Critical Essay on A Nuclear Armed Iran: A Difficult but not Impossible Policy Problem

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Recommended: U.S. relationship with Iran

In his paper about Iran’s nuclear program, Barry R. Posen emphasized that Iran’s nuclear program may result on regional and global instability. On regional level, neighboring countries of Iran will feel threatened with Iran’s nuclear power. This situation may lead them to follow Iran’s step in developing nuclear weapons even though they do not have the capability to ensure the security of their nuclear sites. Clearly, nuclear weapons proliferation will put the Middle East in escalating dangerous situation. On global level, the U.S. and its allies are concerned that the situation in the Middle East may harm their national interests. The Middle East is still a prominent producer of oil which is the main energy resource for industrial countries. Conflicts in the Middle East probably affects economy grows in the United States. Based on this situation, the ruling party in the U.S. tends to take decisive approach to ensure that their national interest will remain secure. They will analyze all possibilities and usually take prediction which is based on the nature of Realism Perspective. Therefore, many assumptions may ignore the possibility of goodwill from other countries.
The key point in Posen’s paper is the failure of the U.S. to negotiate with Iran to stop their nuclear program. The next step that the U.S. should take is ensuring its security. Posen also stressed further risk of Iran’s nuclear program for the U.S. and analyze all risks based on the recent situation. Several of Posen concerns are the fact that nuclear weapons might be used by Non-state actors such as terrorists and the possibility that Iran will be inclined to use nuclear weapons to threat Israel or its neighboring countries. Nevertheless, Posen also gives an exp...

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...). The Global War On Terror: the Most Extensive . Pointer, Journal of The Singapore Armed Forces , 15-23.

Milton, V. (1998, April 13). Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini.TIME. Retrieved from http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988165,00.html

Posen, B. R. (2001). A Nuclear Armed Iran: A difficult But Not Impossible Policy Problem. Essential Reading in World Politics, 4th,

Shadmer, M. (2011). Ideology and the Iranian Revolution. Manuscript submitted for publication, Department of Economics, University of Miami, University of Miami, Miami, . Retrieved from http://moya.bus.miami.edu/~mshadmehr/Ideology.pdf

S. Hashimi, A. (2008). Iranian Synthesis of Ideology & Pragmatism: It’s role in Regional Politics. Focus on Regional Issues,XXVI(1),

Sherill, C. W. (2012). Why Iran Wants the Bomb And What. Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2012 , 32-49.

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