Yesterday, peace talks were to begin between Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu, but much of the talk swirling around the region was of war. First of all, Britain's former prime minister, Tony Blair, said that Iran will ultimately have to be confronted over its nuclear program while Netanyahu made statements indicating that attacking Iran may be the ultimate solution to Iran's nuclear program. Attacking Iran would be disastrous for everyone in the Middle East. Those who are urging war are under the assumption that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons for an attack on Israel and as a means of subjugating its Gulf neighbors whose even conventional military forces come nowhere close to Iran's capabilities. With the Iran/Iraq stalemate, Iranian forces, both soldiers and commanders, gained valuable real-time experience, and the country is unlikely to fold under any kind of military assault. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has called a strike “completely insane,” arguing that it would “turn the region into one big fireball” and that the Iranians “would immediately start building the bomb”. And while the countries in the region are adamantly opposed to any kind of nuclear weapons being developed in Iran, in the aftermath of a military strike by, especially, Israel, many of these countries would change their tune to support Tehran, which would put development of a nuclear bomb on the fast track. There is no good reason for Iran to acquire nuclear weaponry. Indeed, there is no good reason for nuclear weaponry to exist, at all, especially in the Middle East where political tensions can often run close to the breaking point. Nuclear weapons have been used as deterrents, and an Iranian bomb would certainly act as a deterrent should Israel consider attacking a nuclear-armed Iran. But nuclear deterrents are pathetically and absurdly dangerous. It would almost seem as if it were no coincidence that the acronym for the Cold War axiom of “mutually assured destruction” is “mad”, because the entire concept is entirely mad. If we are to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, we should – apart from denuclearizing Israel – do so with a massive diplomatic onslaught from both its admirers and it detractors. Going to war is not an option. __
