A Quote by Valerie Plame
There's no way you can possibly intellectually justify, 'Well, it's okay for the Western Judeo-Christian countries to have nuclear weapons, but not for a country like Iran.' That logic goes nowhere fast.
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I don't want to use the term "nuclear weapons" because those people in Iran who have authority say they are not building nuclear weapons. I make an appeal to the countries who do have nuclear weapons. They don't consider them a nuclear threat. But let's say a country that doesn't have nuclear weapons gets involved in building them, then they are told by those that already have nuclear weapons that they oppose [such a development]. Where is the justice in that?
My reading of the threat from Iran is that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, it is an existential threat to the State of Israel and to other countries in the region because the other countries in the region will feel compelling requirement to acquire nuclear weapons as well. Now we cannot a second Holocaust.
The cavalier casual way that Donald Trump talks about nuclear weapons is not only frightening but it goes counter to more than 70 years of bipartisan, presidential leadership of Republicans and Democrats who believed that we have to prevent other countries from getting nuclear weapons and we have to do what we can to decrease the number of nuclear weapons in the world.
I am against nuclear weapons, regardless of whether they are in the hands of Iran or Israel or any Western country. But obviously some states are allowed to have weapons of mass destruction while others are not.
Iran's Supreme Court has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. President [Hassan] Rouhani has indicated Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. I've made clear that we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy in the context of Iran meeting its obligations.
What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, like other countries in the region, rejects the acquisition of nuclear weapons by anyone, especially nuclear weapons in the Middle East region. We hope that such weapons will be banned or eliminated from the region by every country in the region.
If we are really anxious not to have nuclear weapons in Iran, the first thing is to call an international conference on abolishing all nuclear weapons, including Israeli nuclear weapons.
Iran is not about building nuclear weapons. We don't wanna build nuclear weapons. We don't believe that nuclear weapons bring security to anybody, certainly not to us.
When the U.S. claims the right to invade any country unilaterally and then defines a country like Iran or North Korea as 'evil,' then it is a rational response for these countries to develop nuclear weapons as the only military deterrent to invasion. We create what we most fear.
The JCPOA can perhaps delay Iran's nuclear weapons program for a few years. Conversely, it has virtually guaranteed that Iran will have the freedom to build an arsenal of nuclear weapons at the end of the commitment.
The real concern is that Iran would do what Pakistan did. Pakistan wanted nuclear weapons, like Iran, purely for defensive reasons - to defend itself against India. The problem was that once Pakistan acquired the weapons, it allowed the country to be more aggressive. So they stepped up their support for the Kashmiri terrorists, and it led very quickly to the Kargil crisis in 2000, which almost sparked a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
There are nine countries in the world that have nuclear weapons. There are about 27,000 nuclear weapons total on the planet. The countries that have nuclear weapons deploy them ready for use and have doctrines saying that they would use them in certain circumstances.
As far as U.S. intelligence knows, Iran is developing nuclear capacities, but they don't know if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons or not. Chances are they're developing what's called 'nuclear capability,' which many states have. That is the ability to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do it. That's not a crime.
The basic problem with the Non-Proliferation Treaty is there's no teeth in it, no penalties for countries that don't comply. Worse, as you say, the very naïve structure of the NPT has actually made it helpful for countries who want to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq, North Korea, Iran, all used the NPT to build up their nuclear programs.
There's no question but that a nuclear Iran, a nuclear-capable Iran is unacceptable to America. It presents a threat not only to our friends but ultimately a threat to us to have Iran have nuclear material, nuclear weapons that could be used against us or used to be threatening to us.
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