Richard has put together some ideas and analysis from a day of media and public events he organized on the Iranian nuclear crisis. I’m excerpting this part that echoes my own thinking on Iran’s very rational reasons to be considering acquiring an atomic bomb.
If Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons is it to destroy Israel? In a word, no. Aside from the three-sided net the U.S. has sewn around Iran, several Iranian neighbors like Pakistan and Russia have nuclear weapons. Not to mention Israel’s warheads which could strike it as well. And one fact that is insufficiently understood is that Iran is deeply worried about the instability of the former. Within Pakistan, there is deep hatred of Shiism, the dominant form of Iranian Islam. Pakistan is rumored to have funded and founded an anti-Iranian terror group, Jundallah that is active inside Iran along their joint border.
Iranians worry that an unstable Pakistan could fall to the Taliban or other radical Islamist forces who will look to Iran as a mortal enemy and feel free to use its nuclear arsenal as political blackmail. We must recognize that Iran does have legitimate national security concerns to preserve its territorial integrity and social stability. If we address these concerns and treat them as legitimate then we may be able to resolve the impasse.
I suspect the Iranians are worried about worse things than “political blackmail.”
