I suspect Iran is moving towards nuclear weapons capability, rather than just nuclear power. Of course when you have had a history like Iran’s you may want your own nuclear deterrent too. As a result of German occupation in WW2, France was unwilling to risk depending on the US for it’s nuclear umbrella. Had Iran remained under the Shah it is not impossible that they would have pursued nuclear weapons too.
Indeed this was something of a concern back in the late seventies. There was a top selling novel of the time, John Clancy style fiction, by (financial writer) Paul Erdman called “Crash of ’79″. It featured a nuclear armed Shah of Iran going on the war path with Saudi Arabia. Not an islamist in the whole thing.
Non-screwball Iranians probably think they deserve their own bomb more than most nations too. After all they have had until recently the Soviets to the north (they invaded during the 1940s), the Iraqis (the war with them cost over half a million dead), Afghanistan on their east (with nuclear rivals India and Pakistan just beyond that), Israel and China not far away. Add to this various UK and US interventions and you may want something more than fine words from the UN to protect your borders. Of course there are screwballs in the government there but it’s not just screwiness at work here.
Hey who needs evidence? are you from the reality based community or somethin’? ;P
More seriously, nuclear ambitions and…”keeping your nuclear options open’… are and have been pretty common world wide. Nations build ‘research facilities’ and other infrastructure to give them the capability to put a nuke together when they need it. A lot of this stuff is “multi use”. You could say the same about the US and Russian ‘peaceful’ space programs. The technological skills needed to land a gizmo on the moon are basically the same as the ones required to put a nuke into the men’s room of the kremlin. So ‘peaceful’ and ‘war like’ uses are just deployment options.
Iran is not the only oil rich country with a nuclear program. Indonesia has a nuclear power program too. It probably fits Henderson’s model more closely than Iran.
Even Australia toyed with this idea of ‘nuclear capability’ for a while, apparently quite seriously, at least in the period from about 1967 to 1972. The government never came out and said they wanted a bomb but they seemed keen to keep their options open. There was some concern at this time that UK and US withdrawl from South East Asia would leave a “vacuum” presumably for Red China to fill. The Australian government even refused for a long time to sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, which I think they did in 1972 or so. There are a few links online about this period. For example here. The author of that site is (I believe, not sure) a family member of prominent Australian anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott so maybe it exaggerates a little or perhaps not, not in a position to judge myself.
The former head of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission during the 1970s, Sir Philip Baxter, even argued in the odd op-ed piece in the newspapers, borrowing from the then fashionable ideas of ‘the population bomb’ and the ‘limits to growth’, that the planet was heading for super-catastrophe, probably including a nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere, by the end of the century. He said Australia would generally survive these catastrophes better than most and would become a kind of “Lifeboat” . In order to prevent the lifeboat being overwhelmed by armed refugees he said we needed nukes to keep them out. I don’t think Baxter’s ideas here were taken seriously by anyone in power.
Dr. Prather says that the Iranians could harvest plutonium from their reactors, but they’d have to kick the IAEA out and the bomb itself would then have to be much more complicated to produce.
I’m no fan of the international treaties on such things – they serve only as trip wires for war, but it’s clear that the aggressive policy of the US is encouraging more and more states to seek that “dual use” technology.
Re: Australia as life boat: Can I stay at your place?
Sure we have a spare room, but l I think they’ll nuke Sydney too. I do have some friends with farms in the mountains. They think they can hold out for a few years. And of course the Tasmanians won’t even notice the whole armageddon thing until the hear the next international cricket test is cancelled.
While we’re at it, you can read the case for Tassie secession from the Commonwealth of Australia here. Thanks to Tasmanian historian and Jack-the-Ripper expert, Reg Watson.
I suspect Iran is moving towards nuclear weapons capability, rather than just nuclear power. Of course when you have had a history like Iran’s you may want your own nuclear deterrent too. As a result of German occupation in WW2, France was unwilling to risk depending on the US for it’s nuclear umbrella. Had Iran remained under the Shah it is not impossible that they would have pursued nuclear weapons too.
Indeed this was something of a concern back in the late seventies. There was a top selling novel of the time, John Clancy style fiction, by (financial writer) Paul Erdman called “Crash of ’79″. It featured a nuclear armed Shah of Iran going on the war path with Saudi Arabia. Not an islamist in the whole thing.
Non-screwball Iranians probably think they deserve their own bomb more than most nations too. After all they have had until recently the Soviets to the north (they invaded during the 1940s), the Iraqis (the war with them cost over half a million dead), Afghanistan on their east (with nuclear rivals India and Pakistan just beyond that), Israel and China not far away. Add to this various UK and US interventions and you may want something more than fine words from the UN to protect your borders. Of course there are screwballs in the government there but it’s not just screwiness at work here.
I meant to say Tom Clancy, not John Clancy
Well, I must say that makes perfect sense, but I think there would be some evidence and I sure haven’t heard of any.
Hey who needs evidence? are you from the reality based community or somethin’? ;P
More seriously, nuclear ambitions and…”keeping your nuclear options open’… are and have been pretty common world wide. Nations build ‘research facilities’ and other infrastructure to give them the capability to put a nuke together when they need it. A lot of this stuff is “multi use”. You could say the same about the US and Russian ‘peaceful’ space programs. The technological skills needed to land a gizmo on the moon are basically the same as the ones required to put a nuke into the men’s room of the kremlin. So ‘peaceful’ and ‘war like’ uses are just deployment options.
Iran is not the only oil rich country with a nuclear program. Indonesia has a nuclear power program too. It probably fits Henderson’s model more closely than Iran.
Even Australia toyed with this idea of ‘nuclear capability’ for a while, apparently quite seriously, at least in the period from about 1967 to 1972. The government never came out and said they wanted a bomb but they seemed keen to keep their options open. There was some concern at this time that UK and US withdrawl from South East Asia would leave a “vacuum” presumably for Red China to fill. The Australian government even refused for a long time to sign the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, which I think they did in 1972 or so. There are a few links online about this period. For example here. The author of that site is (I believe, not sure) a family member of prominent Australian anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott so maybe it exaggerates a little or perhaps not, not in a position to judge myself.
The former head of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission during the 1970s, Sir Philip Baxter, even argued in the odd op-ed piece in the newspapers, borrowing from the then fashionable ideas of ‘the population bomb’ and the ‘limits to growth’, that the planet was heading for super-catastrophe, probably including a nuclear war in the Northern hemisphere, by the end of the century. He said Australia would generally survive these catastrophes better than most and would become a kind of “Lifeboat” . In order to prevent the lifeboat being overwhelmed by armed refugees he said we needed nukes to keep them out. I don’t think Baxter’s ideas here were taken seriously by anyone in power.
Dr. Prather says that the Iranians could harvest plutonium from their reactors, but they’d have to kick the IAEA out and the bomb itself would then have to be much more complicated to produce.
I’m no fan of the international treaties on such things – they serve only as trip wires for war, but it’s clear that the aggressive policy of the US is encouraging more and more states to seek that “dual use” technology.
Re: Australia as life boat: Can I stay at your place?
Sure we have a spare room, but l I think they’ll nuke Sydney too. I do have some friends with farms in the mountains. They think they can hold out for a few years. And of course the Tasmanians won’t even notice the whole armageddon thing until the hear the next international cricket test is cancelled.
cricket cancelled??? oh no! who? what? why?
has it been rescehduled?
While we’re at it, you can read the case for Tassie secession from the Commonwealth of Australia here. Thanks to Tasmanian historian and Jack-the-Ripper expert, Reg Watson.