The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,228

dire alternatives for the world ahead. John Mueller, Thomas Schelling, and many other foreign affairs analysts have imagined them for us and have concluded that the Iranian nuclear program is not the end of the world.280

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and Ahmadinejad has repeatedly declared that Iran’s nuclear program is intended only for energy and medical research. In 2005 Supreme Leader Khameini (who wields more power than Ahmadinejad) issued a fatwa declaring that nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam.281 If the government went ahead and developed the weapons anyway, it would not be the first time in history that national leaders have lied through their teeth. But having painted themselves into this corner, the prospect of forfeiting all credibility in the eyes of the world (including major powers on whom they depend, like Russia, China, Turkey, and Brazil) might at least give them pause.

Ahmadinejad’s musings about the return of the Twelfth Imam do not necessarily mean that he plans to hasten it along with a nuclear holocaust. Two of the deadlines by which writers confidently predicted that he would set off the apocalypse (2007 and 2009) have already come and gone.282 And for what it’s worth, here is how he explained his beliefs in a 2009 television interview with NBC correspondent Ann Curry:Curry: You’ve said that you believe that his arrival, the apocalypse, would happen in your own lifetime. What do you believe that you should do to hasten his arrival?

Ahmadinejad: I have never said such a thing.... I was talking about peace.... What is being said about an apocalyptic war and—global war, things of that nature. This is what the Zionists are claiming. Imam . . . will come with logic, with culture, with science. He will come so that there is no more war. No more enmity, hatred. No more conflict. He will call on everyone to enter a brotherly love. Of course, he will return with Jesus Christ. The two will come back together. And working together, they would fill this world with love. The stories that have been disseminated around the world about extensive war, apocalyptic wars, so on and so forth, these are false. 283

As a Jewish atheist, I can’t say I find these remarks completely reassuring. But with one obvious change they are not appreciably different from those held by devout Christians; indeed, they are milder, as many Christians do believe in an apocalyptic war and have fantasized about it in bestselling novels. As for the speech containing the phrase that was translated as “wiping Israel off the map,” the New York Times writer Ethan Bronner consulted Persian translators and analysts of Iranian government rhetoric on the meaning of the phrase in context, and they were unanimous that Ahmadinejad was daydreaming about regime change in the long run, not genocide in the days ahead.284 The perils of translating foreign bombast bring to mind Khrushchev’s boast “We will bury you,” which turned out to mean “outlive” rather than “entomb.”

There is a parsimonious alternative explanation of Iran’s behavior. In 2002 George W. Bush identified Iraq, North Korea, and Iran as the “axis of evil” and proceeded to invade Iraq and depose its leadership. North Korea’s leaders saw the writing on the wall and promptly developed a nuclear capability, which (as they no doubt anticipated) has put an end to any musings about the United States invading them too. Shortly afterward Iran put its nuclear program into high gear, aiming to create enough ambiguity as to whether it possesses nuclear weapons, or could assemble them quickly, to squelch any thought of an invasion in the mind of the Great Satan.

If Iran does become a confirmed or suspected nuclear power, the history of the nuclear age suggests that the most likely outcome would be nothing. As we have seen, nuclear weapons have turned out to be useless for anything but deterrence against annihilation, which is why the nuclear powers have repeatedly been defied by their nonnuclear adversaries. The most recent episode of proliferation bears this out. In 2004 it was commonly predicted that if North Korea acquired a nuclear capability, then by the end of the decade it would share it with terrorists and set off a nuclear arms race with South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.285 In fact, North Korea did acquire a nuclear capability, the end of the decade has come and gone, and nothing has happened. It’s also unlikely that any nation would furnish nuclear ammunition to the loose cannons of a