Why Iran Can’t Have Nuclear Weapons

I talked to a young US citizen, who is also an Iranian citizen. He studies International Relations. He used to visit Iran continually (his family has various property in Iran, including farmland up north). But now no more: he is old enough to be drafted in the Iranian army, and he doesn’t want that to happen. He is secular, and not thrilled with the theologists in Iran. However, considering nuclear weapons, he said: “why can’t we have them?” As most Iranians, he feels that to be deprived of nuclear weapons is a strident injustice. Who doesn’t want to partake in nuclear fun?

For reference, the Japanese, who were smarter than the Nazis, knew perfectly well that nuclear bombs could be made, and had three programs, using different techniques, to make them (one was located in North Korea, rich in hydro, then Jap occupied). One idea was to have a bomb ready to drop on GIs gathered on a beach. However the crazed maniacs who had bullied their way at the top of Japan got a taste of that medicine before they got their own ready:

Nagasaki Bomb Explosion. The Christian city and its cathedral were not the primary objectives. Clouds got in the way. The shipyards initially targeted in another city were switched at the last moment. The bluff was to persuade the crazed maniacs leading Japan that there would be such a bomb every three days. They capitulated before the largest city of the northern island of Japan got atom bombed too. Ultimately, the atomic bombings saved millions of lives, mostly civilians in China being killed by the system the Jap invaders had set up…

In the 1960s, there was an important movement against nuclear weapons. The threat was clear: as weapons were not precise then, war planners had advised to make giant bombs: may be they could not land where intended, but then they would destroy everything in a giant radius, that was good enough. Standard equipment on bombers were bombs in the megaton range. The USSR produced up to 50,000 thermonuclear bombs or so.

A semblance of sanity prevailed later and thanks to Reagan (!) and Gorbachev, arsenals got reduced by 90% or so. (Compare with my useless friend Obama, who achieved no arm reduction, just the opposite…)

However, even after reductions, nuclear weapon systems are still formidable.

A French defense minister pointed out in the last few years:”We can kill 50 million people in twenty minutes, and we think that’s enough.”[1]

No solution was found to world denuclearization. The balance of terror is all the parental guidance the world is getting. [2] 

In the 1950-60s, because of the existential threat to Israel, France helped Israel develop nuclear weapons. At some point 5,000 French engineers were at Dimona, the top Israeli nuclear site. Israeli scientists took part in the French nuclear bomb program, all the more as rabid pacifism was rampant in the French intellectual community, and most French  physicists refused to develop nukes (ironically enough the same who hated the bomb in 1960 wanted it in 1938; but the enemy was not the same!)

It has been said by those who should know, that Israel has of the order of 200 nuclear warheads. During the Yom Kippur war, using nukes was considered. It didn’t come to that, in part because high precision US weapons arrived in a timely manner.

Since then Pakistan and India have developed large nuclear arsenals. Their main potential effect will be to reduce considerably the overcrowding of South Asia.

So most Iranians want nuclear weapons: why can’t we have them?

After all, Iran has existed for longer than India… (Lore and archeology indicate.)

But then is Islamized Iran really Iran? Even the Iranians don’t know from one moment to the next. Thus most of Iranian feasts are gloomy, except for Norouz (which is at least 5,000 years old).

The reason is that if Iran gets nukes, surely so will Arabia, and then why not Egypt, Algeria, Brazil, Argentina, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc. And of course Japan could have thousands of nukes, any time, it’s just a small constitutional change away.

Nuclear Armageddon would be guaranteed.

So, unfortunately, the balance of terror and nuclear strike supremacy of the Permanent Members of the Security Council has to stay in place: only them should have nukes.

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Why The UNSC (UN Security Council) and its five members?

One has to go back to history. China is the oldest civilization with the Western Cradle (the Indo-European civilization). Either have had organized sedentary, agricultural, states for five thousand years. Overall, France and China have been the most prominent military powers of the last two millennia. France was the modernized form of the Roman state and its continuation, and pretty much created Europe, while China created Japan, Vietnam, etc.

Chinese defenses mostly failed in the last millenium, and China spent most of the time occupied by Mongols, Jurgens, and Manchus. (OK, arguably only the Mongols (=Yuans) were really not Chinese.) In the first half of the 20C, Japan tried to invade China, and became crazed fascist from trying too hard.

Meanwhile Germany’s fascist plutocracy tried to seize all of Europe as colony, and was defeated by France and Britain. Their progeniture, the US, caused Europe more problems than it solved, and flew to the rescue of victory in wars it had contributed to launch, organize and maintain. Twice. (Yes, most historians would disagree, but they are paid to say what they say, whereas I am only rewarded with expressing the truth, a fundamental human instinct and pleasure.)  

