lwarmonger

Ok, you are kind of misrepresenting my position here. In no way do I think that Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is a good thing, nor do I think that they are nice and benevolent and have no desire to destroy anyone. What I am pointing out is that when a nation stares annihilation in the face, it scales back the rhetoric, and that the acquisition of nuclear weapons oftentimes acts as more of a braking force on a nation or leader than the possession of nukes by their opponents.

Take China. Before nukes, to listen to China was to think that the second they acquired nuclear weapons was the second they would start using them to cleanse the world of capitalism. That is why China was oftentimes considered worse than the Soviets in the 1960's... at least the Soviets were reasonable. The Chinese were madmen. And then they acquired nukes. Suddenly the Chinese became much more reasonable. Why? Because with nukes, if we misinterpreted what they said or meant, we (or the Soviets) might actually destroy them instead of just posturing. Why would we destroy them? Because they have nukes, and so things they say are more threatening once they have nuclear bombs and missiles then they were before.

If you read that link I gave you a little while ago, it really does make very interesting reading. It shows a few possible scenarios of nuclear war between the various Middle Eastern powers, and in none of those scenarios is Israel destroyed. However in all of the full scale nuclear ones Iran is (28 million dead out of a population of roughly 60 million counts as destroyed in my book). That is why I decided to come up with a scenario that maximizes the Iranian governments control over the nuke (using the Revolutionary Guards) while minimizing culpability. Because while the Iranians may want to use a nuclear weapon on Israel, they most certainly do not want a full scale nuclear exchange with them as the primary target.