There is one real argument. It is that if Iran gets nuclear weapons they will use them. Specifically on Israel.
Iran is, ultimately, ruled by the Supreme Leader. He is deemed to be infallible. In 2003 he issued a fatwa, a ruling of holy law, against the development and use of nuclear weapons. This is when, according to the US National Intelligence Estimate, Iran stopped such developments.
Iran claims it only wants nuclear energy. Countries that produce nuclear energy include Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, South Africa, Czech Republic, Mexico and Brazil. At least 56 countries have nuclear research reactors.
So the argument goes back to intentions. That Iran is more dangerous than Russia, more of enemy than China, more unstable than Pakistan, more warlike than Israel, and more likely to have aggressive leaders who will launch a pre-emptive war than the United States.
If they had nuclear weapons and used them, especially if they used them aggressively, as a first strike, then Israel and the United States would retaliate with far more force and effectively destroy Iran. What we are likely to have in reality, is the sort of mutual stand-off we had with the Soviet Union for fifty years.
In addition to Esfahan's astonishing beauty, its historical value, its vibrant culture, arts, and crafts, it is home to a nuclear research reactor and it's where uranium is processed toward producing nuclear fuel.
If Iran is bombed, Esfahan will undoubtedly be a target. One of hundreds.
Those lovely people that I had dinner with will likely die. If not them, their parents, children, brothers and sisters. The student of English who sat and talked to me about Hafez for two hours. The man who makes the hand-printed table clothes in the bazaar. The mason working on the reconstruction of the great mosque.
I like to think that America can somehow overcome what's happened these last seven years. The unprovoked invasion of another country, the embrace of torture, the assault on civil liberties, the looting of our own economy, the failure to rescue the people of New Orleans and to rebuild it.
Somehow.
But bombing Iran because they posture and provoke on the world stage, will be a disaster that we won't live down. We might try to say it's something that our leaders did, we had no part in it, we could not stop them.
If that's true, and it may be true, that's sadder still.
Larry Beinhart is the author of Wag the Dog, The Librarian, and Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin. All available at nationbooks.org
His new novel: SALVATION BOULEVARD will be published in September, 2008, by Nation Books
Responses can be sent to beinhart@earthlink.net
