In Reply to: Iraq represents the greatest threat to Israel. posted by Gainsborough on April 24, 2024 at 06:15:34
That said, I've always assumed that the main reason Iran pursues nuclear weapon capabilities is to make sure the US (or perhaps also Israel) won't pick a war with them. Not that international politics needs to be run on the basis of hunches, but I actually believe they have a defensive rationale in their acquisition of nuclear weapons.
If you look at Iran's history, they are two things that remain fairly consistent: they have been continually attacked but never quite started a hot war with anyone in their modern history going back to, say the 20th century, and the American interference that led to the coup against Mossadegh left a deep scar in their psychology, which was the driving force behind their potentially only warlike aggression during that period, the US embassy hostage crisis.
So maybe it is the naive romantic in me, but as deplorable as their islamist regime is (and a lesson for all left wingers around the world that the enemy of your enemy is not exactly your friend) I generally think that the western understanding of Iranian motivations tends to be incomplete and in parts, not exactly accurate.
That said, I am not in favor of anyone else developing any nuclear weapons anymore because we have way too many of them as is, and I have 0 trust that those nations who hold them can be guaranteed to be responsible stewards of that power. They may one day have a crazed president who wants to use them against hurricanes or something.