It is sick...
A view from Saudi on nukes in Iran:
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=47777&d=3&m=7&y=2004
Nuclear Weapons in the Mideast
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid
I wasn?t sad the day Israel destroyed the Iraqi Tamouz reactor 20 years ago, and I will be a lot happier if the remaining reactors in Iran and Israel are also destroyed. How can a region full of idiots and ripe with disagreements keep such destructive weapons safe?
The Iranians give paltry excuses, saying that the reactors produce cooking fuel and water reservoirs. We would be also stupid if it didn?t occur to us that they were in fact producing nuclear bombs by which they can threaten neighboring countries.
It is unlikely that a country with a wealth of cheap oil would build expensive reactors that require rare technology and are dangerous to maintain just to produce electricity when it could easily do so using the available diesel for a quarter of the price and in huge quantities. They are trying to convince the world that the enriched uranium will not be used to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons. Only idiots would believe that. Others want to convince us that the purpose of any nuclear weapons would be to create a balance of power with Israel and not to threaten Arab countries. This is dubious because Iran has never been a front in the confrontation with Israel and never will be. Mind you, I do agree that nuclear arms controls must apply impartially, meaning the whole region beginning with Israel should be cleared of all nuclear weapons.
Iranians will be much safer if Mohammed El-Baradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, succeeds in transforming these nuclear towers into tourist sites or grain stores for cattle and save locals from the danger of leakage and radiation. The Iranian people will save billions of dollars if their government abandons this huge military project, which can only mean poverty and destruction for Iranians and would destroy us all.
In order for international dialogue to make any sense we must insist on ridding Israel of its nuclear arsenal, which is a threat to the region and the world and only encourages other countries to acquire them too. Israel justifies its huge arsenal as self-defense against the forest of monsters in which it lives. But if the forest goes up in flames, Israel will either get burned by the fire or the nuclear dust that will radiate. At the moment we live at the mercy of extremists in countries like Israel and Iran, whether they came to power democratically or by other means.
If the world could rid the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction now that Saddam and his hypothetical arsenal are gone, it would avert a great evil. Acquiring banned weapons is no longer impossible, no matter how hard the IAEA agents try. The fact remains that what the IAEA is doing in Iran is great work and greatly benefits the region. It is in the interest of our brothers in Iran to accept that too.