the answer to the last paragraph is simple – paranoia and the whole “what if we can’t destroy all of their stuff before it’s launched at us”. I agree that the numbers involved were/are insane. China has quite an effective deterrent with only several hundred which leads to the following comment…
The shear bloody potential (physically, visually and psychologically) of that mushroom cloud (even without a viable long-range delivery system) has unfortunately made it the next best friend to 3rd-world tinpot dictatorships who wish to survive. At least in the 70′s all they were after was SAM systems from the USSR…
My apologies in post #17: Scott Ritter in paras # 1 and 2, myself para #3.
They suffered a US-backed invasion by Iraq in the 1980s
This is a jarring inaccuracy in an otherwise well written post. The tiny amount of US aupport for Iraq came after the US Embassy invasion, and as I said – it was tiny – and the US would have been within its rights to bomb the mullahs back to the stone age. Mind you, the mullahs have subsequently travelled half that journey voluntarily.
If Jimmy Carter had supported the Shah, and handled the hostage situation appropriately, Iran may not be the loose cannon that it is today.
If I were Iranian, I’d be hoping to hell that my government were working on a nuclear bomb. Seems to be the only way to keep the US from coming in and stomping all over your house.
Different type of bomb with the DPRK. They went for a plutonium-based bomb, which is much harder to construct than a uranium-based one, and will fizzle embarrassingly if you don’t get the plutonium sphere to implode just perfectly.
The enriched uranium one is almost laughably easy to build, but fortunately, uranium enrichment is difficult and tedious.
Rockstar Philosopher,
I cannot speak for Iraninans, but I believe I know how I would feel under these circumstance. I would think I would prefer for a government I could genuinely assist in the selection of to set its mind and efforts to reducing the horrendous problems of high indebtedness, poverty, environmental degradation, law and order, social unrest, educational standards and the many other issues that my nation is facing rather than having what is effectively a self-perpetuating theocracy that is concentrating on blowing huge amounts of the natural and human resources of my country on a pet project designed merely to shore up its position both domestically and internationally.
Just a (long winded) thought.
Only the mullahs?
What about the collateral megalithicification of the rest of the population?
If I were Iranian, I’d be hoping to hell that my government would stop authorising riot police with live ammunition to fire on me. Different strokes, innit?
Tell that the the Pakistanis. They’ve got nukes and US airstrikes on their soil. Splendid!
If you’re against nukes for the USA, Israel, Russia, China etc., how can you be pro-nukes for Iran? Seriously, this thread has produced many WTF moments for me.
oh come on Mercurius, don’t be so disingenuous. Pakistan has US airstrikes because they can’t deal with a problem they made for themselves on the border of a warzone.
The Iranians need nuclear power and they need a nuclear deterrent, and they obviously need a safe facility to build them in. Does anyone seriously believe they aren’t pursuing a nuclear power programme? This has been a stated aim of Iranian energy policy since long before they became mad millenarian mullahs – they need it so they can export oil, and also so they can power the oil extraction programmes.
Also, if you were Iranian you would only be hoping to hell that your government would stop authorising riot police if you were from a particular section of society. It may not be particularly nice behaviour, but let’s not pretend that all Iran is under the cosh. Lots of people support Ahmadinejad and lots of people protested in support of him, as well as voted for him.
Oh, and do we believe anything the US government says about other countries’ supposed WMD programmes? Why should we believe the US govt, known to have lied mendaciously about Iraq’s WMD programmes, over the Iranian govt, or for that matter over the local nutjob UFO abduction expert? They are lying liars, and we have a 6 year long war in Iraq to prove it.
Point of clarification: In Pakistan the US is bombing enemies of the state of Pakistan. This distinction should not be to difficult to understand.
Sure re: Iranian nuclear energy. It would clearly aid regional and global stability for Iran to have civilian nuclear energy and reduced dependency on the black stuff.
Equally, it would clearly be to the detriment of regional and global stability for Iran to have a military nuclear programme.
This distinction, as you say Katz, “should not be difficult to understand”.
But the Iranian leaders promised, with sugar and treacle on top, that they’re only interested in the former, and not the latter. And the G20 and the UN and we should believe them, why, exactly? Especially when there are apparently so many sage bloggers in the west who are so quick to extol the “rationality” of Iran having a nuclear weapons programme…?
And it’s irrelevant how many people voted for Ahmadinejad. I do not dispute the will of the Iranian people re; their government. But I do dispute the behaviour of the Iranian leadership. Some of sg’s remarks sound like apologia. So they only beat up a segment of the population? They don’t oppress everybody…just their political opponents? Wonderful.
Why the equanimity about behaviour from Iran that we would rightly oppose if (and when) ‘allied’ governments do similar things?
To reiterate: I dispute the idea that it is “rational” to pursue a nuclear weapons program in the emerging global political climate, where the existing nuclear-armed nations have a renewed interest in neutralising the strategic ‘advantage’ of nuclear weapons and are looking for ways to take them off the table altogether.
The “rationality” of arming oneself with nuclear weapons is, was and always will be the kind of rationality that exists only in a Dr Strangelove universe.
Let’s be clear.
In a world much closer to the ideal than is this one there would be no weapons of war or even weapons at all, but the world is run by only semi-rational people. If one party has weapons and the other not, and there are reasons for conflict, the public in the underdefended jursidiction becomes collateral damage. Even the US and Britain currently claim they need nukes, despite their abilty to wield conventional force with near impunity.
Would the world be a better place if one could be sure Iran was incapable of creating nuclear warheads? Yes, provided that Israel was not already equipped with about 200 and the means to deliver them onto Iran.
It might well be of course that nuclear weapons are in practice inferior to conventional warheads in ballistic missiles, since one can more readily believe a convnetional weapon will be used. This changes little in this argument however.
Mercurius@28
I couldn’t agree more – the Dr Strangelove Universe is known as strategic studies.
Agreed.
The interesting counterfactual is whether the DPRK and Iran would have got as close as they have to being nuclear powers but for the “diplomacy” of George W. Bush.
One line of argument would assert that both countries were following the crazy logic of their own megalomania.
The opposite line of argument would assert that Bush pushed these two countries toward the nuclear option.
A more nuanced line of argument would assert that Bush impelled an acceleration of policies that were already in place.
“Would the world be a better place if one could be sure Iran was incapable of creating nuclear warheads? Yes, provided that Israel was not already equipped with about 200 and the means to deliver them onto Iran.”
I think that misses an important point, raised by Katz @ 5 – the main danger is sub-national groups getting a hold of nuclear weapons. I agree that Iran is sufficiently rational to not use the weapons it so obviously seeks (for good strategic reasons as mentioned by many already). The worry is that homicidal people without a geographical asset that defines and drives them will get nukes, while lacking an incentive not to use them.
I’m not saying the mullahs would just hand them over, but that Iran is more likely than most to lose control of them, due to its political instability and divided power structures. Pakistan is a similar case, already leaking technology.
In both Iran and Israel the rulers rule at the pleasure of criminally insane clerics. The difference is that the insane clerics of Israel have the bomb and the insane clerics of Iran do not – as far as we know.
