But one has to assume Fidel Castro doesn’t have much longer at this point. The prospect of Castro’s death is always covered with the sort of baited breath that suggests people are anticipating some kind of dramatic change to follow from it. That could happen, of course, but it seems equally likely — indeed, somewhat more likely — to me that nothing in particular will happen. Cuba could just plug along, dictatorial, sanctioned, poor for a good long time just as the death of the DPRK’s founder didn’t fundamentally alter anything.

Textual interpretation of statements by former president Rafsanjani aside, other things to keep in mind regarding the Iran issue:

• There is overwhelming theoretical and historical reason to believe that no country would mount an unprovoked nuclear first strike against a country with a credible second-strike nuclear deterrent.

• There is no particular reason to believe that Iran is especially close to obtaining a workable nuclear weapon.
• There is very little reason to believe that an unprovoked unilateral military attack on Iran will substantially delay the date at which Iran may or may not be in a position to build a nuclear weapon.
• The phrase “point of no return,” though often heard in this debate, has no real practical meaning and, in particular, it’s worth pointing out that many nations have passed this point without constructing nuclear weapons.
• Nothing is more likely to convince future Iranian governments that they should engage in unprovoked “preventative” attacks on other nations in the region than a history of said other nations launching unprovoked “preventative” attacks on Iran.
• There is substantial empirical and theoretic reason to believe that the Iranian nuclear program is substantially defensive (though probably not “peaceful”) in nature.
• The very administration currently pushing toward a military confrontation with Iran has, in the past, rebuffed Iranian peace overtures and consistently refused to attempt good-faith negotiations aimed at resolving outstanding bilateral disputes between the United States and Iran.

So, for some reason the “c” and “g” keys on my omputer have de*ided they don’t feel like fun*tionin* anymore. Worst of all, it’s hard to even *opy and paste under the *irumstan*es so I’m just leavin* the letters off. That may work in the *ontext of a blo* but I don’t think one *an really do a book manus*ript this way.

Richard Just at The New Republic is “a little disturbed by the cavalier attitude some liberals have taken towards the prospect of a nuclear Iran”. Ah, good, I’m incredibly disturbed by the cavalier attitude warmongers have taken to the truth. Just writes:

As plenty of others have noted (see this TNR Online piece), Ahmadinejad isn’t exactly the only member of the Iranian regime who would like to see Israel destroyed. Even a so-called moderate, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, famously said, of a nuclear attack against Israel, “It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.” So maybe it’s true that Khamenei is taking power back from Ahmadinejad.

I wonder whether or not Just is deliberately trying to mislead his readers about this. Anyways, here’s what Efraim Karsh and Rory Miller wrote about Rafsanjani:

>The next year, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, widely regarded as a pragmatist, noted that Israel was more vulnerable to nuclear attack than Muslim countries “because the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.” Then he added, “It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.”

The fact of the matter is that no matter how many times The New Republic truncates that Rafsanjani quotation, it’s still the case that he was talking about deterring Israel’s nuclear arsenal and not launching an Iranian first strike.

Be that as it may, at the end of the day, I do not only the Iranian nuclear program as such, but also the larger issue of the slow disintegration of the global nonproliferation regime, extremely seriously as a policy problem. Which is precisely why it’s so crucial to combat the horribly misguided “counterproliferation” school that was behind the Iraq War, and to fight against the view that sporadic unilateral military strikes are anything but counterproductive in achieving nonproliferation goals. Peter Scoblic’s 2005 New Republic article “Moral Hazard” is probably the best relatively brief statement of why the “bombs away!” approach to dealing with these problems only makes the problems worse and worse.