New at Reason

David Weigel | April 11, 2006

The abuses of "national security," Iran's nuclear surety, and France's lack of maturity -- in the new Reason Express.

Comments

|4.11.06 @ 9:32AM|#

"The moderate forces in Iran can legitimately point to American nuclear attack stories as a reason to change the country's current path."

Um, I'd like to point out that the threat of "mushroom clouds over American cities" didn't exactly boost the standing of moderate Americans seeking to change our country's path. Quite the opposite, it gave the incumbent radicals a nice bit of breathing room.

Sandy|4.11.06 @ 10:05AM|#

I wonder if the moderates called "objectively pro-Christofascist traitorous appeasers" by the Iranian equivalent of Ann Coulter.

|4.11.06 @ 10:30AM|#

joe hits it on the head: threatening a country is never a boost to the moderates. One of the few really universal lessons of history and, of course, the one that is most resolutely ignored. Everyone expects the enemy nation to have a completely different internal dynamic from their own. Why is that?

re: France. Sometimes a big reform is easier than a small one. They should just make a massive overhaul of the entire work-law structure. I mean, why suffer through all of this for such a petty proposal? You could have the same riots over something much more substantial.

|4.11.06 @ 10:33AM|#

Let's talk about the real issue of "what the hell should be done about Iran?"

The diplomacy crowd keep saying if we had China and Russia onboard we could stop this. Well, that doesn't appear to have any chance of occurring. Both nations are apparently happy to play spoiler and get paid for the technology as a side benefit. Without the real players on the team, France, Germany, et. al. can hope to do nothing better than kick the can down the road a year or two.

So what do we do? To those who think that a nuclear Iran isn't that bad: How strongly can we retaliate against terrorist attacks (many of which will undoubtedly have been sponsored by Iran) when Iran has a bomb that they'd probably be happy to test out on Israel? How long will Turkey continue to toe the secularist line with a nuclear Iran next door?

|4.11.06 @ 10:51AM|#

So the answer is to sell atomic bombs to islamic nations in North Africa and the Middle East, making a tidy profit, then maybe get them into a doctrinal war on islam, and go in and pick up the pieces?

Nice!

|4.11.06 @ 11:04AM|#

Whatever happened to that cutish French libertarian/conservative chick from a few yrs back?

|4.11.06 @ 11:15AM|#

sulla,

I see a 0% probability of Iran risking nuclear annihilation in support of even its client terror groups. The mullahs have behaved like very rational actors in their foreign policy since taking over, even cooperating with us in the Afghan War. This is not to say we're buddy-buddy with them, but to rebut your implied presumption that a nuclear Iran would behave like a nuclear Taliban.

|4.11.06 @ 1:21PM|#

From whom would Iran risk annihilation? Name the Western country that could muster the political will to "annihilate" Iran in response to some terror attack? Because their foreign policy will certainly continue to rely heavily on clients, they can maintain plausible deniablility with the surety that any attack will be met not with retaliation, but by months of politicking and posturing.

|4.11.06 @ 4:00PM|#

I wonder if the moderates called "objectively pro-Christofascist traitorous appeasers" by the Iranian equivalent of Ann Coulter.

We call them "objectively pro-infidel".

|4.11.06 @ 7:37PM|#

Name the Western country that could muster the political will to "annihilate" Iran in response to some terror attack?

The US. If we lose a city to a terrorist nuke, I'd be rather surprised if we didn't nuke Iran. (This assumes that Iran has nukes at the time.)

If we are nuked. At least 90% of the country would support a response in kind. We lose NY, they lose Tehran--tit for tat.

|4.12.06 @ 1:37PM|#

tit for tat

Historically, we've committed to full retaliation in the event of a nuclear attack, to prevent getting into tit-for-tat city-vaporizing.

Personally, if we ever get nuked, I don't think we'll end up nuking anyone unless the administration of the time is confident enough as to the source of the attack to respond immediately. Weeks and months later, I don't think we could get a consensus to even nuke one city.