Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ef4 | Hacker News Reader

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For one thing, the regime has been a fairly rational actor that does what's necessary to stay in power. You need to look at what they do, rather than what they say, which often has more to do with domestic politics.

There's no doubt that actually launching a nuclear first strike would be the end of the regime, and they know it. But they still quite rationally want a nuclear deterrent so they can achieve a balance of power with Israel and insurance against an American invasion.

So war is not a foregone conclusion, even if they really manage to build a nuclear weapon, and if they could credibly threaten to deliver it, which is much harder and not at all certain.

Consider that a nation like China values stability and plays for the long term, and yet they've been willing to continue backing Iran. Clearly China has evaluated the Iranian regime and decided it's stable enough to rely on. My money is on China knowing what they're doing.

The push for war has everything to do with the US and Israel wanting to maintain overwhelming military dominance. Iran is not a realistic threat to the existence of Israel or US security. But it's a threat to American regional hegemony.

> But they still quite rationally want a nuclear deterrent so they can achieve a balance of power with Israel and insurance against an American invasion.

Israel is no threat to Iran. The worst they could do is make limited air raids, and the only interest they'd have in that would be to destroy their nuclear program. So the Iranian nuclear program only increases the risk of Israeli action.

As for the US, there's no rational risk of US action if they don't develop nuclear weapons. Iraq is no precedent, if only because Iraq was already in an untenable situation with the economic and military sanctions, and the last thing you do if you want to become Iraq is give the rest of the world a reason to impose sanctions. Developing nuclear weapons and violating human rights are both fantastic ways to get sanctions imposed.

Of course, these arguments are a bit wounding to the national pride, but you're saying Iran is acting rationally, not pridefully.

> Consider that a nation like China values stability and plays for the long term, and yet they've been willing to continue backing Iran. Clearly China has evaluated the Iranian regime and decided it's stable enough to rely on. My money is on China knowing what they're doing.

By that logic, North Korea is a stable and reliable regime. There's something more going on here. Charitably speaking, maybe China thinks they can keep some control over Iran, the same way they have some control over North Korea, by fostering dependence.

It's a power play between east and west. China uses Iran and N.Korea as a leverage against the west. Russia does something similar with Syria.

It's got nothing to do with Iran, N.Korea or even Israel ultimately. It's certainly got nothing to do with human rights (if so, why hasn't NATO invaded Darfur?) I'm going to stop now because this is becoming too political.

I didn't say human rights were a sincere motivation, just that they're a useful pretext, one of the cards on the table that one could play. Largely I think you're right.

Just for what it's worth: you are presuming China is backing Iran for the long term, when they could be using it as a bargaining chip against a different conflict with the US / western powers. E.g. Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, the Koreas, to name the ones just bordering / within China. That said, I agree Iran has acted rational to their means, but as the country tends dangerously close to provoking an Israeli attack, one might alter that viewpoint.

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