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Why the Fuss about Iran?

Writing an op-ed piece "Plenty of countries have the bomb so why the fuss about Iran?" in the Palm Beach Post [Miami] and reproduced in The Age, Tom Blackburn raises a most legitimate question given all the hype about Iran allegedly seeking to develop nuclear weapons and the ever-increasing risk of Iran being attacked in one way or another:

"The only nation to have used nuclear weapons is the United States.

What is it about Iran possibly getting a nuclear bomb that made President George Bush equate the event with world war three?

Why has Vice-President Dick Cheney resumed the eve-of-destruction swagger and snarl he showed before we started the war to bring peace, freedom and democracy to Iraq?

Rudolph Giuliani is in full Hannibal mode on the issue, and his foreign-policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz, is saying that it would be world war four and should be. Most of us missed three, which he keenly detected.

It isn't as if Iran would be the only country with atoms in its arsenal. The Soviet Union had them during the whole Cold War. Russia still has them. There are at least nine nuclear powers. Why aren't any of them causing world war whatever-it-is? Well, Britain and France, you say: No threat there. But England wasn't very friendly in 1776 and 1812. Some members of Congress were ready for war with France in 2003 before they settled for taking its name off their fried potatoes.

One thing about nuclear weapons is that knowledge of how to make them lasts forever, and the interests of states change over time. If you want to be frightened, you may as well be very frightened."

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