	Generational Dynamics
	Forecasting America's Destiny ... and the World's

\| HOME \| WEB LOG \| COUNTRY WIKI \| COMMENT \| FORUM \| DOWNLOADS \| ABOUT \|

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-Oct-04
Iran moves forward with developing nuclear weapons technology

Web Log - October, 2004

Iran moves forward with developing nuclear weapons technology

Iran has indicated that it won't budge on its plans to develop nuclear enrichment technology, which can be used for nuclear weapons development. However, Iran insists that it's only for peaceful power generation, a claim that many find dubious.

Early this month, Iran announced a new missile capability which, together with the nuclear capability it's developing, will allow it to deliver a nuclear weapon to the soil of its arch enemy, Israel.

For the last year, the Europeans have been trying to use multilateral negotiations and incentives to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program. The political subtext is that the Europeans would show how things should be done, in contrast America's handling of Iraq through invasion.

Europe has offered a last chance incentive: the Europeans have offered Iran free nuclear technology for power generation, if only Iran agrees not to go ahead with nuclear enrichment.

Iran has said it's studying the proposal, but has also said it won't give up nuclear enrichment development.

If Iran rejects the European proposal, as expected, then a confrontation will develop in the United Nations, and the Security Council will subject Iran to the horror of threatened economic sanctions. (Sorry for the sarcasm.)

Iran is an interesting dichotomy. The ruling mullahs are fundamentalist Islamists, while most of the people are secular Muslims. Iran, like Iraq, is in a "generational awakening" period, and opposes many of the mullahs' policies. A couple of years ago there were even large pro-American rallies in the streets of Tehran, though the Iraq war pretty much ended those. And despite the peoples' distrust of the mullahs, there is still very strong popular support of Iran's right to have nuclear weapons. "Why should the US, Britain and Israel all have nuclear weapons and not us?" asks one student?

So a potent confrontation appears to be in the works, and we're not referring to the UN's economic sanctions.

For the last few weeks, Israel has been very quiet about Iran. When we last heard, Israel was insisting it would defend itself, and Israeli Prime Minister was saying that Iran will reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear weapons program by November.

This might possibly mean that Israel will take some unilateral action next month, presumably after the American election. We'll be keeping our eyes on the situation. (22-Oct-04) Permanent Link
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Donate to Generational Dynamics via PayPal

Web Log Pages

Current Web Log

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-Oct-04 Iran moves forward with developing nuclear weapons technology

Web Log Pages

Generational Dynamics Web Log for 22-Oct-04
Iran moves forward with developing nuclear weapons technology