Centerfield

You have to remember that the Iranian Shii'a mullahs have no love for Al Quaida, which is Sunni and despises the Shiites. It's not unlikely that Al Quaida might be willing to use a nuclear weapon on Iran. So the fact that Iran is seemingly foreswearing nuclear weapons has little, if any, impact on what Al Quaida does. Al Quaida supporters aren't going to care that a Shiite cleric is against nuclear weapons.

I suspect that there is disagreement among the Iranian elite about whether to pursue nuclear weapons. Some believe that they need nukes because of their strategic situation (ie, surrounded by potentially hostile states--not only Israel but also the Sunni countries) and facing what they perceive to be a hostile US. They might well be trying to adopt an opaque nuclear stragegy like Israel's, where no one is really sure what their policy is. This has the benefit of making it difficult for the West, especially the US, to formulate a coherent strategy toward Iran. Without a smoking gun, if Iran denies it has intentions for nuclear weapons, it would be difficult (and probably crazy) for the US to attack Iran. At the same time, by rejecting the European proposal, Iran keeps its options open. And, even if the US and Europe succeed in getting economic sanctions on Iran, Iran might figure that it has a China card to play.

It seems to me that the statement is a very astute move that remains open to interpretation.

Posted by: Marc at August 10, 2005 04:07 PM

Iran's consistent contention has been that all of their efforts related to fissile materials are confined to energy poduction.

So on the occasion of firing up the grill, they're keeping their story straight.

This leaves us all to choose:

Either we believe this guy, and accept that Iran just wants to keep the toasters and microwaves running (presuming toast and popcorn are not against Islam).

Or we can assume that they felt this was a good time to bolster their lie.

Posted by: bk at August 10, 2005 04:16 PM

Marc beat me to it.

Iranian's are overwhelmingly Shia. Iraq is the only other Muslim nation in the region which has more Shia than Sunni among it's population. And we all know how well the Iraqi Sunni and Shia got along historically.

Most Sunni, and in particular those who are of the much more conservative Wahabbi persuasion (which just happens to be the dominant strain in al Queda), consider Shia to be heretics with no more chance at gaining entrance to Heaven than the hated Jews. Which largely explains why the Sunni-dominated Al Jeezera omitted the Fatwa.

Other Sunni may or may not agree with the Ayatollah's reasoning. But, they sure as heck aren't going to cite him as an authority, even if they do agree with him, precisely because he's a Shia religious leader. It'd be like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell citing David Koresh or whomever leads the Jehovah's Witnesses.

I think that if any Sunni were going to cite this new Iranian position, they'll wait until a non-cleric member of the Iranian government reiterates it and then cite that person.

Posted by: Kevin at August 10, 2005 04:57 PM

An English translation of an Arab (persian?) religious document by a news service of questionable honesty?

I'll bet there is a lot more wiggle room in the original than in the translation.

But even if the translation reflects the spirit of the original, once you have a production line to refine uranium the only difference between enriched uranium and bomb grade uranium is how many times you run the material through the process. And this doesn't even count the plutonium created when you run the reactor.

Even if you take it at face value who says the Ayatollah can't amend or reinterpret his view anytime he wants. An the next Ayatollah may simply decide the current one was mistaken.

Posted by: Bob J Young at August 10, 2005 07:48 PM

By the way: There is a fair to middling chance that they will destroy their processing plant or kill their workers when they start running at full capacity. Criticality is a tricky thing, the more you enrich uranium the more dangerous it becomes. You really have to pay attention about how your plumbing is arranged or you end up with an unwanted event. The Japanese had a very nasty accident several year back that created a nuclear percolator.

There is also a lot of other chemistry and engineering problems involved when making fuel. Its only easy when you already know how.

Posted by: Bob J Young at August 10, 2005 08:32 PM

So India and Pakistan, two allies of our government, are both aknowledged nuclear powers and refuse to sign the nonproliferation treaty... and Israel, a key ally of our government, is known to be a nuclear power even though openly talking about it appears to be verboten, and they too refuse to sign the NPT. But, we're supposed to get bent about a nation who has signed the NPT, nominally accepts the IAEA's authority to inspect facilities on their sovereign soil (contrary to Israel's example of intransigence, mind you) and who is not a nuclear power?

It's not that I don't understand why there is concern. But, what floors me is how partisan it seems to be. For some reason it is a Politically Incorrect sin of monumental proportions to dare suggest that Israel's flaunting of the alleged international will to control access to nuclear weapons is a problem.

By what moral authority do we demand that Iran comply while we studiously pretend that the Israeli Pink Elephant isn't trapsing thru our living room and our other allies aren't being held to the same standard?

Posted by: Kevin at August 10, 2005 10:14 PM

It's not that I don't understand why there is concern. But, what floors me is how partisan it seems to be. By what moral authority do we demand that Iran comply while we studiously pretend that the Israeli Pink Elephant isn't trapsing thru our living room and our other allies aren't being held to the same standard?

