"The Final Say" by Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun (bold = my emphases)
Iran's nuclear program is a danger to the entire world, U.S. President George Bush warned again last week as Washington pressed the UN Security Council to impose sanctions.
The uproar certainly helped distract public attention from the Bush administration's mounting domestic and foreign policy woes. It also showed how few people understand the Iranian nuclear question.
Experts say Iran may be in a position to fabricate a crude nuclear weapon in 5-10 years, but all the current alarms about Iran ignore a basic reality of nuclear weapons.
A nuclear device is useless unless it can be delivered with moderate accuracy over medium to long distances. One reason I was among the few insisting in 2002 that Iraq posed no threat was because it had no delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's most advanced missile could fly only 130 km. Its aircraft couldn't carry a nuclear weapon.
Even if Iran could fabricate, miniaturize and harden a nuclear warhead (a difficult achievement), the maximum range of the country's most advanced missile -- the highly inaccurate Shahab-3 -- is only about 1,300 kms. Iran has no nuclear-capable aircraft.
The only way Iran could pose the grave nuclear threat to the U.S. that Bush and his aides loudly claim, would be to send a nuclear device by freighter or FedEx.
The CIA admits North Korea's Taep'o-dong missile can today hit North America with a nuclear warhead. India's developing ICBMs and sea-launched missiles will also be able to do so in a few years. Contrast Washington's nonchalance about these real programs with the contrived hysteria over Iran.
The question we need to ask, and get a credible answer from G.W.'s Administration, is this level of treat really, really worth the very possible chance of igniting a "Holy War" between the West and the Arab/Muslim world? Note the bold stress on "Holy War," because this is what we would be facing. War is bad enough, but fighting a war where the other side sees it as a religious war is infinitely bad.
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