About 8:00 AM CST Wednesday morning, a banner appeared on the top of the MSNBC.com’s homepage stating that Iranian TV was reporting a possible air strike near Daylam, Iran. (Daylam is near the home of a Russian built, but not yet operational, 1,000 Megawatt nuclear reactor.) I’m sure the thought that raced across my mind was the same one going through the minds of many others in the world; someone had just hit the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
Within minutes of this news hitting the wires, U.S. stock market futures tumbled (33 points for Dow Industrial futures) and oil futures climbed (at least a $1 initially). The Israeli Defence Ministry was quick to state that it had no part in what reports said was a massive explosion from a missile fired by an unidentified aircraft. The U.S. State Department was quick to assert no knowledge of any operations in the area. (Then again it is conceivable the State Department remains in the doghouse with the White House and the Pentagon, thus they would only know about such things via CNN, Reuters, and the BBC World Service.)
It took about 30 minutes for the situation to stabilize some and for Iranian officials to assert the fireball was created not by a missile but an empty fuel tank dropped from one of their aircraft. It now turns out the explosion was the result of a blast at a nearby dam.
During that half hour of pure, unadulterated speculation, people throughout the world had to gasp. Did the United States really just launch a strike on Iran? Is it possible the Israeli’s finally made good on their threat to do the same to Iran as they did to the Iraqi Osirik reactor in 1981?
About the time this news was breaking, the BBC was running a story about how Iran and Syria were joining in a “common front” against the threats from the U.S.A. Combine that with the recent reports of American spy drones regularly flying over Iran trying to sniff out a nuclear weapons program and the Iranian military’s willingness to shoot them down, you have a rich recipe for a geopolitical powder keg.
In many ways, we are fortunate the incident was merely an accident. Yet, it shows just how tense the world is right now in regards to Iran. The fault for this tension lies with all the actors involved: Iran, the United States, Israel, and the European Union.
The unmistakable fact from the accident is if it can cause a hiccup in the world like this, what would a real strike do?
I really don’t want to ponder the answer to that question. However, the world must contemplate such answers in the hopes of avoiding the inevitable disaster that would accompany a military operation against the Iranian nuclear program.
Nuclear proliferation will continue to be a major issue on the world stage for many years to come. How the world community handles the programs in nations like Iran and North Korea will influence many others to pursue the bomb or not.
To believe that the nuclear genie will remain contained to just a handful of countries almost 60 years after its release is incredibly naive. Many nations possess the scientists with the know how to make a chain reaction needed to release the immense power of a split atom. All they need are the nuclear materials and the tools to weaponize it. Terrifyingly, those materials and tools are far easier to obtain than they should be. One only has to look at the reports of how far along Libya was to getting the bomb to see this.
Let’s hope for the sake of the future of the world, that the tension created in the Bushehr province Wednesday will cause a new set of thinking on how to handle countries like Iran and their pursuit of atomic weapons.
