I really thought a war in Iran was just a punchline to a joke not a viable option.

Yeah, I have no idea what this whole bomb plot is about, but I have a higher opinion of Iranians than to think they were behind it

i think an iranian or iranian group was behind it, I dont thing the iranians as a whole were hehind it. I think it was extremely reckless to pin blame on iran right away if there wasnt sufficient evidence. If it turns out that it is likely that the iranian gov was not behind it and this backfires i will withhold my vote from Obama in 2012

US isn't going to war with Iran unless Iran was directly responsible for a terrorist attack on US soil or a US aircraft carrier was sunk by Iran. The US also doesn't fear an Iranian nuclear weapon- it fears for Israel. A nuclear Iran would, imho, bring immediately bring the world as close to seeing a nuclear war as it has been since the end of the cold war.

but I think Iran with a nuclear weapon is dangerous. Not every nation places a death warrant on someone for writing a book.

Frankly I dont see how you can look at a nuclear showdown in the middle east between Pakistan-Iran-Israel and think its no big deal

It is a big deal, but all the same, no one's going to fire anything. Even Iran's not mad enough to ignore MAD.

by having nukes in Iranian hands you make every mid-east showdown into a nuclear armed showdown.

which lowers the threshold for use of the weapons

But they're not going to use the nukes. It establishes parity between Israel and Iran (well, to an extent, considering Israel still has big brother USA backing it).

It does lower the threshold, but again, the consequences are just too great.

no it doesn't, Israels weapons are kept as a fail safe against the destruction of the country. Israel does not wave its nukes around, their use are currently not on the table in regional showdowns. When Iran gets nukes Israel has to worry about first strike and visaversa that puts those nukes in play.

that was to the parity comment

In short we talk about MAD like its a good thing, it is not, the US and Russia put the world on the brink of thermonuclear war, both, especially the U.S. used M.A.D. to engage in extremely risky diplomacy. Parity in nuclear arsenals does not=security.

While, any time you talk about MAD and nuclear proliferation, you have to mention Kenneth Waltz and his and Sagan's book The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed. Waltz argues that more nuclear weapons is actually better because it makes war in general less likely due to the fact that everyone has a deterrent. I don't agree with him, but it's a very interesting perspective to take, and it also allows you to more easily see the world through an actor like Iran's eyes.

sort of like when people argued that having Hamas in charge of a government would make them more responsible, which was followed by the culling of rival police forces and militia and a raid into Israeli territory.

The Iranian gov't may not actively plan on using nukes, but there are deluded mad men in there who salivate at the prospect. They *want* to clutch the thing to their chest while they press the button, at the White House or Time Square or the Houses of Parliament or... And that's who we *really* have to worry about.

the same thing could be said about the nuclear weapons in pakistan, or could've been said about some mad former soviets. And I'm pretty sure that if Iran developed a weapon, it wouldn't be lying around for a radical to grab. And the Iranian government is severely internally divided between liberal and hardline elements, and the likelihood of someone stealing the nuclear weapon and traveling with it to israel/america/europe is, in my view, nonexistent.

"And the Iranian government is severely internally divided between liberal and hardline elements, and the likelihood of someone stealing the nuclear weapon and traveling with it to israel/america/europe is, in my view, nonexistent. "

So severely internally divided government is a plus for nuclear weapon ownership? Wonderful. No one has even breached the topic of stolen weapons, why don't you read

Haven't read too many comments, but everyone needs to keep in mind that we've really been at [psychological] war with Iran since 1979... the radicalist regime that controls the country wants to kill us (and Israel), and knowing that they are behind this plot wouldn't be too large of a surprise.

However, don't get me wrong: psychological war is much different than actual head on war - the latter of which we can't afford (along with all our other wars we can't afford).

@santa I read SpeakerToAliens post as implying theft

" Israel does not wave its nukes around, their use are currently not on the table in regional showdowns"

Er...Yom Kippur war?

No organized government will fire a nuke because every country with a nuke would be ready to blow them off the face of the Earth. Hence, it'd be an Extremist act of Idiocy of epic proportions for Iran to build and fire a nuke anywhere

Putin what don't you understand about "a fail safe against the destruction of the country" ie what was done during the Yom Kippur War.

Killer- The U.S. and the Soviet Union were one bad decision from a naval officer away from firing their whole arsenal...

Right, so apparently any militarized confrontation/regional struggle, even those that don't involve an invasion of Israel proper, is sufficient to wave around nukes. Glad we're so concerned about people waving around nukes. And the nuke threat was targeted at the USSR to escalate conflicts into world war in case of any pro-Arab Soviet intervention. It had little to do with the Arab armies in the Golan and Sinai, which were handled in days.

whatever.

1. Prove they were waved around
2. Prove that this was not done as a contingency to the collapse of Israel

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/1998/98020401_rmr.html

Defense analyst Zeev Schiff opined in independent Haaretz (2/4): "Too
many senior Israeli officials have taken to issuing threatening
statements vis-a-vis Iraq and Iran.... Off-the-cuff Israeli nuclear
threats have become a problem, even before the onset of the Iraqi
crisis.... Washington may decide it wants to distance itself from
Israel in order to avoid being accused of having conspired with us on
an action we planned exclusively by ourselves."

in response to nuclear weapons...

Seymour Hersh can explain better than I could. Read his book on the subject.

But anyway that's hard to argue considering they had turned back Egyptians and Syrians before the American airlift even arrived. I mean you can call anything you want an existential crisis in order to justify rash measures, but this wasn't one, especially considering the peace overtures made by Sadat from 71-73. This was an avoidable war.

http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cpc-pubs/farr.htm