"Hobo" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Tom Cooper" wrote:

. But, no: a vast majority of the Pakistanis have
nothing in common with the West, nor any access to it

Pakis have vastly greater access to the West than Iranians. It is much
easier for a Paki to study engineering at MIT than an Iranian. The Pakis
have more in common with the West than the Iranians because Iran was
never a European colony. The Paki army has legions of quality bagpipers
as a result of colonialization, the Iranian army is a bagpipe free zone.

I don't buy your argument that the Pakis got the bomb first due to
priorities. The mullahs would trade their mothers for a nuke.

You are in error on several points sir.

Iran trains very large numbers of engineers and has done since
the time of the Shah, indeed there's a very large demand for engineers
in Iran as a result of its long established oil and petrochemical
industries. Iran is in fact much more industrialised than Pakistan
and has rapidly expanded its universities in recent years, indeed
over 50% of its graduates are women and they work extensively
in engineering organisations. The last senior engineer of the
Iranian Offshore Oil Company I worked for was female.

While Iran may never have been formally a European colony
it was under effective British contol throughout the 19th and
early 20th century, indeed it was jointly occupied by Britain
and the USSR during WW2.

Finally Iran has had a substantial indigenous aero industry since
the early 60's when they began building helicopters under liscence
By the time of the Islamic revolution the Iranian Military Industries
Organization was producing small arms ammunition, batteries, tires,
copper products, explosives, and mortar rounds and fuses, rifles and
machine guns, helicopters, jeeps, trucks, and trailers.


Iran was also well on its way to manufacturing rocket launchers, rockets,
gun barrels, and grenades. This capability was of course seen as
a good thing at the time since Iran was seen as a bulwark against
Soviet influence.

Under a multibillion-dollar industrialisation programme, the Shah
commissioned US arms firms to build entire weapons factories from scratch in
Iran. Thus Bell Helicopter was building a factory to produce Model-214
helicopters in Isfahan, and Hughes was building a missile plant in Shiraz.
Northrop was also a joint partner in Iran Aircraft Industries, inc., which
maintained many of the US military aircraft sold to Iran and was expected to
produce aircraft components and eventually complete planes. These efforts
represented a large share of US industrial involvement in Iran, and were a
centrepiece of the Shah's efforts to develop modern, high-technology
industries.

Keith