A few things:

There's a big difference between producing enriched uranium and being able to refine it enough to be weapons grade.

Secondly, if I was in a country surrounded on just about all sides by forces that were nuclear capable I would want to be on the same playing field.

Thirdly, why is Iran any different to India and Pakistan who, not so long ago, nearly came to nuclear blows and are more of an immediate danger? In fact it would only need 100 warheads exchanged by the 2 to cause at least 1 billion worldwide deaths and drop the earth's temperature by 1.25 degrees within 10 days clicky.

There will never be an invasion of Iran. The US already bogged down with Iraq would struggle with Iran. And no one else will assist. It is a mountainous country with a much larger population than Iraq, It is also politically, deeply unstable. There will be a revolution there probably within a decade as the younger members want freedom. We can see this as the result of the last "election". This will happen again. That is why the west will not intervene internally in Iran. They want it to collapse of its own accord, and not be blamed for events there.

Iranians are unlike the rest of the middle east. They are very western in their outlook, but they are held back by the theocracy. 70% of the population are under 30, these are the ones who will change the country. Having nuclear power stations are a status symbol for the country, that is why they want them.

It's a little obvious
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

Iran have the 3rd largest oil reserves behind Saudi and Canada, whereas India and Pakistan are not on the list. When you consider many of the terrorists who have tried to blow themselves up on public transport are either from or are trained in Pakistan, it makes you realise what the war is all about.

This is why we never went in after Mugabe when half of his population was starving to death and why we don't go into Pakistan to put a stop to the terrorists...

I think it's more than just a status symbol.

They are bordered on all sides by countries that either have Western Forces in them, by countries that allow NATO troops to freely use their airspace and even by a nuclear capable Pakistan. I would be highly surprised if any country would not try to develop weapons that are available to those forces.

As for Iran being different, yes it is. There is a slowly growing, yet large, democratic movement within the population, particularly amongst the students and Academics.

Tehran on a Friday night looks very similar to almost any Western City, the percentage of cosmetic surgery is higher than in any City of the USA and gender reassignment operations are generally paid for by the State. Those are just a few things that don't fit in with the Daily Mail idea of Iran.

Gav: Exactly. I have no faith in the 'intelligence' opinions of our Governments either considering their complete inability to actually convey reality.

I think that there would have been much more support for us invading Zimbabwe and sorting the mess out there than going into Iraq. Oil is a big factor and our government are not facing up to the fact that we are facing Peak Oil and that will challenge our way of life like nothing else around.

Except that invading a country for the purposes of regime change is illegal under International Law...

Oops Tony did that. Well I hope they fry him for that. The weapons of mass destruction was a ruse around that. But what Mugabe is doing is genocide plain and simple. If it were not for the Vietnamese then the genocide in Cambodia would still be happening now. Sometimes human rights trumps political rights. I was suggesting that we stay there indefinitely and we could always hand over to a force of African peacekeepers in such a case.

British Imperialism? The Africans will love that. Such a move would play right into Mugabe's hands.

Most people in the world believe that America is the country most likely to unilaterally use WMDs.

I'm one of those people, and quite frankly I'd be happier if everyone just turned them over to the Swiss so they could use them to power a massive export industry. No more Armageddon; just lots more high quality chocolate for everyone. It's the only Win-win alternative.

the USA is still the only nation to have used WMD in anger …

And quite possibly to have engineered the biggest social conspiracy involving the sacrifice of the largest number of people in the history of mankind. I know millions died in the second world war, but at least we knew who we were fighting and why.

Even if 9/11 wasn't an American conspiracy, there's little doubt in my mind that the rest of the "war on terror" is. There have always been a few radical extremists willing to commit atrocities on all sides, but right now America and Israel are doing the best impression of state-sponsored mass terrorism.

"Give me your land and your oil, or experience the shock and awe of our multi-billion dollar military machine!"

I see no self defense. I see only dollar signs.

Untrue. The USA is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in anger.
Chemical weapons are considerd WMD's and both Iran and Iraq used them during a war against each other in the.. 1970's I think. I think it's possible that if either of them had had nuclear weapons at that point, they'd have used them too.
And of course Saddam Hussain used chemical weapons against the population of Hallabjah.
So the person most likely to have used a WMD is not in fact American, he's Iraqi.

Aside from that, I also think JJ's original proposition is bunk. Is America more likely to use a nuclear weapon than the crackpots in North Korea? Far from it. As I have said, the Russians and Chinese act as America's 'conscience' in these things, but I don'rt think the North Koreans give a damn about what anyone else thinks.

Let's not this dissolve into blind anti-Americanism. The USA has done and indeed continues to do an awful lot of very wrong things on the international stage but they at least are not being run by a megalomaniac dictator - there are plenty of people in the US who would stop the government using nuclear weapons other than in the time of direst need and would make sure there was hell to pay afterwards. Nobody's doing that to Kim Jong Il and it's recently been shown Ahmadinajad really doesn't give much thought to the democractic process.

And lets face it, Iran aren't exactly doing their best to calm the situation. As far as I know, the Israeli's aren't putting long range missile tests on their national news broadcasts.

Jon

Jon

I did not make a proposition. I quoted statistics from various polls.

Annoyingly, I can't find the one I was actually thinking of. Here's one from 2006 instead, and note well that it only refers to so-called American allies. Levels of fear and distrust are probably much higher in other parts of the world:




Reference: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/nov/0 ... northkorea


I know it seems crazy, but about half the people polled do actually believe the official story:



Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_opinion_polls