Both sets of criminals will bless the bombs. Both believe that they have God on their side.
I this a recipe for a nuclear holocaust?
Huggy.
Jarrah@32
I very much doubt that the Iranian regime is going to let any sub-national grouping get its hands on its nuclear weapons, if it acquires them. The Iranian rulers take, as we know, a robust view of their right to rule without challenge and the last thing they could want was a pretext for some hostile state to claim that they had lost control of their arsenal.
I should add that there remains no persuasive reason for thinking that the Iranians have set about acquiring such weapons. Indeed, unless a power actually means to use them, the mere suspicion that the power holds them and can deliver them is nearly as good as them actually having them. That probably explains much of the DPRKs behaviour.
The Iranians have demonstrated a delivery system capable of reaching Israel and that in itself changes the balance in their favour, nukes or not.
HB: Granting that you are right, does not the downside risk of Israel attacking Iran strengthen the hand of those in Israel urging against such a course?
I’m not in the least enthused about the possibility that Iran will get nuclear weapons. It increases the possibility that some hotheaded leader will take leave of their senses and use them, and it increases the possibility of one or more being stolen.
In the specific case of Iran, their existence gives Israel the incentive to pursue a larger, more survivable nuclear strike force, and raises the possibility that states like Saudi Arabia will want them too – which of course would rightly send Israel completely off its rocker and could quite easily start WWIII. If we’re talking nutty religious zealots, Saudi Arabia’s are probably the scariest of the lot, and they’re not that far from the reins of power if I understand things.
But the fact is that the Iranians are not particularly irrational in their view of their security situation. And the key to talking the Iranians out of nukes – if such a thing is possible – is to make them feel more confident in their strategic position.
Robert,
No-one in the ME can feel secure while Israel has hundreds nuclear weapons. This is the gorilla in the kitchen that most people try to ignore. The fact that this gorilla has group of influential and barking mad mulla equivalents urging it on to attack all and sundry is dangerous. According to these crazies the Iranians are the Amalekites – the ancient and sworn enemies of the Jews (so they say). Avigdor Lieberman is the foreign minister, now that is really scary.
like I said, both sides are heavily influenced by crazies. Neither side can be trusted with nukes, but then no-body should be trusted with nukes.
Some-where there are people who managed to talk various leaders out of the nuclear option in the past 60 years or so, they should be found and celebrated.
I guess it may take another bunch of Nagasaki’s to the power of 10 before we finally wake up and put an end to this insanity.
Huggy
Robert M@35
While I share your concern Robert, consider this:
ATM, the SC is working up to making Iran a pariah state on the basis that it might at some time in the indefinite future, acquire the capacity to make nuclear warheads. By way of comparison though, at the level of the SC, and in the public press more generally, there is no discussion at all of the fact that another state, Israel, which is in breach not only of the NNPT but any number of SC resolutions AND its own undertaking at Oslo and which has recently used white phosphorous against a civilian population in a territory it occupies has already acquired about 200 nuclear devices and the systems needed to deliver them and is currently in receipt of decisive military aid from the member of the SC calling most forcefully for action against Iran to comply with NNPT.
I call that an anomaly.
Huggy, point taken, but remember what preceded the acquisition of nuclear weapons – it wasn’t exactly pretty either.
The central issue about nukes is that they are forever. However, regimes, even nuke-owning ones, come and go. Ask Gorbachev.
A nation that owns them today may be the model of democratic probity. But who believes that any regime, even a democratic one, lasts forever?
And who believes that any Pakistani or Israeli regime that may emerge in the future is a regime that will be responsible with its nukes?
What HuggyBunny and others overlook is that Israel has had a nuclear capability for around 40 years, without using it.
Even in 1973, with the Egyptian army using new Soviet technology to decimate IDF forces in the Sinai, and Syrian tank divisions pouring across the Golan, and the very existence of Israel at stake, they resisted the temptation to nuke anyone.
As far as I’m concerned, the Israelis have proved that they’re not going to casually drop the bomb. I would still prefer that they didn’t have it, but nonetheless I am far more relaxed about nuclear weapons in their hands than in the hands of the mullahs.
Katz @ 31 I’m in furious agreement with you.
I believe that the US foreign policy of the previous administration encouraged the ‘leading lights’ of the DPRK and Iran to pursue nuclear weaponisation. Being pegged as two-thirds of an ‘Axis of Evil’ by the world’s strongest superpower, and seeing what happens to the other one-third, I’m sure, focuses the mind very strongly on one’s strategic shortcomings.
But the fact that Iran’s government does not appear to have revised their strategy in light of the political re-alignments of the last 12 months suggests to me that they’re lacking a certain measure of rationality. Not the least of which is the ability to discern which way the tide of international opinion and geopolitical influence is flowing…
mercurius, I’m not offering apologies for the behaviour of the Iranian government, just not in agreement with your rhetoric, which sounds like they’re holding their own people hostage a la DPRK, Mugabe etc. I don’t think this is true, any more than the nasty police tactics and cctv here in the UK imply that everyone here lives in fear of the state (which is how it would be portrayed if Iranian police behaved like the British police).
I’m also really dubious about this rhetoric of mad mullahs, btw. I don’t think they’re mad and I don’t buy this lunatic right-wing US blogger story about ahmadinejad being millenarian. The strategy of pursuing nuclear weapons may seem high risk but these guys have had a lot of trouble with Israel and Iraq, and they’re not too comfortable about their arab neighbours either. Also, they may not be pursuing a strategy at all – we only have the word of the US (a bunch of committed liars and gangsters) to go on. So why not give them the benefit of the doubt and focus on the only significant crime we know they have committed in the recent past, that of repressing internal dissent?
Also, while this sideshow goes on the main and most flagrant violator of the NPT in the region is threatening all its neighbours with annihilation. Do we really need to allow ourselves to be distracted from that by “information” the US gives us?
at 42 – you suffer from daggetitis also ?
Such subtle antisemitism must feel quite comfortable as an excuse for any sort of action.
Murph the Surf@43
This is a well-worn strawman: putting an equals sign between opposition to Israeli policy and unreasoning animus towards Jews and conspiracy nuttery.
Very poor …
As a point of information about the alleged responsibility of Israel in relation to nuclear weapons.
It is quite likely that Israel co-operated with the Apartheid regime of South Africa in the development of the now abolished nuclear program.
sg, you don’t have to ‘buy’ the excrescences of the lunatic right-wing blogosphere to believe that Ahmedinejad is millenarian. Reading his speeches should be sufficient to convince you of that. His speeches read like a Persian George W. Bush.
And I don’t give Iran’s government the benefit of the doubt because, among other things, they photoshop their missile launches and beat up, oh all right then, a segment of their population. Kind of like how apartheid SA only beat up a segment of theirs…
Sorry, but politically oppressive regimes just don’t get a free pass in my playbook. Not China, not Israel, not Syria, not Iran. Guess we can agree to disagree on that one.
