Doubt Your Policy Makers' Memory Span, a Case for Iran

The Iranians remind the world that their soldiers were victims of Saddam’s poison-gas attacks during the Iran-Iraq war, and that they never retaliated in kind. Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has gone so far as to issue a fatwa (religious decree) declaring the possession or of use of WMD in general, and nuclear weapons in particular, to be illegal under Islamic law.
Furthermore, Iran’s leaders point out that unlike existing nuclear-weapons states in their neighbourhood, such as Pakistan, India and Israel, Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)….

… Iran does after all have a history of being bullied and invaded. In the 19th century Britain and Russia played their “great game” on its territory. Britain and America engineered the coup that unseated an elected prime minister, Muhammad Mossadegh, in 1953. After Iraq’s invasion in 1980 the United Nations did precious little to help Iran. And in 2002 Iran found itself listed as part of George Bush’s “axis of evil”, at a time when America had just sent one army into neighbouring Afghanistan and prepared to send another into neighbouring Iraq….

Knowing that Israel already possesses a very large nuclear arsenal, Iran would have to be ready to sacrifice millions of its own people to destroy the Jewish state, unless it was sure that in a first strike it could destroy Israel’s ability to strike back. That would be hard, given that Israel is reported to have put nuclear weapons at sea on submarines, and has built sophisticated anti-missile defences expressly to protect its second-strike power….

Iran took an American embassy hostage. It may have had a hand in the bombing of the American marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 and it stands accused now of helping to kill American soldiers in Iraq. It is not surprising that many Americans consider Iran a bitter foe.
Nor is it surprising that Iranians return the favor. America organised the coup against Mossadegh, supported the shah, helped Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war, invaded two of Iran’s neighbours and imposes sanctions on Iran…. (The Economist, July 21)