Isn't it interesting that we haven't heard this term being used recently? The actual reason why the Cold War didn't devolve into a real World War? The fact that it actually worked?
Besides discussing the horrific and mind-boggling numbers of how many people would actually die if Israel and Iran had a nuclear war, Julian Delasantellis at Asia Times reminds us: (my bold)
The success of deterrence is intimately related to the nature of politics and politicians. From their days in short pants, the world's leaders have dreamt of possessing power and dominion over millions of their fellow citizens; whether they do so through democratic or other means is only a question related to the random chance of what nation they were born in.
After they assume ultimate national power, after a lifetime of political striving and ambition, those who say that deterrence does not work are, in essence, saying that these leaders will put some abstract hatred or ideology above the lives and interests of their fellow citizens who put them into power. The countering argument to this is that you can't rule a country if there's no country to rule.
Reading the article, it is clear that Iran and especially Tehran would suffer the worst from any kind of nuclear attack on Israel or any other neighbor.
And as Bush has shown these last horrible eight years, he ignores, insults, maligns those countries he calls allies; he threatens, strong-arms, smears those countries he calls evil; and ... he negotiates with those who are armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.
So any tinpot dictator has quickly put two and two together, and has proceeded to move heaven and earth and a few centrifuges to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has been in the cross-hairs of the Bush cabal (and it makes me wonder if they had been aiming for Iran all along if the Iraq War had taken Rumsfeld's projected six weeks...) So it's natural that Iran would do the logical thing and get nukes. Especially after being called one of the axis of evil. Especially because of the ever louder saber-rattling that this White House has been doing.
It's also interesting to note Cheney and Wolfowitz were involved in an earlier deal:
President Gerald R. Ford signs a presidential directive giving the Iranian government the opportunity to purchase a US-built nuclear reprocessing facility...
[snip] (my bold)
The shah has argued that Iran needs a nuclear energy program in order to meet Iran’s growing energy demand. Iran is known to have massive oil and gas reserves, but the shah considers these finite reserves too valuable to be spent satisfying daily energy needs. In a 1975 strategy paper, the Ford administration supported this view saying that “introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals.” Top officials in the Ford administration—including Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Chief of Staff Dick Cheney, and Paul Wolfowitz, who is responsible for nonproliferation issues at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency—are strong supporters of Iran’s ambitions.
Interesting that the very people involved in the control of nonproliferation then are the ones now so very anxious to break the taboo and actually use nukes.
