zalzon wrote in message ...
On Fri, 13 Aug 2004 22:05:50 -0700, Thelasian wrote:

Rather the US says that Iran's nuclear program gives it the
CAPACITY to build nukes. But ANY nuclear program can be characterized
as that. Brazil has the CAPACITY to build nukes too.

Hi,
Such countries do not have a great amount of fossil fuels.


Do you have ANY idea what you're talking about? Russia alone is a
MAJOR exporter.


What justification is there for eyeran to persue electricity from nuclear
power which comes with a FAR higher economic (and political) opportunity
cost?


Well, for the answer to that I suggest you go to the Stanford Research
Institute which told the Shah of Iran in the 1970's that Iran can't
afford to rely solely on petroleum.


It was "pretty obvious" that Iraq had vatloads of anthrax too

That's a straw man argument, lets compare apples to apples.


No its not. It goes to show how "conventional wisdom" can be
manufactured.


It was pretty obvious that Saddam intended to build nuclear weapons with
his Osirak reactor. He himself admitted to it. When you see Eyeran,
Saudi Arabia, Venesuela, UAE ..etc building nuclear power plants, it is
for one reason only. And that is the pursuit of nuclear weapons.


Conclusory statement.


The only country that is a major net oil exporter and operates a large
number of nuclear power plants is Russia. Their reasons for
developing their extensive nuclear infrastructure despite the high
economic opportunity cost was for nuclear weapons (that despite their huge
gas and oil reserves). Electricity was treated as a byproduct by the USSR
until the country went bust.

Now here's a question for you :

Can you honestly say that Eyeran has no military intent whatsoever
attached to its nuclear program?


I can't read minds. But Having "intent" is not contrary to the NPT. In
fact Article X of the NPT itself says that countries have aright to
withdraw from the treaty if their national security requires them to
do so - it is not a blanket prohibition. Obviously, countries will
want to keep their options open - Iran is concerned about its security
just as much as the USA and I don't see the USA getting rid of its
nuclear weapons (despite a pledge to do so in the NPT) so naturally
the other signatories of the NPT will keep open the option of
withdrawing from the NPT too if potentially required to do so. That
was the basis of the NPT agreement, and if you don't like the
agreement, that's too bad.

However, like I said, keeping open the option of building nukes a
violation of NPT. The solution to that is for the parties to stop
threatening each other, so that none will feel the need to develop a
nuclear deterrent. The answer is NOT to say "OH well you can't have
any nuclear technology and meanwhile we're going to build mininukes
that we plan to use" which is what's been happening.