Yale Imbecile: What's Wrong with Giving a Backwards, 12-Century Theocratic Dictatorship a Nuclear Weapon?

And this moron is teaching the youth of today:

What things will change if Iran tests a nuclear weapon? No one knows but many fear the worst. Among others, Atlantic columnist Jeffrey Goldberg has argued that an Iranian nuclear test will set off any number of dire consequences. Some believe that Iran will launch a nuclear war against Israel. Others suggest that “instability” will result from Iran’s increased ability to intimidate its neighbors. Still others insist that the deterrent umbrella of a nuclear weapon will allow Iran and its regional proxies, including Hezbollah, to make more mischief. Goldberg himself insisted that if Iran were to successfully test a nuclear weapon, “American power in the Middle East will have been eclipsed” and Iran will have won “a three-decade war for domination of the Middle East.”

In fact, Iran will not have eclipsed American power in the region -- not by a long shot; nor will it have won domination of the region. It will quickly discover what all leaders of all nuclear powers know: that the weapons themselves are the bluntest of instruments. Nuclear states cannot use nukes to force non-nuclear states to comply with their demands. If they could, nuclear and non-nuclear states would not fight. Nuclear weapons failed to compel the surrender of Saddam Hussein in either 1991 or 2003. They failed to force the Serb cession of Kosovo in 1999. American nuclear weapons failed to cow the Vietnamese in 1965 and Chinese nukes failed at the same task in 1979. Sometimes, non-nuclear states actually start wars against nuclear powers. Nuclear weapons did not deter Syrian and Egyptian attacks on Israel in 1973, nor did Russian nuclear weapons deter Georgia in 2008. The biggest difference between these examples and the Iran is that the nuclear power, in all of these cases also possessed overwhelming conventional superiority. Given that Iran doesn’t even have conventional superiority over neighborhood foes, suggestions that Iran can bully its neighbors with its nuclear weapons range fall somewhere between absurd and ridiculous.

Nuclear weapons cannot guarantee that a state’s neighbors will cater to its every whim nor can they resolve border disputes. Nuclear weapons cannot ensure the safety and security of client terrorist groups. They also cannot topple foreign governments. cannot prevent terrorist attacks. Indeed, as Pakistan has recently discovered, nuclear weapons don’t even guarantee territorial integrity.

We do not need to look far in order to see the limited influence that nuclear weapons provide.

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