Historian Will Durant on the ancient Persian empire:

“[It is not] natural that nations diverse in language, religion, morals, and traditions should long remain united; there is nothing organic in such a union, and compulsion must repeatedly be applied to maintain the artificial bond. In its two hundred years of empire, Persia did nothing to lessen this heterogeneity, these centrifugal forces; she was content to rule a mob of nations, and never thought of making them into a state” (Our Oriental Heritage, 382).

I have no objection to trying to prevent dangerous governments, run by questionably civilized radicals, from having nuclear weapons. Actually, I'd prefer to see nuclear weapons completely eradicated from this planet. But unfortunately, humans have this overwhelming lust to kill each other, and some, like communists and other barbarians, like to do it in massive numbers, when possible. So, civilized people must be protected against such. The Chinese Communist Party, for example, would like to kill everybody else on earth (they seemed to have tried it with the Wuhan virus), or, at best, to enslave everyone (including their own people), but if they attempted to do that with nuclear weapons, they know that America, and perhaps one or two other nations that have nukes, would retaliate. Thus, mankind prefers to stand at MAD—“Mutually Assured Destruction”—and call it peace.

I'm also not opposed to a “regime change” in Iran; getting a government in Persia that is at least tolerable to us, doesn’t want to blow us to kingdom come, and might be at least half-way nice to its own people, would probably........

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