There is an obvious problem with a terrorist-sponsoring regime’s quest for nuclear technology. However, simply analyzing the problem in terms of Iran is short sighted - the real problem is this: How will the rest of the Middle East react to a nuclear-armed Iran?
The most probable reaction is a mutiple-country nuclear-armament race. That is a very bad scenario, given the governments in question.
Don’t think it will happen?
Well, it already is.
See: Middle East racing to nuclear power - CSMonitor.com
EXCERPT:
[i]Middle East racing to nuclear power
Shiite Iran’s ambitions have spurred 13 Sunni states to declare atomic energy aims this year.
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Cairo
This week Egypt became the 13th Middle Eastern country in the past year to say it wants nuclear power, intensifying an atomic race spurred largely by Iran’s nuclear agenda, which many in the region and the West claim is cover for a weapons program.
Experts say the nuclear ambitions of majority Sunni Muslim states such as Libya, Jordan, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia are reactions to Shiite Iran’s high-profile nuclear bid, seen as linked with Tehran’s campaign for greater influence and prestige throughout the Middle East.
“To have 13 states in the region say they’re interested in nuclear power over the course of a year certainly catches the eye,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former senior nonproliferation official in the US State Department who is now a fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “The Iranian angle is the reason.”
…[/i]
Given the major driver, it’s just more motivation to make certain that Iran does not attain nuclear capability.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/09/how_to_keep_the_bomb_from_iran.html
EXCERPT:
[i] …both deterrence optimism and proliferation fatalism are wrong-headed. Deterrence optimism is based on mistaken nostalgia and a faulty analogy. Although deterrence did work with the Soviet Union and China, there were many close calls; maintaining nuclear peace during the Cold War was far more difficult and uncertain than U.S. officials and the American public seem to remember today. Furthermore, a nuclear Iran would look a lot less like the totalitarian Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and a lot more like Pakistan, Iran’s unstable neighbor – a far more frightening prospect. Fatalism about nuclear proliferation is equally unwarranted. Although the United States did fail to prevent its major Cold War rivals from developing nuclear arsenals, many other countries curbed their own nuclear ambitions. After flirting with nuclear programs in the 1960s, West Germany and Japan decided that following the NPT and relying on the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella would bring them greater security in the future; South Korea and Taiwan gave up covert nuclear programs when the United States threatened to sever security relations with them; North Korea froze its plutonium production in the 1990s; and Libya dismantled its nascent nuclear program in 2003.
Given these facts, Washington should work harder to prevent the unthinkable rather than accept what falsely appears to be inevitable. The lesson to be drawn from the history of nonproliferation is not that all states eyeing the bomb eventually get it but that nonproliferation efforts succeed when the United States and other global actors help satisfy whatever concerns drove a state to want nuclear weapons in the first place. [/i]