Under The Persian Rug

I think there might be more than meets the eye to the current Iranian crisis, but I am aving a hard time figuring out just what it is. They insist they want nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, yt everybody else it seems is up i arms about it. The UN, as impotent as ever, has treatened sanctios against them, but the Iraians are adamant, they will proceed with the project. They recently announced they had succeeded in enricing uranium.

They could obviously not hope to produce a nuclear device in any significant amounts in the near future, and large scale productionof nuclear weapons is unlikely even inte long trm, if they did produce some it would doubltess be more useful as a deterrent for invasion thananything else. Even this I believe is a secondary rationale, the main one being simply a patriotic drive to unite the country in asserting its national soveignty over it’s own internal affairs.

Of course, I do not want the Iranians to have the bomb-not even one. On the other hand, I find their possession of a handful of nukes no more troubling than those possessed by the highly unstable nation of Pakistan. Add to tis the possession of nukes by pakistans taditional enemy, India, and yo ave a recipe for eventually disaster, I am very muc afraid. All it takes is for the wrong people to ascend to power in Pakistan. Yet, this is seldom mentioned, probably for good reason.

The Iranians make a far better boogey man, and diversion. What if it were to turn out that they do indeed want nuclear energy, just for the purposes of producing electricity? If so, this could be nothing but good. This would be good for the environment, in at least a small way, as nuclear enegy,in additon to being cheap and efficient, is clean, so long as the facilities are safe. In addition, this would free up more, much more, crude oil to go onto the world market, which by all rights should help to decrease the price of home heating fuel and gasoline. It might additionally force other nations to follow suit, including the U.S.

Unfotunately, everyone has become aware of late of the influence of the multi-national oil compnaies on the global economy, and on the governments of the ever growing industrialized world. Is that really the true unwritten story behind all the international hand wringing?