Religion is Evil!

Evidence that an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons would actually spark a nuclear holocaust?You make the assumption that the man assassinated was key to Iran's nuclear weapons program (assassinating one of a dozen nuclear engineers wouldn't do much to curb Iran's nuclear program, and would simply be a pointless murder) which may or may not be true, and then further assume that a nuclear Iran would likely result in a nuclear holocaust.If Iran were to use some future nuclear capability against, well, anyone, Iran would itself be nuked to glass. If they launched against Israel, Iran would cease to exist (both from an Israeli counterattack, because they have nuclear weapons already, and from the US, who doesn't take kindly to Jerusalem mushroom clouds).Your nuclear hyperventilating stinks of cold-war-era paranoia. Mutually-assured annihilation has prevented every single nuclear power (with the exception of the US, when we were the only ones with nuclear weapons and therefore were not in a state of mutually-assured annihilation) from the USSR to modern Russia to Pakistan to India to Israel and even North Korea from actually utilizing that nuclear capability.Why do you believe that Iran, if it were to possess nuclear weapons, would for some reason break this pattern and initiate what could only possibly result in its own destruction? Do you believe all of the leaders of Iran to be suicidally stupid?

Or can be terribly racist. Or can be a politician pandering to a politically relevant group of poorly educated and/or extremely racist people.Again...do you (or Taz) believe that the leadership of Iran is suicidally stupid? I'm well aware of their stated opinions on Israel and Jews and the Holocaust, and I find those to be frankly irrelevant to the real consideration of whether a nuclear Iran is actually likely to initiate a nuclear holocaust. Does being stupid enough to fall for holocaust-denial suddenly translate to suicide?If North Korea isn't stupid/crazy enough to use nuclear weapons, why do you think that Iran would?It would also be fair to mention now that, even if a state simply supplied nuclear weapons to independent terrorist groups, the specific isotope profile from the resulting weapons is very easily traceable to its point of origination. If North Korea gave a nuke to a terrorist organization to use against the US, for example, we would very easily be able to tell that the weapon came from North Korea, which would then cease to exist as a habitable region of the Earth for some decades due to the massive US retaliatory strike. So too with Iran.

Exactly how does "sacrifice yourself" equate to "sacrifice your entire society?" Because that's what we're talking about here, and I think there's a rather large disconnect. I think a young, zealous jihadist may be willing to sacrifice himself in a strike against an enemy he cannot hope to significantly harm otherwise, but that he would be unwilling to sacrifice his mother, his sister, his uncle, and all of his friends for the same cause.And again, we aren't dealing with some religious nutjob from off the street. We're talking about the leadership of Iran. Sure, they may be religious nutjobs themselves to varying degrees, but how many of them want to take an action that will result in the total destruction of Iran?After all, they could do that now. They could just invade Israel with everything they have, right now, and likely do an awful lot of damage at the cost of Iran's existence as an independent nation. If they're not crazy enough to assure their own destruction through normal means, why would they suddenly become crazy enough to do the same thing with nuclear weapons?And again: they cannot do "nuke by proxy." We can very easily tell where the nuclear material from a bomb originates, the best they could do would be to delay the annihilation of their nation be a few days. Right, and how many of those people have political power? Your paranoia aside, most people support Israel because Israel was set up after the Holocaust, and because Israel continues to play the antisemitism card for every single act of violence in Israel whether it fits or not, not because they feel the need to support Israel to make sure Jesus can come back. Most people agree that Buz and his buddies are insane.The notion that you can expect national leaders to treat their entire nation the same way a suicide bomber treats his own life is a total non-sequitur. It's frankly stupid. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps politicians might play up their opposition to an external enemy in order to unify support for their own power? Youre being an idiot. Sacrificing yourself isn't the same as sacrificing your entire nation. Al-Qaeda wants to set up a global Taliban-esque government, not get one of the most severe Islamist states that currently exist wiped off the map! Because within days we would know the nuke was provided by Iran, and then Iran would burn. All it takes are some fallout samples and a lab.

I prefer to argue via reason and logic, not old proverb.People used that same argument during the Cold War, you know. Somehow we seem to have avoided nuclear annihilation, because neither side wanted to be nuked. Seems in real life people can be smarter than freaking arachnids.

Which is surprising, because last I knew, Iranians were people too. You'd think if we had wanted to be so exclusive about the rights enumerated in the Constitution we would have specifically said "American Citizen" instead of "person."But I suppose treating non-Americans as people is just too inconvenient.

You betray your lack of knowledge of nuclear weapons. The so-called "suitcase nuke" is not a simple device; it takes decades of research to miniaturize a nuclear weapon to the point it takes up little enough space to fit in even a non-commercial vehicle (you cannot actually carry a "suitcase nuke" like a suitcase; they're small, not light, you could put one in the trunk of a car or in an SUV. Remember, it's still filled with plutonium, which has a density of 19.74 g/cm^3, as compared to lead, which is "only" 11.34 g/cm^3, and you need enough for critical mass and the mechanism that initiates the reaction...). I'm not even positive that Iran possesses the industrial and research capacity to pull it off any time in the foreseeable future.More pointedly, a nuke carried in a vehicle like a car bomb runs some very significant risks. You need to actually deploy such a device to a target worth hitting, which means driving it across borders and risking normal police stops. The weapon would almost certainly need to be carried in a full tractor-trailer, unless you're looking multiple decades into the future; those sorts of vehicles need to go through checkpoints for customs.No, missiles are actually far more likely as a delivery system; Iran doesn't require ICBM capability to hit Israel. I believe they have already test-fired ground-based missiles that have a projected range capable of reaching Israel. Their task at this point is developing a nuclear weapon, and then miniaturizing it sufficiently to fit in a warhead that can be mounted on one of those missiles. Nuclear weapons are extremely heavy (being based on Uranium or Plutonium) and are usually quite large when first developed.ICBM-interception missiles would be useless - we're talking basically about a glorified SCUD launcher, like what we saw in Desert Storm. PATRIOT missile batteries can intercept a fair number of those types of missiles if deployed (and I would imagine we would do exactly that, or sell some to Israel, if Iran becomes nuclear-capable). This means Iran would need a large first-strike capability to ensure that any targets will actually be hit. And, of course, firing a medium-range missile like that would be an act of war that would result in an immediate response, even if we didn't know the attack was nuclear yet. From both the US and Israel. And Israel has nuclear weapons. And Israel is very trigger-happy.The difficulty isn't developing nuclear weapons, nor in making a rocket. The difficulty is miniaturizing a nuclear weapon so that it will fit on the rocket and not interfere with its range or flight profile, because a nuclear warhead is so different from conventional payloads. And good luck getting a nuclear weapon that far. It's easy to sneak an individual with a little equipment past customs checkpoints. Nuclear weapons are somewhat more difficult.

"Universal truths" are wishy-washy nonsense.The "golden rule" stems from simple empathy, the ability to see other individuals as similar to oneself.It's "universal" among humans because complex features (like brains) within a species evolve together - there's a reason that smiling is universal, a reason we can all feel sadness and happiness and anxiety and joy, a reason that a psychiatrist can prescribe the same medication to a hundred patients and have it work in roughly similar ways, and the reason is that our brains are all very similar.Morality does not stem from the laws of physics. There is no term for fairness in the laws of motion. There is nothing in the Universe looking out for us, no special meaning from on high.But we don't need that. We give the Universe and our lives meaning, we create fairness, we determine right from wrong by how we want to treat others and how we want others to treat us. The answer to the question "what is the meaning of life" is "whatever you want the meaning of your life to be!"