>But all that effort needs is one dramatic event or episode to turn
>that dull interest in war, slaughter, and chaos around into a
>passionate conviction that Iran absolutely must be bombed to stop
>its non-existant nuclear weapons industry from producing a
>non-existant bomb out of non-existant enriched Uranium, even though
>most nuclear weapons use Plutonium and even though Iran has no
>nuclear weapons industry or Plutonium. Well they COULD IF they had a
>nuclear weapons industry and if they had enough enriched Uranium,
>they could make a bomb.
>
>In other words we are still in the same state of play and that has
>not changed in all these years.
Iran has a nuclear energy industry and no-one goes to the trouble and expense of developing a nuclear energy industry unless they are interested in achieving the capability to develop nuclear weapons. Nuclear energy is far too dangerous and simply too expensive to be socially and economically viable in its own right.
Except when you want to develop nuclear weapons, or you think you might want to do so in the future.
The US government assumes, in the case of Iran, that the only reason for developing nuclear energy is to have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. Frankly, I think they are right. But as usual they are tied up in their own hypocrisy.
Firstly, they make this assumption in the case of Iran, but not in the case of i.e. Japan, or their other nuclear-capable, if not nuclear-armed allies. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, you can't have it both ways. Secondly, they want to keep distinguishing between "peaceful" use of nuclear technology, and the illegitimate use of nuclear technology. As if the two can be separated.
The way to deal with it is to ban nuclear energy by world-wide treaty, with exceptions afforded to the nuclear weapons club. (For the entirely practical reason that those who already have nuclear weapons can't be bullied into giving them up. Because they have nuclear weapons.)
But everyone else should be simply banned from developing this dangerous technology. Nuclear energy proliferation should be treated the same as nuclear weapons proliferation, because it is the same. It should be treated as a crime against humanity to even attempt to build a new nuclear reactor on the planet Earth. Those who merely advocate nuclear energy should be imprisoned, or treated as mentally deranged.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas