Who is afraid of peace?
I raise this recent history because now more than ever, we need clear thinking in our foreign policy, and I raise this history because it bears directly on how we respond to the Iranian nuclear program. That program has been around for decades, dating back to the Shah's efforts, with U.S. support, in the 1960s and '70s to develop nuclear power. The theocracy that overthrew the Shah accelerated the program after the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, a war in which Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons to brutal effect, and Iran's nuclear program advanced steadily through the 1990s despite unilateral U.S. sanctions.An excerpt from, "Iran Is Not Biggest Nuclear Cheater-Guess Who Is?" by Ryan Mcnamara, Who.What.Why. August 4, 2015:
When the Bush administration took office, Iran had no centrifuges, the machines necessary to produce material for a bomb, that were spinning to enrich uranium. But despite repeated warnings from the United States government, by the time I took office, Iran had installed several thousand centrifuges and showed no inclination to slow, much less halt, its program.
Among U.S. policymakers, there's never been disagreement on the danger posed by an Iranian nuclear bomb. Democrats and Republicans alike have recognized that it would spark an arms race in the world's most unstable region and turn every crisis into a potential nuclear showdown. It would embolden terrorist groups like Hezbollah and pose an unacceptable risk to Israel, which Iranian leaders have repeatedly threatened to destroy. More broadly, it could unravel the global commitment to nonproliferation that the world has done so much to defend. The question then is not whether to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but how. Even before taking office, I made clear that Iran would not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon on my watch, and it's been my policy throughout my presidency to keep all options, including possible military options, on the table to achieve that objective.
The US has placed nuclear weapons in many other nations as part of NATO’s “nuclear sharing” program. These nations not only store US nuclear weapons, they practice handling and delivering them. Under this system the United States has nuclear weapons in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey.Late Shah of Iran in an interview with a French television crew in the 1970s:
Many see this as a violation of NPT, which bars nuclear states from delegating “the control of their nuclear weapons directly or indirectly to others.”
The US also has a history of selling nuclear secrets to friends. In the 1980’s the Department of Energy provided Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with information important to the construction of nuclear weapons and materials. In 1989, the DOE went so far as to invite three nuclear engineers from Iraq’s Al-Qa’qaa’ weapons facility to a conference on detonation physics.
According to Article I of the NPT, nuclear states may not “assist, encourage, or induce”–in any way—a non-nuclear state to manufacture or acquire a nuclear weapon.
"Why is it normal for you, the Germans and the British to have atomic or hydrogen weapons while for Iran it is not, though we are not in NATO nor automatically protected by any other country? Why for Iran is the simple principle of self defense, the defense of its interests, a problem, while for others it is totally normal?"This point is still valid all these years later, and I still have not seen it brought up once in the debate over the P5+1-Iran nuclear deal, whether in the American and Western media or in Iran. Even the more objective, cool-headed, and rational defenders of this deal have failed to bring up the issue of self-defense. The U.S., the West, and Israel have a nuclear gun pointed at Iran, and this reality is not even worth mentioning? Not even in passing?
Countries like the U.S., France, Israel, and England who are led by evil scumbags from the depths of hell have no right to moralize and give lectures on the world stage about what countries have the right to nuclear weapons and what countries don't. They want to play the role of God with the keys to the nuclear kingdom, but their mentality is that of apes with sticks.
Shah of Iran on Nuclear Weapons
President Obama's speech on the P5+1-Iran Nuclear Deal At American University
