Eye on IranFred Kaplan takes readers' questions about future relations and remaining nuclear potential.

Slate columnist Fred Kaplan was online at Washingtonpost.com on Dec. 6, 2007, to chat with readers about Iran's long-halted nuclear-weapons program and what Bush should do next. An unedited transcript of the chat follows.

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Fred Kaplan: This is a good point. The NIE does address it. The document says, "We continue to assess with low confidence that Iran probably has imported at least some weapons-usable fissile material, but still judge with moderate-to-high confiden it has not obtained enough for a nuclear weapon." Not exactly airtight, but there it is.

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Anonymous: If Iran would ever attack any nation with a nuclear bomb, Iran as a nation would cease to exist. The true leaders of Iran aren't living in caves eating gruel -- they are wealthy, live in palacial estates and have families and children. They don't want to lose what they have. This warmongering and jingoism from the Bush administration is an embarresment to this country and does only harm.

Fred Kaplan: Good point, but there are other issues as well. If Iran assembled a nuclear arsenal, it is fairly certain that other nations in the region - Egypt and Saudi Arabia, in particular - would do so as well, if just for deterrence. The United States and (in the day) the Soviet Union spent decades developing secure "permissive action links" (coded locks) on their nuclear weapons to ensure that only the proper authorities could order their use. (Even so, there were many years when loopholes existed.) Who knows how tightly these new nuclear powers could control their weapons, especially given the volatile nature of their societies? Even if control could be ensured, accidents do happen, whether due to misperceptions or miscalculations. The chances of a "nuclear exchange" in the Middle East would be considerable. There's another element in all this as well. If Iran had nuclear weapons, it automatically would have a new instrument of leverage. Think of it this way: If Saddam Hussein had had nukes when he invaded Kuwait in 1990, it would have been much harder for George H.W. Bush and Jim Baker to put together the international coalition to kick the invasion forces out. Many countries may have been reluctant to join the coalition, fearing the nuclear shadow.

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Oslo, Norway: How much of the Bush administration's strategic planning, exemplified by documents such as the 2006 QDR and the 2002/2006 National Security Strategies, will carry over into future administrations? I'm thinking mainly about aspects such as the overriding focus on counterterrorism and asymmetric warfare, an altered global posture directed towards an "arc of instability" with a lily-pad base structure, and heavy investments in defensive systems such as ballistic missile defense. Are these fundamental changes in U.S. strategic planning, or a reflection of Bush/neocon thinking that soon will be out of date?

Fred Kaplan: There are continuities between administrations, but the Bush initiatives that you're talking about were explicit departures from past practices (in the case of the QDR and the NSS) or vast buildups from previous programs (in the case of missile defense, which went from a very well-funded R&D program to a procurement program). I see no evidence that a Democratic president would cut back missile defense to previous levels, even though the evidence suggests the program is not nearly as effective as its proponents had hoped. But the doctrines are almost certain to be rewritten.

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The new superpower?: If everyone disarms, it will be with intrusive inspection regimes that probably will not catch every bomb. But how does one or two nuclear bombs make a country into a superpower?

Fred Kaplan: OK, "superpower" might be going too far. But if Country X has a pocketful of nukes, and the rest of the world has none, X can exert tremendous leverage through blackmail and intimidation.

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Freising, Germany: The interesting aspect of Iran's nuclear bomb program is that Iran has never admitted to having one. Iran reminds me somewhat of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, whose stubbornness and indignant hesitancy in freely divulging all information pertaining to their nuclear bomb program actually added to the suspicion that they actually had one.

Muammar Gaddafi in Libya doesn't seem to regret having given up his nuclear bomb aspirations, but he had to open up all his books and laboratories to Western inspectors. This seems to be what Hussein tried to delay or prevent (perhaps to present a stronger image to his regional foes) and what the mullahs in Iran aren't too keen on either. The question is, if Iran doesn't own up to having wanted the bomb in the past, are they still harboring thoughts of starting it up in the future?

Fred Kaplan: Good point. Gaddafi doesn't seem to regret giving up his nuclear aspirations, in part because his program was pretty much a bust. (He not only opened up his books and labs, he surrendered all the hardware.) The NIE states clearly that Tehran might resume its program in the future; the analysts (admirably) admit they don't know what Tehran's long-term intentions are.

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Kingston, Ontario: Mr Kaplan: Mr Bush was using familiar language today (Wednesday) when he said that despite the cessation of the nuclear weapons program "Iran is a threat." This is the formula he still uses about Iraq. Despite all the false information about WMDs, etc., he still judges that "Iraq was a threat," and therefore the invasion was justified.

It's a smart way of changing the subject from the objective evidence to Mr Bush's subjective feelings, which are obviously less open to scrutiny. Should we fear that history is about to repeat itself? After all, they may calculate that a Middle East war will help them retain the White House in 2008, as it did in 2004. Thanks.

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