That's according to Tad Daley, using the logic that never worked with Mom: everybody else can do it!
This time it was not, as usual, the divergence between the rules of the game for countries like Iran (nuclear weapons permitted: zero) and for countries like ourselves (nuclear weapons possessed: 10,000+ . . . with plans to deploy new and improved models fully a third of a century down the road).
No, this time, instead, it was the double standard between our expectations for countries we like, and those for countries we don't like.
First, Khalilzad repeated the formulation about Iran that has been expressed many times by many Bush administration voices. "Given the record of this regime, the rhetoric of this regime, the policies of this regime, the connections of this regime, it cannot be acceptable for it to develop the capability to produce nuclear weapons." It was a wearyingly familiar argument. Our assessment of the character of the Iranian regime determines whether we will permit it to pursue a nuclear "capability."
Sorry, Tad. It isn't just about "countries we like" and "countries we don't like." Iran has a fresh history of threatening to use nukes if it gets them. That's sort of the difference between Iran and Egypt, the example Tad gives of a country allowed nuclear capacity.
It's always hard to understand the stupidity of the no nukes types. The argument goes that because we have a lot of nukes, everybody else should, too, to deter us from using them. But the problem with that argument is that having nukes hasn't caused the U.S. to run around using them. We haven't used them in more than half a century...to end World War II.
It would make more sense if the countries wanting nukes were seriously threatened by other countries (us) with nukes. But even the purported threat the U.S. poses to Iran isn't a nuclear one; we don't need to use nukes.
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