h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The reasonable justification for not believing that Iran would set us up the bomb, is that their leadership probably isn't insane, since its actually quite sensible for them to slag off 1) Judaism and 2) 'The West' (Tm) at every possible juncture in order to appease their populace and improve their domestic political standing.

The other argument is that the US has actually made efforts towards developing usable tactical nuclear weapons, whereas Iran is just going for the plain old stupid kind.

Although personally I still wouldn't equate the US' rhetoric with Iran's, nor their having nuclear weapons with Iran having them.

>Umm, how about, it's a religious theocracy where the religion says that dying for the cause of Islam *guarantees* that you and your family get into heaven? (Well, not the women of course). What good is MAD when one side thinks dying's a good thing? Remember, it was an Iranian I believe who said "You in the West love life, but we love death more".

>When one side is in the grip of a psychotic death cult, MAD goes out the window. Keep the Iranian hands off nukes, at least until the secularists kick the zealouts out.

Do you really think the Ayatollah and the Guardian Council are prepared to die in a suicide-attack or to let someone else do it for them? Ayatollah Khomeini, despite his fundamentalist rhetoric, didn't seem to keen to be part of the "human waves" during the Iran-Iraq war.

Do you really think that your local muslim shopkeeper would "die for islam" tomorrow? Do you also worry that your local churchgoers are suddenly going to run to their local gay bar and stone everyone inside to death like the Bible orders them to?

Religious people don't work like that, even the "fundamentalists". They're in-hoc to personal desires and social conventions first and foremost and they explain to themselves how they're still working within the confines of their religion. Islam was supposed to expand in a holy war and it suddenly stopped and the muslim nations started trading with their "infidel" neighbours. Later they even formed alliances with them, sometimes against other muslims.

Iran is, of course, a belligerent country with a history of supporting terrorism run by hard-right religious authoritarians but they are not - to a man - willing to suddenly commit suicide tomorrow.

No, I'm not suggesting that all Iranians are suicidal. Note my earlier posts that millions of Iranians are educated and secular. But the leaders aren't and they always reckon they'll survive. How can you reason with a religious government that implicitly believes in the unreasonable concept of an "invisible friend"?

As for shopkeepers et al, how many times must I repeat that "Muslim", "Christian", "Sikh" and/or "Zorastorian" is merely a social label for millions? It's like supporting a football club but not actually going to the matches.