Letters | 27 June 2009 | The Spectator

A nuclear Iran

Sir: Should there be any doubt, following James Forsyth’s article (‘What to do about Iran and the bomb’, 20 June), that the Iranian government intends to build atomic weapons, it is answered by the forest of anti-aircraft weapons protecting their uranium enrichment plant at Nantaz.

When in the area two weeks ago I saw battery after battery of anti-aircraft weapons, manned, every kilometre in from 25 kilometres from the plant along the route they have assumed a foreign air strike would come, and more on the exit. The plant itself is protected by an impressive paraphernalia of watch-towers, wire and berms. Peaceful atomic work does not require such protection.

Nantaz symbolises the current Iranian tragedy. The ageing theocratic leadership is totally out of tune with the mass of young people — 70 per cent of the population are under 30 — who are proud of their country, respect their religion, but want to join the world, not be isolated in a pariah land. They, particularly the women, are fed up with being dictated to about how they must behave by elders with no experience of life outside Iran. They heard president Obama’s speech in Cairo. It gave them hope. None told me they see atomic weapons as the passport to that hope.

Sir Kenneth Warren
Cranbrook, Kent

Sir: James Forsyth wants both to help Iran’s modernisers and to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. He should note the US defence secretary’s recent statement that ‘Our goal is complete and verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula, and we will not accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.’ Substitute the Middle East for the Korean peninsula and Israel for North Korea, and, hey presto, you have a formula for Iran’s complete and verifiable co-operation on nuclear non-proliferation.