How dangerous is Iran?

by prydwen

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says he doesn't want nuclear weapons. The world is suspicious. Newsweek asks
How dangerous is he?

At present India and Pakistan have nuclear capabilities but because of the friendliness to the West then this is alright. But if Iran, Iraq, Syria and the like were to attempt to develope their countries towards the 21st century, the West automatically sees this as a threat. If the world was to escalate to a state of war against Islam, it wouldn't be like a conventional war that we have known of old. The battlefields would be streets the casulties not troops but normal citizens. At the moment about 3% of the Iraqi people are fighting an insurgent 'war' against US and British troops and it is only being 'contained'. What if 80% of the islamic populus turned on the West. Every country would find the 'enemy at the gates' and reflecting on the instances of unrest in France last year it could turn very nasty.

The Islamic world, like a hornets nest, is being poked and prodded by the West with a big stick and wonders why it gets stung. Rather than give the militants ammunition to swell their numbers the West should be gaining the support of the non-militant muslims with the hopes to defeat from within.

America got a bloody nose in Vietnam as the British did in Korea, Aden and Cyprus. You cannot fight terrorism on a conventional battle field or with conventional troops. Hit and run tactics wreak havoc and demoralise troops and the general public. 7/11 , Madrid and the London bombings showed that everybody felt defenceless afterwards, what if this happened every day? Society would slow, effecting commerce, prices would rise and so would the jobless. Left to its own devices anarchy would rule and people in the West would feel untrustworthy of immigrants that have lived in their countries for decades.

Are we ready for this? Will prodding the hornets nest unleash a backlash that we could never appreciate?

I think this time we need to use more dialogue. It will feasably take Iran between 4-10 years to get 'the bomb', which is enough time for the West to diffuse the situation without the mass bloodshed that would be the alternative. Lets not rush into this one all guns blazing like we did in Afghanistan and Iraq.