Why Can't Iran Have a Nuclear Weapon?
The United States has nuclear weapons. So does Russia, China, France, The United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel. Nine nations have them. Why not Iran? To answer that question, it helps to understand what Iran is—and what it isn't. I was a college student when the Shah was deposed in 1979. At the time, many observers described the Iranian Revolution as a freedom-seeking domestic uprising against a dictatorship, and that interpretation still persists among some commentators today. But revolutions that seek liberty don't replace one autocrat with another. What emerged under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini wasn't a freedom movement. It was an effort to reshape the moral, political, and cultural order of Iranian society according to his Islamic revolutionary worldview. Khomeini believed Western political and cultural influence had corrupted the Muslim world and sought to replace it with a system governed by Islamic law and clerical authority. Khomeini taught that ...