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More on Iran and Hillary

Tuesday, 6th May 2008

Oliver Kamm links to (indeed, takes part in) a post on the Indie's Open House blog by Anthony Painter on Hillary Clinton's comments about Iran:

When asked on ABC News about what she would do if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, Hillary Clinton was explicit, “…we would be able to totally obliterate them and those people who run Iran need to know that.”
Forget the fact that the latest CIA National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concludes that the Iranians have suspended their nuclear weapons programme.

Painter's post is woeful. Oliver rightly takes him to task for the basic error so many of his ilk make:

[T]he NIE's definition of what constituted Iran's nuclear programme was heavily circumscribed. In a footnote, the authors commented: 'For the purposes of this Estimate, by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.'
To draw conclusions about Iran's nuclear programme but explicitly leave out of the discussion Iran's uranium enrichment activities is some caveat. To refer to the enrichment facility at Natanz as "civil work" is question-begging. There is no need for that facility at Natanz or for the heavy-water plant at Arak - before a single reactor has come into service - if Iran's nuclear programme is intended for purely civil purposes. Other countries that have reactors, such as Sweden, don't seek the capability to enrich uranium, but buy fuel more cheaply on the open market.

But there's a still more basic problem with his post. As Painter himself writes, the context of HRC's remark was this:

When asked on ABC News about what she would do if Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, Hillary Clinton was explicit, “…we would be able to totally obliterate them and those people who run Iran need to know that.”

In other words, she wasn't saying the US would obliterate Iran, point. She was saying it would do so in response to a nuclear attack on Israel. Deterrence.

But if Painter is right, and the entire notion of Iran having nuclear weapons is nonsense, then it won't be launching any nuclear attack on anyone. And so there'll be no US response.