SODOM & GOMORRAH: Iran has taken steps to acquire atomic weapons for years, the West has complained for almost as long. Yet in that time, very few have paused to consider why Iran would want nuclear weapons in the first place.
Western policy makers have a habit of calling non-Western policy makers insane or crazy. Ideologies that stand outside their accepted norm are clearly the product of mental imbalance (such is the result of the Cult of Reason). Iran has certainly been no exception. Ahmadinejad’s belief in the imminent coming of the 12th Imam has been branded as crazy, his insistence that Israel is Islam’s mortal enemy is insane, the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons is stupid, etc. These things are not crazy or even necessarily stupid. The belief in the 12th Imam’s return is no less far fetched than that of Christ’s. The insistence that Israel is Islam’s mortal enemy is not as insane as insisting that JP Morgan is the mortal enemy of the working class. And plenty of countries have pursued nuclear weapons for various ideological reasons – to defeat the imperialists, the Nazis, the capitalists, and so forth. Western policy makers find Iran’s stance so strange and foreign because they are secretly nihilists and don’t believe in anything anymore.
The terrible impact of this is clear: in a fight between Iran’s version of Islam and the West, the West will lose. People want to believe in something as opposed to nothing. Politics are a product of faith, and the stronger faith wins. We in the West must learn to believe if we ever want to understand what motivates a country like Iran.
Finally, let us use the current issue. Most Republican candidates attacked President Obama for intervening in Libya. We should not be spreading democracy through arms, we shouldn’t be aiding unknown elements in a foreign country, and so the arguments went. Yet in their recent CBS debate, most said that they would use the CIA to foment revolution in Iran, murder scientists, topple the government, use sanctions to starve the populace, and would eventually militarily attack the country to prevent their pursuit of weapons. Recall that Libya gave up their pursuit of nuclear weapons years ago and were still subverted by Western forces. Now consider Pakistan, which openly aids American enemies, but has a nuclear weapon. There’s a lot of whining, and in some quarters a call for an end to foreign aid, but very few want to bomb Pakistan. Ask yourself: if you were Iran, would you stop pursuing a nuclear weapon?