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Originally Posted by Schroeder
The issue is you would have to fanatical kindergarten kids with nukes who aren't afraid of getting killed because they do it for their god. MAD did only work because each side feared destruction.  |
On the other hand, I think people are vastly overestimating the "madness" of both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Neither side is fanatical or kindergarten-like as most Western commentators would like to think, and if you actually follow their line of negotiation and logic, you'll see that they've been pretty clever through this whole process. That's not to say one shouldn't be concerned about them, but I think a lot of the media portrayal of them is very sensationalized.
What might actually be far more scary to realize is that Iran's policy in the Middle East has by far been more rational than virtually everybody's, and certainly more rational than the US's. This isn't so much a compliment to Iran, but more a testament to the immense Western blunders (and particularly the Iraq war) that basically handed regional dominance to Iran, who have shown themselves far smarter than to let it go to waste. Don't think them so dumb as to waste it by doing something stupid with nukes. They're really not dumb. What they're doing is a combination of clever realpolitik and sensationalist bombast that's aimed mostly at repressing domestic dissent, which is Iran's real greatest threat - and their government knows that all too well.