Originally Posted by lwarmonger

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.... ...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.