Iran and nukes

How Iran's Rulers Think about the Nuclear Program

by Harold Rhode
December 15, 2011 at 4:30 am

http://www.hudson-ny.org/2659/iran-nuclear-weapons-program

As the Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic revolution in Iran, said: The Muslim world is engaged in a war with the non-Muslim world, a war which will end only when the non-Muslim world converts to Islam.[1]

What, then, is Islam, and what is the form of this religion that Khomeini wished should rule the world?

Although Khomeini, a staunch Shiite, wrote before he returned to Iran that Islam was "one," and that the differences between the Sunnis and Shiites were secondary, he also constantly argued that the problems facing the Islamic world were the result of three sources: the hated Rashidun Caliphs, who were the first four leaders of the Sunni world after the Muslim prophet, Muhammad, died; the Umayyads, who ruled the Muslim world from Damascus from ca. 660- to 750 AD/CE, and the Abbasids (750-1258) from Baghdad.

The Sunnis, however, who make up about 85% of the approximately 1.4 billion Muslims throughout the world, see these Sunni rulers as the very embodiment of the Golden Age of Islam.

This is the context in which we should understand why obtaining nuclear weapons in so essential for the Iranian regime.

Possessing nuclear weapons addresses both of the problems mentioned above: At one end, it addresses Islam's eternal battle with the non-Muslim world.

Nothing of this is lost on the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world, whether Sunni or Shiite, who, from their point of view, see that the non-Muslim domination and control of most of the world goes against the basic precept of Islam: that Islam is Allah's [God's] most recent and final revelation to man, and therefore is a supremacist religion that must rule the entire world. To think anything less would be heresy. Hence the massive admiration by all Muslims – even the Sunnis -- of Iran's dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons.

At the other end, a nuclear-armed, defiant Iran would seriously threaten most of the Sunni dictators and tyrants who rule the Arab world whom the West (usually inaccurately) labels as "moderates." Over the years, these dictators and tyrants have whipped up anti-West and anti-Israel hatred as an a way to focus the anger and frustrations of their own people towards the outer world, so their people would not blame them, their leaders, for the massive poverty, corruption and lack of accomplishment everywhere, despite the staggering oil-wealth of many of these nations.

Along comes Iran and demonstrates that these Sunni Arab leaders have failed to push back the West, while Iran has stood up to the West, threatened it, and successfully caused it to retreat. A nuclear, anti-Western Iran would enable the Muslims to hold their heads high and force the West into retreat. Of all the Muslim countries, only Iran will have proven that it is willing and able to stand up to the non-Muslims and to the Sunni rulers of the Muslim world.

This is what the acquisition of nuclear weapons means to the present Iranian regime, and why nothing the West does short of changing the current regime will stop the Iranians from acquiring these weapons.[2] From the regime's point of view, nuclear weapons free them to make the political calculations they would like, both in the international arena and within the Muslim world. They do not even have to be used: the mere threat of their use would be sufficient to cause most countries to capitulate to whatever they were asked, especially if there were nuclear-tipped weapons pointed at every capital of Europe.

Who, then, runs the regime in Iran, and what should we examine if we want to understand how to control that regime's nuclear designs?

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