Does Iran Have Right to Self-Defense

Update: Robert Dreyfuss: We aren't going to war with Tehran.

Iran is an authoritarian nightmare, like many of America's other allies in the region. But is a country developing weapons to protect itself against aggressors really that outrageous?

The neocons used to believe that is was not so outrageous.

From Norman Finkelstein:

In 2000, leading neoconservatives Robert Kagan and William Kristol edited a volume of foreign policy analyses titled Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy (Encounter Books). The chapter on Iran was written by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA analyst on the Middle East. Here’s what he said:

"Tehran certainly wants nuclear weapons; and its reasoning is not illogical. Iran was gassed into surrender in the first Persian Gulf War; Pakistan, Iran’s ever more radicalized Sunni neighbor to the southeast, has nuclear weapons; Saddam Hussein, with his Scuds and his weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions, is next door; Saudi Arabia, Iran’s most ardent and reviled religious rival, has long-range missiles; Russia, historically one of Iran’s most feared neighbors, is once again trying to reassert its dominions I the neighboring Caucasus; and Israel could, of course blow the Islamic Republic to bits. Having been vanquished by a technologically superior Iraq at a cost of at least a half-million men, Iran knows very well the consequences of having insufficient deterrence. And the Iranians possess the essential factor to make deterrence work: sanity. Tehran or Isfahan in ashes would destroy the Persian soul, about which even the most hard-line cleric cares deeply. As long as the Iranians belie that either the U.S. or Israel or somebody else in the region might retaliate with nuclear weapons, they won’t do something stupid.

"A nuclear-armed Islamic Republic would of course check, if not checkmate, the United States’ maneuvering room in the Persian Gulf. We would no doubt think several times about responding to Iranian terrorism or military action if Tehran had the bomb and a missile to deliver it. During the lead-up to the second Gulf War, ruling clerical circles in Tehran and Qom were abuzz with the debate about nuclear weapons. The mullahs…agreed: if Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, the Americans would not have challenged him. For the “left” and the “right,” this weaponry is the ultimate guarantee of Iran’s defense, its revolution, and its independence as a regional great power. (pp. 138-39)"