The Nuclear “Threat” At the End of the Age of Petroleum

[Clara T]

The Nuclear “Threat” At the End of the Age of Petroleum
by Zbignew Zingh


There are at least five reasons why the West, and America in particular, fears a nuclear Iran, even if it is only pursuing nuclear power generation.

First, an empire cannot abide a rival or a rebel. Like Asimov's galactic empire of the Foundation Trilogy, the United States will not tolerate any deviation from subservience, because the successful rebellion of one will invite the rebellion of all others. Thus do empires disintegrate. There are other 'rebels' in the world today—most notably in South America where Bolivarian style revolutions are emancipating economies and politics from a colonial past. But for the insurgent Iraqis, like Lilliputians who have tied Gulliver down to the ground, the United States would have already tried harder to stamp out the Bolivarians in South America, and, undoubtedly, it will try to do so again (if it could ever put the Middle East to the yoke). Iran, however, lies adjacent to the where the American soldiers and weapons now are stockpiled. To it, therefore, will Washington apply the first lash in an effort to frighten all others back into line.

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Second, indeed there is a close correlation between nuclear power generation and the development of nuclear weapons. The technology to do one naturally feeds the technology necessary for the other. The more nuclear power plants a country has, the more nuclear weapons it can produce. America knows this because its own nuclear power plants fed America's nuclear weapons build-up, and the Administration's push to build more “civilian” nuclear reactors will, in turn, feed the next generation of American nuclear weapons.

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The third reason why America fears Iran's nuclear power ambition is because of the waste nuclear power produces. Both the Gulf War in 1991 and the Iraq War in 2003 were 'nuclear wars' in which the United States deployed tons of depleted uranium munitions. DU shells cut through Iraqi armor like a hot knife through butter. The Pentagon does not care that the DU dust has sickened, and will sicken, thousands of Iraqi civilians and thousands of American soldiers and their unborn children. The Pentagon cares only that depleted uranium weapons significantly shift the military balance of power to those that have them.

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Iran, like Russia, also holds large reserves of natural gas in addition to oil. However, notwithstanding gas liquefaction and its cryogenic transportation by super-tanker, natural gas is used most economically on the continent where it is found. In the case of Iran, lying astride Europe and Asia, its continental markets lie both east toward China and India, and west toward Europe. The United States is not an optimum consumer of Iranian energy products. China, India and Europe are. Thus Iran, like its Russian gas-and-oil-rich neighbor to the north, not only has a domestic energy resource to fuel its own economy, it also has the ability to control other countries who will depend on it for their own economic viability. Therefore, Iran is a two-fold rival to the United States in that it challenges American dominance of the world's energy resources; and by being the fuel supplier of first-resort to China, India and Europe, Iran gives those nations, too, the ability to resist American influence.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=586&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0