GPN Editorial on IRAN NUCLEAR WATCH: Iran MUST BE STOPPED
Israel W. Charny

1. Is Iran developing military nuclear capability?
   
   It is forever amazing how the eggheads of our world always run to minimize destructive intentions and dangers. (For those knowledgeable in social science, this is another extension of the familiar "just world hypothesis" - humans and their societies are intrinsically good, and that life in the larger analysis is basically just - if you believe it. 
   
   By now it appears that the answer to this question is yes, without a doubt Iran is heading for nuclear weapons.  Indeed, many of us believe that the answer to this question has been totally obvious all along and literally staring us in the face.  Iran is on the way to  military nuclear power!
   
   
   
2. Will Iran use its expected military nuclear capability destructively?
   
   Again, the eggheads - who include a large number of perfectly well intentioned people, whose ideals of peace and justice are also the ideals for most of us -  say, in one form or another, that even if Iran has a military nuclear capacity, we can live with it; we can hold them at bay.  Deterrence has to work. The Iranians are not so irrational as to seek to destroy themselves, and they know that any nuclear strike by them will bring their own destruction.  Yet there are other analysts who believe that the madness of power striving that is characteristic of fascist dictatorships does not stop at the rational outcome of possible destruction of its own people - Hitler and Stalin and Mao tse Tung together account for perhaps 100 million dead of their own peoples and they didn't give a - !  In fact there are some psycho-historians who suggest that the madness of such leaderships includes a love of deathmaking that is unconsciously extended to the leader's own people as well. 
   
   Without going into psychological complexities, there are many analysts who more simply see Iran as blindly devoted to a messianic purpose that does not allow for any obstruction.  The Iranian-God-Messiah is Great.  Moreover, the specific goal-dream at long last of destroying the Jewish people, as Mohammed enjoined us to do, is an eternal achievement that even justifies sacrifice of some of us who will become holy shahids in the process.  Like the suicide bombers of the world -  Western eggheads ever dreamed that there would be such endless surpluses of personnel for suicide bombing in one country after the other.   Destroying Israel is to the minds of the devoted, an eternal privilege to be a martyr for one's god, let alone the concrete rewards specifically announced as awaiting the shahid at the pearly gates that beat out the social security benefits of just about all Western countries, let alone delight sensual desires.  
   
   
   
3. What measures should the world attempt to stop Iran's development of military nuclear capacity? 
   
   How far should the world go?  And will the world implement measures that are decided on say by a Western leadership? There seem always to be businessmen and companies who are ready to cut a multi-million or is it billion deal even with the devil at the cost of human lives.  Furthermore, the power politics between nations doesn't ever seem to stop, and there have already been any number of situations where Russia for one, and China for another have undermined or torpedoed Western policies intended to stop Iran. 
   
   
   
4. Should there be a military attack against Iran? 
   

Should America initiate such an attack?  Should Israel initiate such an attack?  Should Israel initiate such an attack only with the agreement and support of the United States.  Should Israel attack only in a joint military operation with the United States? 

It has to be emphasized that the decisions to make every effort to stop Iran does not inherently imply also a position advocating military attack on Iran.  There is a lot of confusion in discussion of a possible attack on Iran.  The image that is immediately conjured up in the minds of many people is total nuclear destruction of all of Iran and millions of its people.  But the possibilities of military attack include much more strategic attacks of the nuclear facilities and not necessarily with nuclear attack weapons.  And as will also be seen in the present issue of GPN, there are very significant possibilities for considerable cyber warfare to jam the wheels of production of Iran.

"You are right on target.  Viewing such developments in Iran as a matter of genocidal consorts is a critical element in stimulating public opinion - before rather than after - mass scale atrocities begin."

Israel W. Charny is the Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem and retired Professor of Psychology and Family Therapy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GENOCIDE, published by ABC-Clio Publishers, US and UK, and Author of FASCISM AND DEMOCRACY IN THE HUMAN MIND, published by the University of Nebraska Press, Both the encyclopedia and the book on fascist and democratic thinking were awarded "OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR" by the American Library Association.  He is also author of FIGHTING SUICIDE BOMBING: "A WORLDWIDE CAMPAIGN FOR LIFE" published 2007 by Praeger Security International [Greenwood Books], and republished in India and Sri Lanka along with the Praeger edition by three publishers: Penguin Books, Pentagon Press, and Lancer.