Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain

The question that nobody wants to talk about – not even Congressional opponents of Trump’s potential war against Iran – is why the Iranians can’t have a nuclear weapon if they want one. This is not discussed because Americans have been taught to believe that there are good and evil nations and regimes, and that Iran is an evil, “rogue” state that only wants nukes so that the Ayatollahs can use them to destroy Israel.

What a crock! Iran is a state like most others, vesting the power of an elite while calling itself a republic. They have their Ayatollahs and we have our Oligarchs. The actual reason Iran wants nuclear weapons (or at least the right to threaten to develop them) is so that their country – an industrialized, middle-income nation of more than 90 million people – can hold its own with Israel and avoid becoming another dependent subject of the American Empire.

It is not as if possessing nukes were a privilege reserved to a few peaceful do-gooder nations. Pakistan and India have them, as do Russia, China, and North Korea. The United States used them against an already-prostrate Japan. And the State of Israel, which has repeatedly attacked and invaded........

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