And any time you can produce evidence that “the most flagrant violator of the NPT in the region is threatening all its neighbours with annihilation”, feel free to submit it to the LP editors. That would truly be an example of the blogosphere breaking news that’s to be found nowhere else.
Is missing the point is your speciality Comrade Barlow?
What they share is their antisemitism and probably nothing else.
Begs the question Murph — do they share anti-semitism and ‘dagettitis’?
Youy say SG and Daggett do, but on what basis are SG’s calims subtly anti-semitic or to be cast as conspiracy nuttery?
I was wondering when the anti Semitic slur would emerge.
Let us be absolutely clear about this, the present actions of the Israeli government have no justification in Jewish culture or history.
The holocaust does not justify:
The wholesale destruction of Arab villages and the killing of the entire populations
The massacres in refugee camps
The building of enclosed Ghettos for the Arab population
The forcible expropriation of Arab land and property
The use of White Phosphorous on civil uprisings
The collaboration with the Apartheid South African regime to build and test nuclear weapons
The possession of Nuclear weapons outside the agreed international frameworks
The legal structure that enforces religious rites and actively discriminates against those of other faiths
The list goes on and on
If the religious leaders of both Iran and Israel wish to do millenarian battle let them slug it out in the hot sun man to man with swords. In the meantime the rest of us can get on with our lives.
In the words of the song “we don’t need no thought control.” Or stupid Amalek fantasies either.
What is it with these religious nut-bags that they want to fight the final battle with our blood and the bodies of millions of our children incinerated in a nuclear war? They are just criminals.
Huggy
“It is quite likely that Israel co-operated with the Apartheid regime of South Africa in the development of the now abolished nuclear program.”
Yes, that’s true. Is there some particular point you’re trying to make, Katz?
When Israel’s nuclear program was launched, the future of the Israeli nation was far more tenuous than it is now. They would, I’m sure, have been happy to develop weapons in collaboration with the Americans or Brits or French. But that option wasn’t available. So they went with the South Africans, who had some things they needed.
You may condemn that. But answer this: let’s say you felt that the very existence of Australia was dependent on acquiring nuclear weapons, and let’s say that the only country prepared to work with us was an odious regime analogous to the Afrikaners. Would you hold your nose and go ahead? Or pack your bags for London?
Huggy, thanks for your wonderful comment #49
The irrationality and predictable self-righteousness and speed at which these debates descend into such name calling and toxic red-herrings, never ceases to worry me intensely.
It seems to me that one of the major issues with these exchanges is the habitual glibness – and the lameness – of the pro-western stance, which always, always has to be believed. The west’s unfailingly paranoid interpretation of all those enemies of our civilisation is always right.
No ifs or buts.
And why? – because “we” have said it: it has been handed down, either by a Prime Minister, a President, a “specialist”, or even better – an authoritative and well connect anonymous source and delivered to our lounge rooms courtesy of an impartial and honest media – despite any, and often overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We’ve sucked it in and had it presented to us in myriad and unceasing ways, ad nauseum.
On the other hand – “they” (those horrid non-western antogonists of ours) – are always challenging us and our “right” to control the world’s resources for our own use, our “right” to destroy them if they disagree or get in the way, and our “right” to state it as we see fit.
Unfortunately for “us” in the “west”, only the most immediate and worst of the rest of the world – whoever has the current and ever changing status of “evil empire” – can be taken out, a few at a time.
And it’d be so much easier if the fundamentalists on the other “side” would just accept our money and become lap dog rulers like so many are willing to do – except our armaments makers wouldn’t have the continual need to make new and more lethal weapons.
What “they” have to understand is that they don’t have a right to challenge us – and by god we intend to blow their brains out until “they” realise our right to do so!
Discussions like these are all a lay-down misere – when you consider this is the driving, fundamental principle. This basic pattern seems to me to be habitual. And it is the framework that is trotted out to limit discussion on peace and social justice and environmental issues – no matter the topic or the forum.
(My apologies for my punctuation – amongst many things I never understood.)
Paulus,
My take on what Katz said is that the two regimes naturally clubbed together because they were both at that time white supremacist racist regimes, both were in the business of suppressing their “native population”. It was a grotesque marriage of convenience, South Africa had the test sites and probably the uranium and Israel had the know how.
You go on ” You may condemn that. But answer this: let’s say you felt that the very existence of Australia was dependent on acquiring nuclear weapons, and let’s say that the only country prepared to work with us was an odious regime analogous to the Afrikaners. Would you hold your nose and go ahead? Or pack your bags for London?”
That is simply an argument for every country to possess nuclear weapons. Should Australia build the bomb in order to deal with the future threat from a flooding Indonesia? I you dig hard enough I am sure you will find a strategy paper in some murky government Agency that argues exactly that.
Your argument fails of course in that history has shown that Israel did not need the bomb to defend itself.
The true irony of this is that if Israel now does nuke Iran, the days of the Israeli State will be numbered. It will have confirmed the prejudices of the entire Arab world and immeasurably strengthened the hand of the religious zealots from all over the ME. They will never rest until they extract revenge. The hideous lie of the “treacherous Jew” will be “proven”. The bodies of the innocent will once again testify to this mutual insanity.
This I fear, I fear that the vitality, the joy and the love, of the young people of both countries will be once more perverted by the insane desires of fanatical old men.
Huggy
Oh, Paulus, Paulus, Paulus. Do I detect the defensiveness syndrome (by proxy)?
My point is that, as I suggested above, regimes are temporary but nuclear knowhow lasts forever. Unfortunately, the world is now in the predicament of the Magician’s Apprentice. There is no way of avoiding the eventual, inevitable detonation of such a device in the midst of some population centre or another.
Like the early purchasers of VCRs or flat screen TVs, the so called legitimate nuclear powers huff and puff about how cheap it now is for the nouveaux and parvenues to acquire their erstwhile expensive gadgetry.
Someone is doomed.
On Anti Semitism,
I spent some time today with a wise Jewish lady, she is a very brave Jewish lady who has spoken out here in Brisbane against the Israeli activities in Gaza. For this she has been labelled as a “self hating Jew” by many in her community.
Among other things, she said , citing a Jewish writer, that if the Jewish people cannot rise out of the ashes of the Holocaust the anti Semites win.
Huggy.
Huggy,
On Yom Kippur my rabbi delivered a 30 minute speech in which he quoted Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the USA in May of this year:
I repeat: That’s the Israeli Ambassador to the USA speaking. In May 2009.
The rabbi also cited David Ben-Gurion’s opposition to the seizing of the West Bank and echoed Leon Wieseltier’s 2007 remarks…
The congregation, with a few exceptions, applauded.
So can we please have a little less of the ‘mad cleric’ references from you, thank you so much?
Mercurius,
If I have offended you I apologise.
My remarks about “mad clerics” are meant to be confined to the radical fringes of all religious beliefs. I am aware that for every mad one there are hundreds of sane hard working pastors in all faiths who do wonderful work.
Unfortunately the more extreme seem to have the loudest voices in this time of crisis.
I am also aware that there is a growing number of those in the Diaspora who are increasingly concerned about the course that Israel is taking.
Your citations eloquently demonstrate this.