Well, I'm a Republican, but I don't know that I can answer that question. You're right, most conservatives are very pro-Israel. There are a number of issues why this might be the case, ranging from the obvious practical answer (Israel is a democracy with which we get along; we don't get along with Iran, and it's more of an open question as a democracy; more about this later), through the historical answer (the Soviets backed the PLO, we backed the Israelis), to the downright silly (it is routinely alleged by some anti-war folks that neoconservatism is, in and of itself, a "Jewish plot" - this from liberals who would normally have a screaming fit if you accused them of antisemitism). So there are reasons. My general feeling is that no matter how outlandish a belief a person may hold, there is obviously some thought process that underpins it, and thus some kind of effort to understand that mindset is essential to the civilized dialogue which is the hallmark of political moderates. So don't be too hasty to think of this view as unfounded.

The reason I say I'm not really qualified to answer is that I am unusual among Republicans, firstly because my support for Israel is very densely footnoted with qualifiers, and secondly, because I flat-out oppose military action against Iran, unless it really did become inescapably necessary. I wrote an article a couple of years ago, which I have dusted off today in response to this thread - which outlines my view on the matter, which may or may not be agreed with by posters here, and are certainly not shared by the bulk of the GOP.

Posted by: Simon at August 11, 2005 12:11 AM

The reason I say I'm not really qualified to answer is that I am unusual among Republicans, firstly because my support for Israel is very densely footnoted with qualifiers...

I can certainly relate to that. I used to be a Republican. And I have always supported Israel, albeit it with many qualifiers.

My question is really a rhetorical one. The double standard is patently obvious. I just wish people would be intellectually honest about the situation.

Posted by: Kevin at August 11, 2005 08:29 AM

The answer to that question is simple. Israel isn't about to use it's nukes on us or give it's nukes to anyone that will. I wish we could say the same about Iran. Unfortunately they have a nasty habit of arming people that go around blowing up things in other countries.

I don't favor use of millitary force against Iran either (and it's not like we don't have enough troop commitments across the globe as it is). But I really don't mind looking like a hypocrite at all if we can find a way to arrange it so they don't have nuclear weapons.

Heck, if it'll keep nukes out of Iranian hands you can put a dress on me and call me Nancy!

Posted by: cengel at August 11, 2005 09:49 AM

I understand that many people prefer to look at nuclear-nonproliferation from the point of view of "what gives us the moral authority." My sense is that, for better or worse, our policy isn't really derived from a serious concern with having inherent moral authority, and that's why our policy can't really be understood from that vantage point.

Seems to me that our policy is to try to keep the nuke club as exclusive as possible, by any practical means. For any given prospective new member, we're going to try harder to keep them out if our relationship with them is hostile or troubled.

Quite honestly, in national security matters, we really do face a choice about whether we care about maximizing security in the current day, or whether we care about some abstract debatable moral fairness. Perhaps we don't have the inherent moral authority to prevent other nations from having nuclear weapons. Perhaps they have as much inherent moral right to these weapons as we do. Oh well, that's for God to decide on judgement day.

In the meantime, we have the power to take and declare this right. We're going to use the power that we have to try and stop nations who might use nukes against us from getting these nukes. We'd care a lot more about Israeli nukes if we thought they'd use them, especially on us.

Our policy stance is informed by the notion that we don't care about moral fairness as much as we do about protecting our citizens from nuclear attack. Who really isn't Ok with that?

Posted by: bk at August 11, 2005 10:27 AM

One thought on Al Jazeera's failure to report on Khamenei's "production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons" prohibition fatwa... It appears CNN and The Moderate Voice are pretty much the only news services that have covered this statement as of 08/11/2005 @ 1150 Eastern Time.

I wonder what Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and every other news agency in America's sinister motivations could be for witholding this important story???

...or maybe the news simply hasn't spread through the wires yet. CNN only released the story five hours ago, it does take a little time for these things to be reported. If Al Jazeera fails to report the story in 48 hours, then you can question their motives. Until then, your speculation seems a little unfair.

Posted by: Ryan Somma at August 11, 2005 11:49 AM

Good point Brian. While we should strive to be "right" there are frankly times when abstract morality is less important than protecting ourselves. National survival is a moral right as well.

I totally agree with Brian that the issue of whether we have the "right" to keep other countries from having nuclear weapons is an abstract moral question that is akin to counting the number of angels that can stand on the head of a pin. It doesn't matter; the way of the world is that countries pursue their own interests. In the same way, the US didn't debate whether we had the "right" to demand that the Soviets remove missiles from Cuba.

The question really is whether our "hypocritical" stance helps or hinders our our goals. To put it another way, would eliminating the different standard for Israel and India with respect to nonproliferation make it more likely that countries Iran would be willing to give up its nuclear program? (Of course, since Iran denies its program is designed to make weapons, it's sort of a moot point.)

Posted by: Marc at August 11, 2005 11:50 AM

I'm not sure I buy the "hypocrite" article. We certainly know they're dangerous weapons. It also seems reasonable to have as few as possible nuclear weapons around.

Posted by: c3 at August 11, 2005 04:48 PM