Iran

[SpitfireMK461]

I know you were joking, just saying. I have no better solution to nuclear proliferation, I just know it's pretty damn hypocritical for us, with over 5,100 nukes and being the only nation to have used them in anger, to tell another nation they can't have them.

It's not the US telling people they can't have nukes, it is the UN. Anyone that is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty agrees to not develop a nuclear weapons program. Being a part of the NPT also means nuclear countries helping other countries gain peaceful nuclear technology, which the US and other nuclear countries have been offering Iran all along. Lastly, it means nuclear armed countries pursing disarmament, which the US has been doing alongside Russia. The peak US stockhold was over 31,000 warheads in 1967, now it is one sixth of that.

The US and Russia, being the first and largest nuclear nations, have been at the front of nuclear disarmament from the beginning, starting with the Partial Test Ban Treaty, and continuing with the SALT and START treaties, as well as various others. The Obama administration is even considering cuts to the current stockpile up to 80%. And to call the US hypocritical for its use of nukes to end WW2 just doesn't still well with me. The true effects of nuclear weapons weren't discovered until after these bombs were dropped, and none have been used since. But more to the point, the current members of government are the same members that dropped the bombs, or tested a thousand weapons, or nearly went to war with the Soviet Union. You can't hold one country hostage to sins it may have committed generations ago. Times have changed, people have changed, and policy has changed.

These days, it is about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons so that the chance of one ever being used does nothing but decrease (I will trust any country that has held a nuke for decades over any country just developing one, especially in a region that is a hotbed of conflict).

[tigger]

It's not the US telling people they can't have nukes, it is the UN.

No, it's both. We've got our own unilateral sanctions against Iran. Many of which predate their nuclear program, but that's only provided reason for more aggressive steps. Stopping nuclear proliferation is a clear goal of US diplomatic policy, with or without the UN. I know the treaties, I know there's just a fraction of the nuclear weapons there used to be, etc.

And to call the US hypocritical for its use of nukes to end WW2 just doesn't still well with me.

That's not what I said. We've got thousands of them. We're the only one to have used them in war. But we don't want another nation to have a few of them because we're worried they'll use them. I understand the reasons for that, but at the most basic level it's hypocritical.

These days, it is about stopping the spread of nuclear weapons so that the chance of one ever being used does nothing but decrease.

That's a nice sentiment, but if you've got to start a war to stop a nation from getting a bomb anyway, what's the point?