Huggy
sg: “So why not give them the benefit of the doubt and focus on the only significant crime we know they have committed in the recent past, that of repressing internal dissent?”
Maybe because their president has expressed the view that the state of Israel should be wiped from the earth? Don’t you take him seriously? Do you regard that as US propaganda as well? Do you hear only what you want to hear?
Like all of us, Mr Ahmadinejad has a compex person. Just as a lot of Australian racists are running from their aboriginal ancestory, the following story on the Iranian President is a very quirky angle on this one…..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/6256173/Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-revealed-to-have-Jewish-past.html
“A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.
A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver….
Experts last night suggested Mr Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past….”
Fact is stranger than fiction – ?
But we’re all pretty strange creatures.
Peter TB@57
Your claim is both spurious and specious.
1. Ahmenidinejad alluded to Khomeini’s comment that the Zionist regime should be erased from the pages of history and compared this with the demise of the USSR and Apartheid SA. No weapons involved
2. Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister spoke og bombing the Aswan High dam
3. Pakistan in 1999 threatened use of tactical nukes against India
4. Armitage for the US in 2001 threatened to bomb Pakistan back to the stone age if they didn’t get on baord with the US
So we have nuclear armed states (two of which are US clients that threaten to bomb people and the US itself which has used nuclear weapons and we focus on a state that has none yet and has yet to make an explicit threat.
Hmmm
Fran,
The Jews are a bit sensitive to predictions about being erased from history, even those that do not (explicitly) involve weapons. I can’t imagine why.
But of course Mr Ahmenidinejad is a man of non-violence, as we have seen in his treatment of protesters on the streets of Tehran, so I’m sure Israel has nothing to worry about.
I wonder, just to muse a little on public diplomacy, how Indonesia would take it if Kevin Rudd made a public prediction that the Indonesian state would soon be erased from history (non-violently). I doubt it would go down well in Jakarta.
HuggyBunny,
“Should Australia build the bomb in order to deal with the future threat from a flooding Indonesia?”
We have more than enough conventional capability at the moment compared to any nation in SE Asia. But to answer your question: if I really thought our security depended on it, I wouldn’t have the slightest hesitation in supporting the building of nukes.
“Your argument fails of course in that history has shown that Israel did not need the bomb to defend itself.”
Yeah, but sadly the Israelis in the 60s didn’t possess a crystal ball to see how the future would turn out. Since you evidently do possess one, I’d like to know the answer to a question of great geo-strategic import: who’s going to win the Melbourne Cup?
“if Israel now does nuke Iran …”
They won’t. There’s still a slim possibility of a conventional strike. But the Israelis would need to prepare public opinion well in advance of that, and there’s no sign of such a campaign at the moment.
Israel would also need to give considerable warning to the US, to enable ships to be moved out of the Gulf, and the forces in Iraq to be readied. And also, Israel would need the US’s permission to use Iraqi airspace. There’s no sign of moves towards any of that.
Paulus
“But to answer your question: if I really thought our security depended on it, I wouldn’t have the slightest hesitation in supporting the building of nukes.”
Sorry Paulus but any-one who supports the use of nuclear weapons under any conditions is totally devoid of any morals or ethics.
Are you really prepared to exterminate millions upon millions of fellow humans in order to protect your cosseted existence? Are the Indonesian people simply untermensch vermin to you?
Please, no weasel words about “building” – not using.
I submit that the difficulties in the ME are exacerbated by this view of the “evil other” and the need to destroy them before they destroy us.
In the case of Indonesia, Bangladesh, parts of the Phillipines and many low lying island states we will need to work out programs to assist the people to overcome the problems that are to come with rising sea levels, rainforest fires and endless storms.
You may be prepared to use nuclear weapons against these people in dire distress but I suggest that the majority will oppose this.
Huggy
Don’t get all hysterical on me, HB.
What I meant was that, if there were some existential military threat which we couldn’t deal with via conventional means, I would not oppose building (and, if really necessary, using) nukes. As a last resort.
Obviously we would not ever use them on civilian refugees. (It would spoil the beaches, for one thing.)
“Sorry Paulus but any-one who supports the use of nuclear weapons under any conditions is totally devoid of any morals or ethics.”
Right. So all the American, French, British, Israeli, Russian, and Indian voters who, over the years, elected governments that built and maintained nuclear forces — they are all “totally devoid of any morals or ethics”. That’s at least a billion people you’ve just slandered.
Memo for HuggyBunny: not everyone who disagrees with your extreme pacifist views is a monster.
Paulus,
I am not a Pacifist.
I note that of all the countries that possess nuclear weapons, only one has been barbaric enough to use them.
Nuclear weapons have no other target but the civilian population. They are designed to kill, maim and burn as many ordinary people as possible. No amount of sophistry will change this.
Huggy
Paulus: “The Jews are a bit sensitive to predictions about being erased from history, even those that do not (explicitly) involve weapons. I can’t imagine why.”
It’d be nice if you didn’t speak for all of us, especially those of us who think the current Israeli regime poses more of a threat to Jewish people everywhere, than does the Iranian one.
Huggy, two points:
1) A nuke or a machete, you’re just as dead.
2) For completeness, there is one military target that you could conceivably argue it’s a) plausible, and b) acceptable to use nukes against – a carrier battle group in blue water.
I’m not claiming it is acceptable to do so, merely that that very special case is somewhat more ambiguous.
Moreover, furious balancing, Paulus evaded the key point — the identification of the Zionist regime with “Jews”. (Perhaps Paulus is about to label anti- and non- Zionist Jews as “self-hating”?)
If one can accept that erasing the apartheid regime did not amount to erasing Afrikaaners, or erasing the Soviet regime did not amount to erasing Russians, then how can one claim that Zionist and Jew are interchageable terms, especially when not all Zionists are Jewish?
Interestingly, these Zionists support Israel precisely becuase they think it brings armageddon, the second coming and the rapture one step closer. Self-evidently, their Zionism both supports the Zionist state and anticipates it being erased from the pages of history though they have a range of opinions on what will actually happen to the Jews themselves.
I’d say that ought to make the right of Jews to exist and the right of the zionist state to exist quite different things, including in the minds of all who think Isreal is a matter of prophecy.
Robert M
Silly. You can survive or even evade a blow from a machete. The effects of machetes are shortlived, even when deadly, and confined entirely to those against whom they are deployed. As a mass-casualty weapon they are much less effective than nukes since you need masses of people to wield them at close range and people can defend themselves. Psychologically, it’s much harder to get people to use machetes than it would be to get them to approve nukes.
Um, no, Fran, it’s not silly at all.
Since 1945, millions of civilians have been killed by small arms, from the AK-47 down to the machete. Many more have been left with permanent disabilities.
Robert,
” A nuke or a machete, you’re just as dead”
When some-one invents a machete that can be fired across the world and descend upon a sleeping city and entirely destroy several million people it at one blow I will agree. Hanna Arendt wrote of the banality of evil. That statement of yours is up there with the best.
It is not a question of degree Robert, it is a question of a the monstrous qualitative difference between all preceding weapons of war and nuclear weapons.
