Thursday, September 20, 2007

Iran- Whose "existential" threat?

Galbraith's article (here) on Iran was originally published in the New York Review of Books and then here in the Asia Times. It is so important that it is worth reproducing here for discussion.

There is much that could be argued with in the aricle, but, in the main it seems to capture the situation well.

IMO, the US has refused to accept the idea of sharing power in the Middle East with the Iranians. That lies at the heart of our problem with them. All other issues are more sympton than anything else. As Galbraith observes we have ignored efforts on their part to draw us into a serious discussion of what are really bi-lateral issues.

We talk about Iran being a strategic threat (life-threatening to the nation) to the United States. This is nonsense. Unless the Shihab series of guided missile developments results in an ICBM with a six-thousand mile range fitted with warheads of city destroying yields, Iran will never be an existential threat to the US.

If it were not for the undeniable fact that an Iran equipped with their present Shihab 3 and nuclear warheads would be an existential threat to Israel, our concern over their future nuclear weapons would be no greater than our present concern over Pakistan's weapons. Pat Lang

Photo

Estimated Range of Shihab3 Missile

2 comments:

bishop said...

awesome post dude...

bishop said...

and people are actually arguing with those dudes that wrote that book on the Israeli lobby who claim that America sometimes acts contrary to it's own interests ...for Israel. this is proof right here!!!