Without adding a single other word, I’d like to cite, with emphasis added, a brief passage from Reuel Gerecht’s “The Struggle for the Middle East”:
And it is an open question, of course, whether any combination of sanctions, short of a blockade of Iranian oil, could convince the ruling mullahs to cease and desist since the nuclear program is one of the few things that the quarrelsome political clergy can agree on. It is also undoubtedly popular with many ordinary Iranians, who see the nuke as an expression of Iranian nationalism, not as an instrument of mass destruction in the hands of virulently anti-American clerics. The mullahs, who have alienated just about everyone in the country with their incompetence, corruption, and antidemocratic behavior, have accidentally discovered something that gives them prestige and nationalist credentials.
Well, I’ll add this. Long before Iran’s clerical regime came to power, the Shah initiated a low-level nuclear weapons program. The Shah’s rule was authoritarian, capricious, and cruel, and its security services, foremost among them the hated SAVAK, committed ghastly atrocities against dissidents. At the same time, the Shah’s Iran was, ostensibly, a steadfast ally of the United States. The country was ripe for a democratic revolution. It happened. It didn’t go as planned.
India-where a threatening strategic environment and domestic politics both played a role in the decision to pursue nuclear weapons-also comes to mind. That’s for another time.
— Reihan
The Dish 