That you are unable to appreciate this amazes me.
Huggy
Doubtless Robert. Small arms, including machetes, are a lot more ubquitous and require less expertise nad fewr resources than nukes to deploy. The machete has other uses and bearing in mind the nature of the peaceable usages of those involved in intra- and inter-communal conflict, it is hardly surprising. But their scope for rapid mass killing is far smaller than nukes. If you want to kill 80.000 people with machetes or even AK-47s it’s going to be a lot more prolonged than if you use a nuke against a city.
The dreadful civil conflict in the DRC was costing, last time I heard, about 3000 casualties per month — appalling for sure, but orders of magnitude or two less than if you dropped the big one.
Fran,
Yes, I am well aware that non-Zionist Jews exist, including part of the Hasidic community in Israel itself. But with all due respect to their views, and to ‘furious balancing’, it’s a little bit late now, isn’t it, to be having a debate over whether Israel should exist?
Because Israel does exist. And it’s not going anywhere. The only imaginable way it might cease to exist in the foreseeable future is via massive amounts of armed force. Which you (presumably) do not wish to see happen, right? But, honestly, we all know that is what Mr Ahmad-I-Hobnob-With-Holocaust-Deniers-Nejad was thinking about, don’t we?
Incidently, this is a distinct question from the rights of the Palestinians. Even if a Palestinian state were established on the entirity of the West Bank, Israel would still be sitting there right along side.
Now, your references to Russia and South Africa are irrelevant because the situation is so different. Russians were secure after the fall of the USSR because they were still much stronger than any other ethnic group. Afrikaners were secure because Nelson Mandela was in charge.
Whereas Israeli Jews would be secure, after the hypothetical ‘erasure’ of Israel, because of … erm …?
Paulus, by contrast with individual people, states have no particualr ‘right to exist’. Under certain circumstances, communities of people can try to form states to secure their interests. Whether they succeed is not derived from some inherent ‘right to exist’ as to broader questions of economics, diplomacy, the cogherence of the community itself and so forth.
One can imagine Israel as currently configured being displaced by a state which, like most other states, attached no particular significance to being a Jew. The same people might live there. Palestinians might have the same rights as Jews to be citizens and vote. “Israel” vanishes but its citizens do not. We get a one-state solution. That would probably be best.
I grant that this seems implausible right now, essentially because there has been 60 years of bloodletting between the two groups ands the US continues to back Israel with massive aid. Perhaps the two-state solution, based on the pre-June 1967 boundaries would be better, but even this can’t happen while the US continues to give Israel the right to flout its own agreements and NNPT and receive US aid.
I’d be interested in reading the provisions of the Machete Nonproliferation Treaty.
A good point you’ve made there, Katz. More people died in the 20th century from machete attacks- 800,000 to a million over one hundred days in Rwanda in 1994 alone- than died from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, around 220,000 in the hundred days to the end of 1945.
I don’t know where Fran Barlow got her figures for the Democratic Republic of the Congo civil war;
The Guardian’s estimate (in January 2008) of the monthly death toll is 45,000 (ie dead not just casualties who might recover):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/23/congo.international
That’s both atomic bombings combined every four months in a civil war that has been going on for over ten years. That’s orders of mangitude more than the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And not one atomic bomb in sight.
I suppose it is just Fran fabricating again; making up facts to suit whatever line she wants to peddle without the slightest effort at researching what the truth might be- or any care about it. One gets used to it.
Hmmm!
GregM
You need to read more carefully, rather than seizing on the first thing that appears to give you the ammo you so clearly want to wield against me.
Now, if you divide the 350,000 by the 68 months from August 1998 to April 2004 that gives about 5100 per month. I recall a BBC figure at one point of about 3000 per month, which might have been true at one point in time, but either way, ballpark correct, and not in the nuke league.
Will you apologise now that you have been shown to have misrepresented what I said?
Ah, the Fran Barlow theory that if you starve to death as a result of a war it really doesn’t count, first expounded in her proposal that the Pacific War should have been ended by starving the Japanese into submission.
Fran what part of dying in a war don’t you understand? If you starve to death or die of disease because of one you are dead, and just as dead as if you had been slashed to death with a machete, cut down by a bullet, blown up by a bomb or vaporised by a nuclear weapon. The conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is killing (according to the Guardian in January 2008) 45,000 people a month. Not causing casualties, but killing people.
You said;
That is an untruth and an untruth chosen to make a cheap polemical point.
The dreadful conflict in the DRC is killing 45,000 people per month, not causing 3000 casualties per month as you have misrepresented. That is 42,000 dead people whom you choose to ignore because it is not convenient to your argument to acknowledge them.
This despite your statement:
So much for the right for those 42,000 a month to exist.
I have not misrepresented what you have said. I have shown it up for the untruth that it is.
Hmmm!
GregM
It was clear from context that we were talking battle casualties since the discussion was entirely about weapons of war — machetes versus nuclear weapons. Hence Robert’s comment above. You clearly acknowledged that point when you used the term “machete attacks” in reference to Rwanda.
Now, when I call you for lying, you try moving the goalposts. Pathetic.
And do you suppose that if Israel decided to detonate one each of its 200 nuclear devices on a major Arab city every Saturday that the total casualties would, were it not stopped, not radically exceed those associated with Rwanda or the DRC?
You are simply a dissembler, and a lame one at that.
Then why don’t you address the evidence that the death toll over 100 days in 1994 was four times greater from machetes than from nuclear weapons over 100 days in 1945?
Your point being about the evils of nuclear weapons, I suppose. So why do you choose Israel as your example? Why not ask, for example, about the total casualties if the United Kingdom decided to detonate each of its 400 nuclear devices on a major French city every Saturday, or if China decided to detonate each of its 400 nuclear devices on a major Japanese city every Saturday, or if Russia decided to detonate each of its 2000 nuclear devices on a major German, Polish, Georgian etc. city every Saturday or if India decided to detonate each of its 200 nuclear devices on a major Pakistani city every Saturday?
So why do you choose Israel as your example of the inherent evils of nuclear weapons? I think we all know the reason why. And it isn’t pleasant.
Duck and weave out of that one.
Hmmm!
Noting your backpedal … can you have thought I’d let you get away with it?
Allowing this figure, that is still 8000 per day, which is nothing like the daily toll from a thermo-nuclear attack. We are discussing rates of morbidity from direct usage of a weapon. At Nagasaki and Hiroshima roughly 140,000 and 80,000 respectively died from each attack. Today, a thermo-nuclear attack would be far more potent.
I don’t deal in “evil”. I deal in efficacy, as you should know.
Because Israel has in recent times attacked and bombed its neighbours. We are discusssing Iran so it is reasonable to have regard to its direct and proximate antagonist, Israel. I did draw attenmtion in this topic to Pakistan’s 1999 threat to use nuclear weapons against India and did refer to the US use of nuclear weapons against Japan.
I guess if you backpedalled to its illogical extent, you could argue that since the death toll from atomic weapons in the last 54 years is still only ~200,000, nuclear weapons are *in fact* the least lethal in the history of the world.
