Dying for another Mistake, Is Iran Telling the Truth? Theocratic Bombs over Crawford ......
"The U.S. officials who claim that the Iranian missiles are dangerous or that we are seeking to produce atomic bombs know themselves that such statements are false," said Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "We fundamentally reject nuclear weapons and prohibit the use and production of nuclear weapons." Khamenei issued a fatwa, a religious edict, against nuclear weapons five years ago. ....."
“….Medvedev confirmed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a secret visit to Moscow earlier this month and said Israeli officials had assured him that they are not planning a military strike on Iran. Medvedev said any Israeli attack on Iranian facilities would result in "humanitarian disaster, a vast number of refugees, Iran's wish to take revenge -- and not only upon Israel, to be honest, but upon other countries as well."…..”
Is it possible that conventional ‘wisdom’ is no wisdom at all? It is almost taboo for a Western or Arab reporter to take the obvious alternative position that Iran may not actually want the bomb at this time. There are a couple of journalists (in the New York Times, New Yorker) who have expressed doubts.
Iran’s foes believe that she is aiming at nuclear weapons, or pretend that they believe so. Most Arab regimes as well as Israel either believe so or are just using it for their own purposes. Arab oligarchs use it to get the West to weaken Iran, maybe even attack her, and to scare their own people: fear is a great postponer of reform, a great excuse, a great diversion. Israel uses it as an excuse to delay a peace process that may force her to give up occupied land.
Or maybe the mullahs are doing a Saddam. Until 2003 I was certain that Saddam a stockpiles of WMD and near developing a nuclear bomb. I was worried about the famous mushroom cloud over Crawford, Texas.
On the Other hand Iran may be developing a weapon. It is possible: even Israel does not claim openly to have nuclear weapons.
Most likely:
Leaders outside the West sometimes do tell the truth, perhaps not as well as say W, Cheney, or Tony Blair, but they have their moments. Even theocrats of both the Shi'a and Sunni denominations.
In my view Ayatollah Khamenai is foremost a religious man: when he publicly says, repeatedly, that Iran is not developing and will not develop the weapon he means it because his religious reputation is at stake. Whatever the West thinks of him, which by the way does not mean a hill of beans to him, he is not a flagrant public liar. He really truly does not care what the West thinks of him: that is one difference between Iran's theocrats and Arab oligarchs. He is closer, in that sense, to Benjamin Netanyahu: they both thumb their noses at the rest of the world.
When he says he does not want the bomb, as he has been doing for years, he almost certainly means it. Of course in the confusion of the Iranian power structure it is possible that Khamenai does not really know everything. He may not want the bomb, but the Revolutionary Guard probably does.
Iran has the ‘technology’ and will perfect it, but will pull her punch at the last step: no nuclear weapons, but everything will be in place for a speedy development.
Which may be little comfort for everybody else……
Cheers
mhg
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