Why Iran Wants a Bomb

tough neighborhood

You don’t have to sympathize with Iran’s odious regime to acknowledge that they have a legitimate reason to feel surrounded by forces that are hostile to them and bent on removing them from power.  Within the last decade, the US has invaded and occupied the countries to Iran’s East and West, toppling their governments and replacing them with new regimes under American auspices.  Most of the other countries in the region are US allies to one degree or another.  All of the top five recipients of US foreign aid are in Iran’s immediate neighborhood, and three of them – Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – dominate Iran’s borders to East and West.

What’s more, a US action to change Iran’s leadership would not be unprecedented.  In 1953, the CIA developed and implemented a plan (codenamed “Operation Ajax”) to remove Iran’s democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, from power and replace him with a successor more amenable to US and British interests.  This coup succeeded, effectively establishing the Shah as an authoritarian monarch.

Iran’s primary goal in developing nuclear weapons is defensive.  They may be odious, but they are not completely insane. They are well aware that any offensive use of nuclear weapons would trigger a response that would destroy them immediately.  As with all dictators, their priority is self-preservation and the continued control of their own people and territory.  And while they certainly do seek to influence events in neighboring countries, there is no evidence that this indicates any desire beyond self-preservation by weakening those powers, namely the US and Israel, whom they perceive to be a threat – a perception that is validated more or less every day, as US and Israeli leaders routinely use the major media to freely discuss various plans for attacking Iran.

For the Iranians, a bomb is a shield – something to insure them against a highly credible, and precedented, threat of attack and invasion by the US and/or Israel. This is what nuclear deterrence looks like in the 21st century.