Indeed, Nick, but this is typical of the specious nonsense that is SOP for GregM.
Not backpedalling; just noting that even if one puts aside your mendacious misrepresentation of the death toll in the Democratic Republic of the Congo conflict you’ve ignored the lethality of the use of machetes in the Rwanda genocide. It doesn’t matter on what day the victims of that genocide died, they are still dead just as the 42,000 per day whose deaths you won’t acknowledge in the DRC are nevertheless dead.
And Russia attacked and bombed its neighbour Georgia last year. NATO (so there’s Britain and France) attacked and bombed Serbia during the Kosovo war. You are, as you point out, aware of the threats Pakistan made to use nuclear weapons against India in 1999, but you did not choose it as your example. You chose the example of Israel bombing Arab cities when the direct and proximate neighbour (actually with two countries, Jordan and Iraq, separating them, so hardly proximate) that you cite, Iran, is not an Arab country. No, your agenda isn’t pointing out the “efficacy” of nuclear weapons it’s to run your anti-Israel agenda.
Hmmm!
Wow, a man goes away for a couple of days and look at the chaos that descends!
If pointing out that Iran is not the only country in breach of the NPT is anti-semitic, then colour me full of hate. I suppose if I had pointed out that Iran doesn’t get along too well with Pakistan then I’d be anti-Pakistani? Funny too how people seem to have picked up on my comments about Israel but not Iraq or “their arab neighbours”. Is this because they were looking for something, or because arabs are semites too? Oh I just can’t tell…
I’m not giving Iran a “free pass”, Mercurius, I just think that their nuclear programme can actually be assessd by the same standards as that of every other state – not assumed to be in some frenetic state of millenarian development because they happen to use a lot of religious rhetoric. Iran have done a lot less invading and killing than Israel, Iraq or Pakistan in the last 50 years, and if they weren’t muslim they’d be considered a much better potential nuclear state than any of those countries. Not to mention, of course, those pre-eminent invaders and killers, the US and Russia, both of whom happen to be on Iran’s doorstep.
If you don’t like Iran’s approach to demonstrators, fine, let rip. But let’s not pretend that their nuclear aspirations need to have any relationship to those issues. When the US first became a nuclear state they still had segregation, lynching and cointelpro. The British had Northern Ireland, now they have 42 days, cctv and police murders. But – quite reasonably – we assess their nuclear programme on the basis of what those nations say it is for.
Also, just to finish off. Trident: 17 billion pounds. Machete: 1 pound. Arguing about which one is worse: priceless.
It matters how they died for the purposes of a discussion of the comparative efficacy of particular weapons. A person who dies as a primary consequence of a machete wound three days or three weeks after injury is sustained counts. Surplus deaths associated with the breakdown of law and order, loss of the water or food supply or sanitation system don’t count unless one can say that these are peculiar to the use of machetes.
Wow … in your earlier post you were claiming 45,000 per month and thow it is 42,000 per day you want me to acknowledge. Yet you accuse me of carelessness in serving an agenda?
Putting aside your sloppiness, I do acknowledge them — but reject their pertinence to the toll from non-nuclear weapons. Like many arguing a weak case, you are inventing strawmen to argue your case.
You cite me explaining my focus on Israel:
Then say:
And indeed, I might have added these too, since I’d like to see these powers, along with every other nuclear weapons state also decommission their nuclear weapons. But you will notice that this topic refers explicitly to Iran and concerns about its nuclear program’s direction, which invites the obvious question about Israel, which is outside of the nuclear club, and is simultaneously in violation of NNPT and in receipt of US aid, including military aid. This applies also to Pakistan and India of course but Pakistan and India are not currently in diplomatic conflict with Iran.
The term ‘proximate’ need not be geographic, but thematic. Iran is ‘proximate’ to Israel in the sense that both are closely engaged diplomatically, with Israel accusing Iran of funding terrorists hostile to Israel.
It is true of course that Iran is not an Arab country, but here I was merely pointing out the scope for Israel to use nuclear weapons to achieve mass casualties in a way that was consonant with its past military history. In the minds of the Israeli leaders, the principal threat to the viability of the Israeli state comes from the Arabs around them. That is why they hold the Golan Heights, and have attacked and bombed Syria, Lebanon and Iraq for example, and why Lieberman has spoken of bombing the Aswan High Dam. In the future, they may attack Iran as well. So the discussion is germane.
That said, ex-Bush “national security” honcho Elliot Abrams has suggested bombing Iran might not be opposed by ordinary Iranians.
He is out of power of course and was convicted of lying to congress so perhaps he doesn’t count as much as the Israeli Foreign Minister.
I cannot believe that there is any argument at all about Machetes vs Nuclear Weapons.
A single primitive atomic bomb carried the explosive power of 2000 B29′s of the time and devasted Hiroshima, causing 200,000 deaths.
Multiply this by a thousand or more and you get some idea of the power of the modern atomic weapons that Israel posesses.
Like I said there is only one possible target for these weapons and it is people, millions and millions of people. Whoever uses them is a war criminal,even in the caase of a “tactical” nuclear strike aginst another nuclear installation or a fleet of ships in “blue water”.
Huggy.
I think the point which Robert was trying to make at #65 and #68 is not that there’s an equivalence between machetes and nukes, but that huggy had been over-egging the pudding in terms of stressing the special destructiveness of nukes compared to conventional weapons of all kinds which have been used to kill and disable, often in extremely cruel ways, millions of people since WWII.
If Robert’s comments are to be criticised at all, it is on the grounds that they entailed a choice of words which shows an overestimation of the rationality with which the comments would be read, interpreted and responded to.
For my part, I don’t think Presidents Gorbachev and Reagan were remiss in focussing their discussions on reducing their respective countries’ nuclear stockpiles and not spending so much time on finding ways to reduce the incidence of machete ownership amongst Soviet and US citizens.
Paul,
I have spent some time among Machete weilding really angry people and am here to tell the tale. Doubt if I would survive a close in nuke but.
Interesting that the supporters of nuclear energy often turn out to be supporters of the gradualist argument for nuclear weapons.
Huggy
True enough. You also probably wouldn’t survive a close-in daisycutter or nerve gas attack or WWII-style firebombing with conventional dumb bombs.
You make a fair point Paul. As was noted during the stoush here a while back following the anniversary of Hiroshima, “conventional” firebombing is very effective at mass casualties. The firebombing of Tokyo from late February to early March of 1945 is reckoned generally to be at least equal in deaths to Hiroshima. Mind you, we are talking about the effects of more than 500 aircraft journeys rather than just one … That’s not a tactical difference to be sniffed at.
Hmm. This thread took a funny turn with the nukes vs machetes debate. I prefer Plants vs Zombies, personally.
Coming back to nukes. Both Fran and sg have said that Israel is in breach of, or in violation of, the NPT.
This is wrong. Israel, India and Pakistan never signed. You can’t breach a treaty you never signed.
