Nuclear Iran-rational and irrational actors
Would a nuclear Iran be a rational actor and could he be controlled through deterrence and containment? Daniel Pipes referred to Ahmadinejad and Iranian hardliners. Now Ahmadinejad is no longer in office and whether the Iranian hardliners are guided by Mahdi – Armageddon visions by means of a nuclear war is also questionable. Like the so-called moderates, they have no moral reservations about sacrificing hundreds of thousands of young people and people, as in the Iran-Iraq war, after Iraq had already been pushed back they started an offensive to conquer Iraq, are also waging conventional wars or sending children as suicide bombers, would also use nuclear weapons for blackmail and deterrence, as Western realpoliticians do, but it is unlikely that they want an Armageddon that wipes out their own god-state. They are probably as realistic and rational as the USA under Reagan with its nuclear war threats, armsrace and airland battles of NATO and the NSC directive 54 of Colin S. Gray, which declared nuclear wars were „limitable, feasible and winnable“ against the Soviet Union. Probably the Iranian hardliners are as rational as Reagan’s then Vice President George W. Bush Sr. in an interview with the Los Angeles Times correspondent Scheer:
Scheer: Don’t you reach a point with these strategic nuclear weapons where we can destroy each other so often … that it really doesn’t matter anymore whether you’re ten or two percent below or above?
Bush: Yes, if you think there is no such thing as a winner in a nuclear exchange, then the argument makes sense, I don’t think so.
Scheer: How do you win a nuclear exchange?
Bush: You have a survivability of command and control structures, survivability of industrial potential, protection of a percentage of citizens, and you are able to do more damage to your opponent than he can do to you. That way there can be a winner.
It is questionable whether Bush senior was serious, but Reagan’s nuclear war threats, nuclear jokes or NATO maneuvers like Marple Archer often put the Warsaw Pact in panic and high alert. So much for the rationality of normal realpolitik and brinkmanship in normal international operations in world peace, which was also successful and which is often set in opposition to religious-fanatical irrationality.
Would a nuclear Iran be so dramatic, or would it spark a nuclear arms race in the region and beyond, if Erdogan Turkey, with the help of Russia and Japan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which also tries to go nuclear with the help of Yared Kushner’s Iron Bridge program. Saudi Arabia seems to be preparing more and more for its own nuclear armament, especially with the help of the US and Pakistan. It is noticeable how much Saudi Arabia is now giving Pakistan in economic aid and investment, even investing in the New Silk Road through the China-Pakistan-Economic Corridor (CPEC). In addition to geopolitical and economic interests, military interests should also play a role, namely gaining access to Pakistani nuclear weapons technology. The Trump administration is also very active in this direction.
Based on the reports of a whistleblower, a committee of the US House of Representatives has now submitted a report after leading circles in the Trump administration, to which his son-in-law Jareed Kushner belongs, allegedly launched the so-called IP3 / Ironbridge program, a kind of Marshall plan for Saudi Arabia, but which is only supposed to be a cloak for supplying Saudi Arabia with nuclear power plants and ultimately nuclear weapons. The front company includes a consortium of General Electric, Siemens, Toshiba and other companies, ex-generals and Trump’s former National Security Advisor Flynn, but above all his son-in-law Jareed Kushner. The original report of the House of Representatives can be read at:
In order to enforce nuclear non-proliferation, the US would have to prevent any attempt to do so after the nuclear state of North Korea, which can no longer be prevented. Otherwise discussions will begin again in US government circles, as in the 1960s under Kennedy and then Johnson, as Seymour Hersh describes in his book „Nuclear Power Israel“, whether one really wants to adhere to the non-proliferation policy or not tolerate also a group or a belt of atomic States such as Japan, Taiwan and India as a counterweight to the nuclear weapons of China and the Soviet Union, whereby the discussion was not allowed to get out, not even in official statements, even in the form of hints. Nixon then tried to win the Soviet Union for a joint military strike against China’s nuclear arsenals and nuclear infrastructure, which the Sovjets rejected and Nixon then traveled to China and allied with Mao.