Iran Is The Biggest Danger

By Tariq Alhomayed
This commentary was published in Asharq al-Awsat on 05/04/2011

The danger of Iran in our region is not in any way difficult to prove. In order to see evidence of hostility, and the danger, we only need to look at what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday with regards to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, specifically Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. However, let us reflect on some of what Ahmadinejad said yesterday in more detail, in order to show how the Iranian threat is extremely alarming both for the region and the wider world, and not only in terms of political issues.
 
In a press conference held in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said that his country's nuclear plants were safer than their counterparts in Japan, and that the events that occurred in Japan's Fukushima nuclear facility would never happen in Iran. Ahmadinejad justified this viewpoint by saying: "the technology used in the nuclear plants in Fukushima dates back fifty years, but the technology used in Iranian nuclear plants is completely up to date"! Could anything be more absurd?
 
The Iranian President says that Iran is more advanced than Japan, in terms of the technology used in its nuclear plants, yet everyone saw how Iran stood helpless when faced with the "Stuxnet" worm virus – a destructive computer program which is believed to have disabled up to five Iranian centrifuges, and helped to thwart Tehran in its quest to produce Iran's first nuclear weapons. We saw the Iranians at the time form a crisis committee, incorporating officials from all concerned departments in order to combat the worm!
 
This is not all of course, during the same press conference Ahmadinejad added: "as far as I know, the (Fukushima) incident was not caused by the earthquake, but by the tsunami waves. We do not have tsunamis in the Gulf, and therefore there is no cause for concern"! Is this a rational argument, considering we have seen a hurricane strike the Sultanate of Oman, which is part of the Arab Gulf, and is situated opposite Iran in terms of its coastal borders? However, above all that, Tehran does not have the required capacity to deal with an earthquake, for we saw how the whole world rallied to help Iran after the devastating earthquake which struck the country two years ago.
 
Therefore, Ahmadinejad's comments about what happened in Japan alone are evidence of the danger of Iran becoming a nuclear state. It is a danger for the region, a danger for the Iranians themselves, and a danger even to the global economy and its stability. The threat of Iran relates not only to what it does in the Arab world, from Iraq to Bahrain, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere, but the dangers also lies in its way of thinking, coupled with the weakness of its capabilities. Tehran insists on possessing nuclear energy, which it is fundamentally not equipped to deal with in an emergency, and this matter is more serious than the intentions of Iran itself.
 
Thus, the Iranian threat stems not only from its interference in the countries of the region, or its promotion of sectarianism. Indeed, the Iranian threat lies in the weakness of its potential combined with the size of its delusion, and the gravity of its intent. Iran doesn't only threaten the Middle East, but it threatens the whole world as I said above. Ahmadinejad's comments on Japan alone are evidence of the size of the danger posed by the Tehran regime, and its way of thinking.