Iran did sign, and accepted the bargain of the NPT: you get aid and support from the IAEA for your civilian nuclear program, in exchange for letting the IAEA monitor and inspect that program to make sure you’re not building weapons.
Then Iran started building secret installations, which it refused to allow the IAEA to enter, and that’s why we are at the crisis we face today …
Paul,
So by your own admission the comparison of machetes with modern weapons is just an exercise in vapid blather? Your attempt to conflate nuclear weapons with fire bombs is pathetic, even Dresden was but a backyard barbecue when compared with a modern H bomb.
I am seriously concerned about the gradualist argument for nuclear weapons. It starts with, oh its OK to use them against a naval fleet in blue water through Oh its OK to use them to “take out” the enrichment facility of a nation that you don’t like through to; after the inevitable retaliation. Those Persians they are the re-incarnation of the ancient Jewish enemy; we must annihilate them all with nuclear weapons.
Each step “legitimises” the next.
Huggy
Like SG I’m somewhat bemused by arguments over the equivalence or otherwise of nukes in relation to machetes. It is undoubted that more persons have died of machete wounds than by nukes. But what does this signify?
Machete attacks resulting in mass deaths are intensely social acts of mob hatred. As such they are public, political acts that are potentially and actually mediated within the public sphere. The victims have time to flee and or to form their own machete-wielding mobs. Fear and exhaustion limit the extent of the damage. Arising out of the carnage is a modified modus vivendi. The variables arising out of machete wars are limited and quite well understood.
Contrast this situation with nukes. At the highest end they are world-ending. At the lowest end — hypothesised use by a terrorist group — their use would be secret and removed from the public sphere. Victims would have no prior warning at all of their impending victimhood. There is no absolute upper limit to the extent of damage or suffering. No negotiated modus vivendi is sought. The variables arising from even the lowest level of nuke wars are more or less unknowable.
There is little equivalence between the two.
Ok Paulus
regarding the NNPT … yes, you are right. You can’t be in breach of a treaty you don’t sign. Amend to not compliant with
While there is a shade of difference between giving aid to countries who sign a treaty associated with aid and then breach it and giving aid to countries who refuse to sign the treaty but get aid anyway, it’s not an important one if the aid-giving country deems the treaty of such importance that non-compliance would trigger not merely withholding of aid but international sanctions whilke at the same time aiding countries that are non-compliant.
I don’t have to admit anything as I am not making and have not made such a comparison.
I think Fran B covered this pretty well at #89.
Machete. That is all.
Ahem.
I suppose my point is that we should look at the situation in totality.
There are a few reasons why nuclear weapons are special:
1) Only they have world-ending potential. I
2) Even if the world doesn’t end, they would cause civilian casualties on an unprecedented scale.
3) It is argued that they cause more long-term health and environmental effects than other weapons.
To start with 3), the evidence for this from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chernobyl is not actually terribly strong.
To take point 1), this is obviously true, and a good enough reason in itself to deplore the spread of such weapons.
On point 2) however, while they do have the potential to cause such casualties, you have to look at the risk they will be used, and the alternatives.
I want a world with fewer nuclear weapons. I don’t think zero is possible. But in the process I’d prefer it if we didn’t disturb the peace between major powers that we’ve had for the past 60 years.
In any case, I’m not any clearer as to how the Iranian regime is going to be persuaded that giving up their nukes is in their interests at the end of this discussion thread than at the start.
To take your key substantive point Robert
It is not clear if by “nukes” you mean
a) nuclear weapons
or
b) nuclear power
There’s no call for them to give up (b) and no evidence yet that they propose (a) -or are any closer than they were to acquiring them six years ago – indeed, they specifically disavow it. They have declared that IAEA inspections will take place on 25/10/09. They have declared that they will not enrich beyond 5%, which is of no use for warheads.
One might conclude also that if they were planning to develop such weapons, they’d use a small research reactor, the way Pakistan and Israel did, and keep the whole thing secret. This would be a lot easier to hide and much cheaper than a power plant.
As to what would discourage them from pursuing such a course, the answer is obvious — a perceived lack of need, and technical difficulties in producing enough plutonium or U235. Gaddafi struggled with the second and finally decided that the game wasn’t worth the candle. If the Palestinian conflict were resolved and Israel stripped of its nuclear weapons there can be little doubt that the pressure within Iran to acquire them would decline. Indeed, it might well be that less fundamentalist elements would gain the upper hand and something of a step in the direction of an open state might emerge in Iran, easing tension all round.
For all of the animus between Israel and Iran’s hardliners it’s hard to escape the impression that politically they need each other.
Drongo.
Insane Clown.
Do you guys own shares in Youtube or something?
I hereby propose that the next joker submitting a comment with a Youtube link, gets their IP address added to the spam filter for the next 50 years.
It’s just bad to the bone.
Thank you, Fran. That last comment gave me the best laugh I’ve had all day.
So Iran specifically disavows [in bold and italic] having a nuclear weapons program. Well, that settles it, I guess. I don’t know why the IAEA is even bothering to check.
If Israel were to specifically disavow having nuclear weapons, would you accept their word for it too? Or is it only anti-American dictators whose word you trust?
The short answer to your point about a research reactor, is that you then have to build a plutonium bomb — which, even in this day and age, is quite tricky. Note the embarrassing North Korean fizzles. It is not at all surprising that the Iranians went down the uranium path instead.
But hey, maybe they didn’t. If at the end of this month, the IAEA carries out a full, unconstrained inspection of every Iranian facility, and gives them a clean bill of health, I’ll happily concede that you were right. (And indeed it would be great if you were right.)
I hope that you will accept the IAEA report if it comes out the other way, although I have the depressing feeling that the anti-Israel crowd will simply launch into accusations of the IAEA being a pawn of the CIA or something.
Misdirection. The specific disavowal was one datum about possession of either nuclear weapons or intention to produce them. Even if they claimed they had them, I wouldn’t rely on it. Saddam Hussein implied he had them, and claimed at various points he was just about to refute the US invasion. Of course, the fact they disavow their use means we have to entertain it as possibly true, just as if they declared they had them, we’d have to entertain it.
And the same goes for Israel though in their case they neither confirm nor deny. In Israel’s case of course we have Mr Vanunu as witness, a man whose witness the Israelis took seriously enough to kidnap from Italy, imprison and gag.
I deem it as unlikely that the Iranians would permit inspection if they had anything to hide. A clean bill of health would discourage military adventures against Iran and that would indeed be a good thing.
It’s more likely that the pro-Israel lobby will try to suggest that Mr A didn’t submit to an anal probe and could be hiding a warhead in his colon and that the IAEA was duped. That’s what happened in the lead up to the Iraq escalation of 2003, after all.
Why are we still beating around about machetes?
It doesn’t matter that Israel and Iran have or haven’t signed the NPT for the purposes of the comparison – they both are up to something that we have to judge their veracity on. Israel sided with an extremely odious regime to make a secret stash of nuclear weapons for probably quite strategically sensible reasons. It’s quite natural that Iran follows suit.