Thus France, Britain, the US, China, Russia could pose as the main combatants against barbarity, horror, and infamy in the 20C… and they were. Moreover the first three are the champion of democracy, human rights (France abolished slavery in 655 CE, imposing that to all of Europe and later the world; then formally re-established the “Renovatio Imperium Romanorum“ (Renovation of the Empire of the Romans), unwilded Germany, in 1066 CE France abolished slavery in England, and French imperialists there ended establishing the world’s most advanced democracy, the British Parliament, etc.)

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So it is OK that those five have nuclear weapons: they are unlikely to engage in crazed world conquest. To those who moan that France had a giant empire, let them be reminded that it was a “Mission Civilisatrice”… Not a joke when you look at the details. French Canada was not the English Colony in the Americas: the later, founded by private investors, practiced genocide, whereas the French colony, under tight government control, didn’t.  (This is also why the English won the war… Nothing like genocide, when you want space, as Hitler pointed out cogently, yet idiotically… because those things are better left unsaid.)

Argentina and Brazil were persuaded to drop their atomic bomb program. South Africa, too, and accepted to dismantle seven already completed bombs.

The world order we have now is not the best imaginable… But it works. Some Germans moan they would like a Permanent Security Council seat. Well, they already have it… through France. Otherwise why not Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, etc.? The beauty of it all is that all these countries can, and have sieged at the UNSC. Just, they aren’t permanent and don’t have veto powers.

So Iran will not get nukes. Arabia and Israel are dead set against it. Arabia tolerated the nukes of its de facto ally Israel: everybody understands Israel is very small, very hated, and has been disappeared thrice already, once by the Babylonians, later by the Romans, and finally by the Nazis. One could say they have excuses to take existence seriously.

But Arabia will not tolerate to have Iran as local superpower. Not again: they have seen that movie before, several times.

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Shah Abbas expanded Iran back into Iraq (as happened many times prior).

Iran Was Not Always Pacific:

A leitmotiv, out there, repeated by millions of parrots, is that Iran was always pacific.

In the early Seventh Century, Iran, then Sassanid Persia, conquered most of Arabia. The backlash is that god crazed Arabs destroyed the Sassanid empire a few years later (the Romans had done the heavy lift of destroyed the Sassanids before, literally a few years before the Arabs attacked, led by their great strategist Muhammad…)    

Using an army formed in part of ghulams—Christian slaves from Armenia and Georgia who had been converted to Islam—Shah ‘Abbas re-established Iran’s borders, defeating the Uzbeks in the northeast. He would eventually expand his empire, seizing the Kingdom of Hormuz from the Portuguese, on the other side of the Arabo-Persian Gulf, and defeating the Ottomans to take control of Baghdad (Iraq) in 1623 CE. These conquests allowed Shah ‘Abbas and Iranians access to the sacred Shi’i shrines of Kazimayn, Karbala and Najaf in Iraq. It also gave the Shah complete control of trade coming through the Persian Gulf. The Shah created a magnificent capital, Isfahan, in the south. A breathtaking city I had the good fortune to visit, with some of the world’s most beautiful building (blue and gold mosques).

Not again will the Arabs say. Conscious of the fact the present world order needs to be sustain, the US and the EU agree… And no, Russia and China are not stupid enough to come to the rescue of Iran in a significant way… That’s precisely why China and Russia are on the UNSC: because they aren’t crazed too much.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] Standard US and French bombs are around 250 kilotons nowadays. But they are typically on a “bus” carrying up to nine other independently guided bombs. Thus one missile on just one nuclear sub missile could destroy the largest city. for example Teheran. France has 4 of these Armageddon subs, the UK has three (the fourth was denuclearized). The US has 14 such subs, each nearly 20,000 tons (!!!), carrying 24 Trident missiles with up to eight nuclear warheads… 4 other such subs were denuclearized…)

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2] Accidental nuclear war from a short circuit is possible, as Launch-On-Warning systems are still in existence, in Russia or the USA (France doesn’t do launch-on-warning, as it depends upon aircraft and nuclear subs). Unbelievably, supposedly progressive politicians in the West have long stopped caring about Launch-On-Warning, although such systems can launch nuclear war, Terminator style, any day…. Another deep failure of the Clinton and Obama administrations (I didn’t expect progressive smarts from W. Bush or Trump! But when the self-declared progressives are not progressive, we have a serious problem…)

Tags: Iran, nuclear weapons, UNSC