      • The Guardian,     • Jump to comments () There is
widespread international agreement that Iran's acquisition of
nuclear weapons is an alarming prospect, but very little
attention is paid to the most obvious, immediate reason why:
that there is already a Middle Eastern nuclear power, Israel,
insistent on preserving its monopoly.  So the crisis has been
foreseeable for decades; it would be automatically triggered by
the emergence of a second nuclear power, friendly or unfriendly
to the west. Iran is the unfriendliest possible, encouraging the
widespread assumption that it alone is responsible for creating
the crisis - and settling it. But is it?  It certainly isn't
blameless. First, its nuclear arming would deal a major blow to
an already fraying international non-proliferation regime.
Second, it would involve a huge deceit. Third, the US divides
actual or potential nuclear powers into responsible and
irresponsible ones. Iran would be irresponsible, being already
the worst of "rogue states".  Typically,