New U.S. intel reports say Iran is closer to manufacturing nuclear weapons

[Beholder]

Israel wishes to survive and ensure its security.

When one have means to live normal life and defend himself he is not surviving.
So:
"Israel wishes to live in peace and security." sounds better.Unless you think we are really with backs to wall,desperately trying to survive another day.

[thounaojamtom]

70+ technology i guess they can fizzle by now

[medo]

and there's a difference between a peaceful nuclear armed country and a country that harbors terrorist being nuclear armed. Nobody leads their enemies by example.

So, what will you do with Pakistan?

[EITAN88]

When one have means to live normal life and defend himself he is not surviving.
So:
"Israel wishes to live in peace and security." sounds better.Unless you think we are really with backs to wall,desperately trying to survive another day.

Israel has had its back to the wall in the not so distant past (even a lot of Israelis seem to forget this fact) and one of the main reasons we don't have our backs to the wall today is because of Dimona.

That's what I meant by my choice of words and I'm sticking to it.

[Beholder]

Israel has had its back to the wall in the not so distant past (even a lot of Israelis seem to forget this fact)

I remember,but past is past.IMO

[EITAN88]

I remember,but past is past.IMO

The past is something that is always worth consideration in my opinion, especially when it is relatively recent (which is very true in Israel's case).

It seems to me that you simply misinterpreted what I meant in post #29.

[USA_1911]

So, what will you do with Pakistan?

Its not as easy as just going into a hostile country to disarm them of their nuclear capabilities.

[J.Noah ה]

Strange, The Huffington just posted a article about the US proclaiming Iran is farther away from creating a nuclear weapon.

[JRT]

Israel wishes to survive and ensure its security.

I bet so does Khamenei, and logically he sees nuclear weapons as the ultimate insurance.

[EITAN88]

I bet so does Khamenei, and logically he sees nuclear weapons as the ultimate insurance.

That and probably as another means by which to expand Iranian hegemony in the region, which is why the Arabs are probably just as concerned as Israel (if not more) by this program.

[JRT]

That and probably as another means by which to expand Iranian hegemony in the region, which is why the Arabs are probably just as concerned as Israel (if not more) by this program.

Indeed so.

Iran's perceived ambitions towards a hegemony is a matter of debate, as their actions are a bit contradictory, while their rhetorics obviously point in that direction.

[Ambassador]

I bet so does Khamenei, and logically he sees nuclear weapons as the ultimate insurance.

Quite true. Iran is the only country post-World War II to have been attacked by massive quantity of WMDs by a foreign nation in warfare, resulting in hundred thousand casualties, who could not be saved through international intervention. One's own WMD is the best deterrence against WMD, though some countries manage the deterrence with screwdriver capability only.

It's also often overlooked that Iran, while widely condemned to be a terror sponsor itself, is one of the frequent victims of terrorist attacks from Sunni Muslims as well many of whose sponsors (chiefly from Saudi Arabia) are well shielded from international punitive actions. Their regimes are also radical and very oppressive, with malignant intent to pursue their religious ideology to the extreme (they just don't have the desired capability to do that yet except to their own citizens and through the above-mentioned sponsorships) yet go relatively unpunished. One could argue that this exhibits a biased standard against certain terror states/HR violators depending on their strategic value to one's national interest. Additionally, saying that the west would be fine with Iran being a nuclear state if it simply was democratic is utterly naive and as likely to prove true as saying democratic Poland, Chile, New Zealand, Korea or Japan could go nuclear without severe opposition from the region or the international community at large. Whether or not the country was democratic, the west would simply not want another nuclear state to exist in the Middle East aside from Israel and Pakistan, unstable with potential warfare as it is (don't think this instability will stop when solely Iran becomes democratic when pests still exist in the Arab world; when they can't target Iran anymore they will just target something else), and continue to work hard to prevent the development of a third Middle Eastern nuclear state, though the 'terror threat' argument does provide a more convenient sounding moral justification for the current effort against Iran. Even if this terror threat did not in fact exist a democratic Iran will still not be permitted to go nuclear for fear that it will strain relations with the Middle East's existing western 'allies'.

[Ought Six]

So, what will you do with Pakistan?

Unfortunately, one day Pakistan, India and China might just get together and solve that problem permanently.

[Smok]

Just like WMD in Iraq?

[LineDoggie]

Just like WMD in Iraq?

Yep those civvies in Halabja just invented a story about being gassed.