<snip> The case at first appears clear cut. Here is a country so irrational that it stones women for adultery. So intolerant that conversion to a religion other than Islam is apostasy punishable by death. So lacking in regard for life on this Earth that it happily "martyred" hundreds of thousands of its young men during the Iran-Iraq war. What might it do with weapons of mass destruction?
Yet Iran's stance on nuclear power has made it something of a hero among third-world states, even those that are democracies with good human-rights records. Viewed from their perspective, this country's refusal to bow to pressure from the west is admirable – the current stand-off highlights the double-standard approach to nuclear proliferation adopted by both Europe and America. It is these double standards that earn Iran its many admirers.
Think about it from the perspective of someone in Tehran, Lagos or Rio de Janeiro. You are allowed to build power stations, under watchful western eyes, perhaps to western designs and with the help of western companies – but you absolutely cannot make your own enriched uranium to power them. For that, you must go to those same rich, powerful countries who have appointed themselves as global policemen. And you must beg. In a bizarre contradiction, these countries that restrict your nuclear development actually bristle with arsenals of destructive power that could destroy your little state, not to say the rest of the world, a thousand times over. Now does this seem balanced, or do we hear that old-fashioned word "imperialism" being whispered?
The nub of the problem is scientific as much as it is political. It is difficult to separate civilian power stations from weapons programmes because both use enriched uranium. For years, western governments told anti-nuclear campaigners among their own populations that the two industries were quite different. Yet the decision to build the first generation of reactors in Britain and America had everything to do with the Cold War philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction. Why else would we subsidise these white elephants so generously, particularly at a time when coal, oil and gas were in plentiful supply? So here is the first double standard: we fear Iran will follow our bad example. <snip>
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/49220.html
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