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Showing posts from March 19, 2006

More on Iran's nuclear program

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Olivia Ward from the Toronto Star interviewed several experts including yours truly on the topic: Leon Hadar, author of Sandstorm: Policy Failure in the Middle East and a research fellow at the Washington-based Cato Institute, says the fear of an Iranian bomb is overblown. And, he adds, looking at the question historically, there may be points in its favour. "If you go back to when China exploded its first bomb, the reactions in the American press looked like the end of the world had come. "China was ruled at that time by ideological fanatics who were every day reiterating their plans to destroy the West. But in the end it created a triangle of relationships that contained the Soviet Union, which was already armed with nuclear weapons." When Pakistan set off five nuclear tests in 1998, it was also greeted with horror. However, Pakistan's relations with its nuclear rival, India, thawed in the aftermath of the blast, and there was new agreement over the territorial is