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Originally Posted by flylock shox
This sounds right to me. I wrote a rather lengthy paper in my last term of law school on nuclear proliferation, but it's amazing what a few years of being a lawyer does to your memory for all kinds of law other than what you're practicing.
And you've hit the nub of the problem too, I think. Iran is entitled to develop peaceful nuclear technology under the NPT, but prohibited from developing weapons technology. Unfortunately, the technologies are so closely related that it's not a big leap once you've got the one to acquire the other. So the problem the US faces (and other interested countries, of course) is that it doesn't have any justification under international law to prevent Iran's development of nuclear power, unless it has evidence that Iran's projects are not peaceful in nature. And it doesn't have that evidence as far as I'm aware.
And, of course, the US has also lost all credibility when it comes to bare assertions without physical proof (see: Iraq has WMDs). If I'm not mistaken, weren't Iran's facilities inspected by the IAEA or similar body several months ago?
And you're right - the balance of power throughout the region would shift with another nuclear state, particularly one that is more likely to trumpet their status than whisper it.
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To give the US some credit, they were quite successful in coming to a diplomatic solution with Libya.
Lybia (at one point a very unfavorable country with the US and its allies) was busted with a large amount of equipment with no use other than weapons. They chose a diplomatic solution. Libya dismantled their weapons production facilities and allowed IAEA and US inpectors to have full access to their facilities and things worked out quite amicably. In fact, the whole thing turned into a much wider peace initiative between Libya and it's neighbours and a lot of long term disagreements were put to rest.
The problem with Iran is that in 2003 they were busted not having complied with full inspection and disclosure under the NPT. At the threat of UN action, they made much greater efforts to disclose what they had, but there is still debate about whether this disclosure is complete.
Another problem is that the type of nuclear energy Iran is choosing to pursue is closely related to weapons technology. There are other alternatives out there, but Iran is choosing the heavy water, fission (not really sure how this works, I'm not a physicist in by any means) route.