Iran has already had one reactor blown up, and they can be fairly confident that they will lose another at some point. Hence the secrecy. Whether this is for weapon or power reasons, we have no reason to think that their proliferationist neighbours are going to play nice and there is no pressure on them to do so. Hence,again, the secrecy.
But we do know that they have been pursuing nuclear power for years, have stated this aim repeatedly, and allow inspectors in when forced to. This makes them a much better world citizen than their neighbours, or for that matter those countries which turned a blind eye to India’s development, when they surely knew of it. The main people claiming they are seeking weapons are known liars who have no foreign relations with Iran and are a close ally with Israel.
Also, did I mention the “known liars” part, several times? Perhaps I should say it again: they’re lying liars and you can’t trust them. The most trustworthy people in the Iran-Iraq-US-Israel quagmire for 30 years have been Iran. So yeah, let’s all believe everything the US says instead, and refuse to deal reasonably with Iran as a consequence.
An interesting article at Christian Science Monitor about nuclear Iran and a US program called..”Atoms for Peace”:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1002/p04s01-usfp.html
Not quite SG
The attack was on the French supplied reactor in Iraq by Israel (on my 33rd birthday!) 1981. Interestingly, the Iranians had bombed it in late 1980 shortly after hostilities had broken out.
All good then. 800,000 to a million dead in a hundred days in Rwanda all explained and dusted under the carpet.
The variables arising out of the Rwanda genocide are indeed well understood. They are 800,000 to one million dead people in one hundred days. Made up of people who all too obviously were not able to flee or to form their own machete wielding mobs, possibly because a lot of them were small children who never had a chance to live or to defend themselves.
And arising out of the carnage, had not the RPF got the upper hand over those committing genocide there would not have been a modified modus vivendi. There would have been no Tutsis left to have it with.
I have never seen a more sickening or indecent justification of genocide than this. Anywhere.
GregM, Katz’s comment was obviously and clearly not a justification of genocide, but a comparison of two types of killing (you will have noticed there has been some discussion of this up till now?) The faux outrage is really boring.
Presumably all you machete-nuclear-equivalence folks think the people of tel aviv will sleep no less easily to know that Iran has dumped its nuclear programme in favour of a machete programme? No? Or you’ll be equally satisfied if the Iranians sign up to the same machete ban that the west is adhering to, but keep their nukes? I mean, it’s all the same how our friends in Tel Aviv die, right?
This insistence on pretending that Iran and the west are subject to the same conditions on their adherence to international law is ridiculous too. Could Iran, for example, sign up to the NPT and allow open inspections in exchange for a treaty with Israel guaranteeing no attack on its infrastructure a la iraq, and promises of stern measures from the west if Israel did? No, because there would be diplomats throughout the western world sniggering at its naivete and relishing the coming bombing raid, and everyone here and there knows it. There will be no ramifications for Israel if they bomb a genuinely peaceful Iranian nuclear plant for sh’ts and giggles. Anyone who doubts this needs merely look to the recent behaviour of Israel in lebanon – or to the recent invasion of Iraq – to know that the West holds itself to a different yardstick where international law is concerned, and that the Iranians are on their own. The UN is no friend of muslims – it stood by in Bosnia, it stood by in Palestine and Gaza and lebanon, and it stood by in Iraq. The US still hasn’t signed the chemical test ban treaty (or maybe they did, but very recently). Why should Iran give a toss about these international agreements when they clearly aren’t worth the paper they’re written on?
And why is discussion of this framework – and Iran’s largely very peaceful international behaviour in the face of fairly strong intimidation and provocation – still largely ignored when talking about Iran’s behaviour?
Spot on, SG, on both counts.
You are describing a dangerous regime of bad faith and double standards whose inevitable consequences will be proliferation of nuclear weaponry motivated by fear, suspicion, spite and self-righteousness.
As all have acknowledged, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan have been involved in this nefarious trade in nuclear materials, technology and knowhow.
This is truly a witches’ brew.
According to Fisk:
“Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html
Worth a read.
Huggy
Well oourse it is boring to you.
What are the deaths of 800,000 to a million Africans in Rwanda, or for that matter 1.5 to 2 million Cambodians put to death by agricultural implements, if that causes us to deviate from your narrative: that the Iranians have the right to develop nuclear weapons in self-defence just in case the
JewsIsraelis were to attack them?I don’t have a dog in the Middle Eastern fight that obsesses you. I think I am the only person to have posted on LP about the right of Palestinians to seek to restore their pre 1448 borders- although I have pointed out the right to defend themselves that the Israelis have should they try to do so.
I have, however, taken a strong position on LP before about the Rwanda genocide and the Cambodian genocide which, for your foul ideological reasons, you choose to brush aside because it doesn’t advance your hatred of
Jewsthe Zionist State.So just stroll along there with your bigotry. You feel comfortable with it. Who am I to disturb you from your prejudice by pointing out the deaths in genocide of people who clearly aren’t convenient to your prejudices?
Sorry that my mentioning of their deaths is boring to you.
Dog.
I cannot recall the last post I sent and nor would I want to.
Except for this: the words afer Jews in the third paragraph should not be stricken out, but should read:
I am tired of those people who in their sick obsession with the Middle East conflict ignore the rest of humanity and describe those of us who care about them as “boring”.
GregM
Your contribution in this topic has been not so much boring as an exercise in eccentric misdirection. As far as I can tell, nobody in this thread is indifferent to genocide or murder-by-machete or human suffering in any form or in any place. You think, apparently, that shrill squealing at the top of your lungs about them establishes a platform for you to attack the rest of us at will.
That’s ridiculous.
GregM, if you’re sincerely concerned about the fate of victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (and I believe you are), I suggest you:
1) Do some basic research and discover for a fact there weren’t nearly the 800,000-1,000,000 machete deaths that you’ve repeatedly claimed here.
2) Realise why knowing that fact is so important to correctly interpreting and gaining an understanding of what took place in Rwanda during those 100 days.
Then, perhaps consider dropping the blatantly hypocritical double-act you have showing, between:
1) Constantly demanding fellow commenters produce firm evidence in support of their assertions.
2) Producing nothing yourself, but clumsy, self-righteous and snide, *wholly unfounded* insinuations about the “prejudices” and “bigotry” and “hatred” and “sick obsessions” of fellow commenters, whenever it pleases you to do so.
It’s…really shitting me.
wow GregM, I’m a dog! Just for pointing out to you that Katz’s comment was about the equivalence of machetes and nuclear bombs, and not a defense of genocide?
I think you rather missed the point there.
Also I think it might not be the case that the middle east conflict obsesses me. Colour me obsessed, but it seems kind of relevant to discuss the Middle East conflict in a comment thread about Iran, which I think is in the Middle East?Something about assessing the strategic environment in which they make their national security and energy decisions…?
I may have mentioned the faux outrage is boring, but it’s nowhere near as boring as the anti-semitism allegations…
I am the righteous GregM
I can always taste bile in my phlegm
If you think my comments are vain
Then beware if ever I deign
To construct an apophthegm.
You are undoubtedly the only person to have posted on this subject, but might I suggest that it is the Mamluks rather than the Israelis whose sensitivities need to be considered.