Sorry, but the very thought of using nukes for military purposes gives me the creeps.
I think the moment any nation, no matter wether the US, Russia, India or whoever decides that nukes are a weapon of war like Artillery or a Rifle the human race is doomed. Period.
And sorry, I don't think Iran is worth crossing that threshold. You stuff one specter back in the bottle and unleash another, greater one.
Ahmadinejad might be a shiite doomsday cultist, but not all of Iran is, and especially the clergy are people mainly interested in power. So I suppose even a conservative successor to Ahmadinejad will tune down the rhetoric and will try to obtain nukes as a classic deterrent.
You seem to be obsessed with the idea of proliferation. In a worst chase scenario, this could happen, but actually the Pakistanis have connections to a lot more terror groups and did not proliferate anything sofar. Al Quaida has nothing to do with Iran. Iran supports the Hezbollah in Lebanon and diverse Shia militants in souther Iraq. These are territorial groups.
While the Hezbollah might find a nuke useful, I suppose if they really had wanted, they could've allready dropped a dirty bomb on Israel. They have access to radioactive material via Iran and Syria.
The regular use of nuclear precision munition, even though not as "dirty" as the nukes of old, would slowly contaminate the planet. Not to mention the fact that even today some US planners toy with the idea of a disarming first strike on Russia.
And in regards to the EU being powerless, I don't see it that way.
The EU has nukes; the french ones, the british are de facto under US control as they rely on US targeting data. And Sarkozy has allready made clear that a nuclear attack on Europe will trigger a nuclear response from France.
It is very popular to portray the EU as a toothless tiger, but I suppose in a real crisis the US would have to rely on the Europeans (maybe not the germans as our politicians are simply too mentally blocked) in order to get enough boots on the ground and planes in the air.
The US military and the brits are simply too stretched to fight another war all by themselves and in a real shooting war with Iran, all those Estonians and Ukrainians that went into Iraq might not be the coalition the US really need.
The EU militaries represent an untapped reservoir of forces which another US administration might find useful if the need should arise.
I suppose in the constellation of a Pres. Barack Obama asking for german forces after an iranian attack on Israel, even our current politicians could not say no.
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