Perfectly Petersen

Why Iran Should Not Attain Nuclear Capabilities

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Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD)

What better reason do you need than self-preservation? Anyone who lived through the Cold War is all too familiar with this military doctrine, but we aren’t all that old, are we? Even if we were, memory of the masses has been known to deteriorate incredibly fast under the influences of constant propaganda, so let’s cover the basics.

The Cold War

At the end of WWII, the U.S. was the nuclear powerhouse. Hiroshima, Nagasaki… anyone? It was quick. It was not painless, though, and the world realized how dangerous a nuclear bomb is. They were immediately recognized as something to be saved as a last resort. No one wanted to suffer a nuclear blast ever again, and the world changed from that point on.

The greatest military minds in the world collectively came to the same conclusions that are still in effect today. The biggest names in the nuclear power struggle after WWII were the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. Russia quickly caught up with the Americans in the arms race and we lost our First Strike capability. What is First Strike? First Strike capability is the armament status of being able to launch a nuclear attack on another nation/group that would completely destroy their nuclear arsenal and eliminate the threat of a retaliatory nuclear strike.

With the progress of the Cold War and the Star Wars program came a constant state of Second Strike capability among a handful of nations. Second Strike capability means that even though a nation/group could not be denied nuclear retaliation if they are struck, they have enough nuclear arsenal to make an initial nuclear attack a highly undesirable tactic.

Today’s Nuclear Situation

There are currently 9 countries with nuclear weapons: U.S., Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel (undeclared). No one possesses First Strike capability, and all of these states are abiding by the logic of MAD. It becomes a global problem when MAD does not apply to a country with nuclear weapons, and we are fast-approaching this issue if certain countries/groups gain nuclear capabilities or if a country with an arsenal drastically changes certain assumptions that MAD relies on for mutual stability.

Where MAD Breaks Down

What is going on in Iran (and could happen in North Korea), is a fundamental breakdown of the logical assumptions that the doctrine relies on. MDA is wholly dependent on self-preservation and sane, logical, and benevolent leaders. Wikipedia puts the assumptions about rationality into a nice list:

Perfect rationality

• No “rogue states” will develop nuclear weapons. Or, if they do, they will stop behaving as rogue states and subject themselves to the logic of MAD.
• No rogue commanders will have the ability to corrupt the launch decision process.
• All leaders with launch capability care about the survival of their subjects.
• No leader with launch capability would strike first and gamble that the opponent’s response system would fail.
• No person possessing nuclear weapons capability will have a belief system that offers him peace and reward in an afterlife if he dies in a nuclear war of his own volition or will have any other moral or religious belief that makes mutual annihilation an acceptable or even preferable outcome.

How many of those things do not apply to Iran at this point? They have a leader who is determined to bring on the Apocalypse, is a front man for the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and thinks that both the Holocaust never happened and that Israel needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth. The world would have no reason to believe that Iran, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in particular would use a nuclear weapons program responsibly. “Enriched uranium for the highest bidder, anyone?” “Anyone have a long-range rocket we could buy?” “Hey, kid! Want to drive this truck over to that market and detonate my bomb for me? You’ll get 6 billion virgins in Paradise if you do.”

In January, the Arms Control Center didn’t think that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. Regardless of the U.S. mainland, which is certainly at risk for smuggling in dirty bombs, we have thousands of troops within range of any number of deployment devices. This is a risk the world cannot take.

It will be interesting to see who takes care of the threat first.

Resources

http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/assets/pdfs/position_statement_iran.pdf
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/policy/iran/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutually_assured_destruction#Criticism_and_challengeable_assumptions
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/cold-war/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons