Dear longbrained
I read your comments about this necessity that Iran should equip itself with nuclear weapons for defending itself.
I understand your reasons and I believe you're right, specially when I read "nuke them" or "nuke Iran" or similar phrases in comments of many American people on articles about this story in recent days.
But I believe there is no need necessarily to build nuclear bombs or weapons. I think acquiring the capability of building nuclear weapons every time you decide to build is enough, Like Japan. Iran is near to that point now, I think even now Iran has such deterrence capability to some extent when you see Panetta says in the best scenario attacking Iran can just postpone its nuclear porgram 1-2 years.
In Iran We also have Fatwa of supreme leader that production and using of "weapons of mass destruction" like nuclear weapons is haram.
Well, it is upto you guys. But I still prefer nukes ready to go on top of ICBM just in case. That is the only guarantee against a bunch of crazy white fascists who are unstable in mental faculty. Of course it is not for first strike use but if attacked then they should be ready to go. Otherwise, United States had given Iraq just 48 hours to surrender and even started the war by launching cruise missiles before that 48 hours was over. And they were lucky. Sometimes an attack comes without any ultimatum.
As for Japan, that country has a military pact with United States and lives under
American nuclear umbrella. So its situation is abit different than Iran. There are many countries living under umbrella of a nuclear country for example all of Europe lives under nuclear assurances of UK, France and United States. Those holding nuclear weapons are Russia, United States, China, France, UK, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea. But in addition to these are
those countries which share nuclear weapons. Though your peaceful attitude is appreciated, I am not sure, if Iran is going to have enough time before a surprise attack with a total war destroying Iran in order to build a stockpile of nukes. As you know just one or two nukes are completely useless. A nation with a nuclear deterrence must have atleast dozens and ideally hundreds of nukes. Since using just one nuke will not finish off your enemy but it will cause your enemy to nuke you 500 times.
So this latent capability does not apply to Iran. Japan can depend on this latent capability because US is protecting it already. Nobody is protecting Iran. As for Fatwa, it is just a jurist opinion and is not something that can not be undone. Fatwas are broken every day and new fatwas issued. It is not something written in Quran. By the way in Quran it is clearly written, Fight your enemies the way they fight you. So there you go. If they start nuking Iran tomorrow, Iran will not have enough time to build 300 nukes and ICBM for a response. It will be too late.