This post first appeared at TomDispatch.

No serious analyst believes that Iran would ever use, or even threaten to use, a nuclear weapon if it had one.

Through­out the world there is great relief and opti­mism about the nuclear deal reached in Vien­na between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five veto-hold­ing mem­bers of the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and Ger­many. Most of the world appar­ent­ly shares the assess­ment of the U.S. Arms Con­trol Asso­ci­a­tion that ​“the Joint Com­pre­hen­sive Plan of Action estab­lish­es a strong and effec­tive for­mu­la for block­ing all of the path­ways by which Iran could acquire mate­r­i­al for nuclear weapons for more than a gen­er­a­tion and a ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem to prompt­ly detect and deter pos­si­ble efforts by Iran to covert­ly pur­sue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.”

There are, how­ev­er, strik­ing excep­tions to the gen­er­al enthu­si­asm: the Unit­ed States and its clos­est region­al allies, Israel and Sau­di Ara­bia. One con­se­quence of this is that U.S. cor­po­ra­tions, much to their cha­grin, are pre­vent­ed from flock­ing to Tehran along with their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts. Promi­nent sec­tors of U.S. pow­er and opin­ion share the stand of the two region­al allies and so are in a state of vir­tu­al hys­te­ria over ​“the Iran­ian threat.” Sober com­men­tary in the Unit­ed States, pret­ty much across the spec­trum, declares that coun­try to be ​“the gravest threat to world peace.” Even sup­port­ers of the agree­ment here are wary, giv­en the excep­tion­al grav­i­ty of that threat. After all, how can we trust the Ira­ni­ans with their ter­ri­ble record of aggres­sion, vio­lence, dis­rup­tion, and deceit?

Oppo­si­tion with­in the polit­i­cal class is so strong that pub­lic opin­ion has shift­ed quick­ly from sig­nif­i­cant sup­port for the deal to an even split. Repub­li­cans are almost unan­i­mous­ly opposed to the agree­ment. The cur­rent Repub­li­can pri­maries illus­trate the pro­claimed rea­sons. Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, con­sid­ered one of the intel­lec­tu­als among the crowd­ed field of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, warns that Iran may still be able to pro­duce nuclear weapons and could some­day use one to set off an Elec­tro Mag­net­ic Pulse that ​“would take down the elec­tri­cal grid of the entire east­ern seaboard” of the Unit­ed States, killing ​“tens of mil­lions of Americans.”

The two most like­ly win­ners, for­mer Flori­da Gov­er­nor Jeb Bush and Wis­con­sin Gov­er­nor Scott Walk­er, are bat­tling over whether to bomb Iran imme­di­ate­ly after being elect­ed or after the first Cab­i­net meet­ing. The one can­di­date with some for­eign pol­i­cy expe­ri­ence, Lind­sey Gra­ham, describes the deal as ​“a death sen­tence for the state of Israel,” which will cer­tain­ly come as a sur­prise to Israeli intel­li­gence and strate­gic ana­lysts — and which Gra­ham knows to be utter non­sense, rais­ing imme­di­ate ques­tions about actu­al motives.

Keep in mind that the Repub­li­cans long ago aban­doned the pre­tense of func­tion­ing as a nor­mal con­gres­sion­al par­ty. They have, as respect­ed con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor Nor­man Orn­stein of the right-wing Amer­i­can Enter­prise Insti­tute observed, become a ​“rad­i­cal insur­gency” that scarce­ly seeks to par­tic­i­pate in nor­mal con­gres­sion­al politics.

Since the days of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan, the par­ty lead­er­ship has plunged so far into the pock­ets of the very rich and the cor­po­rate sec­tor that they can attract votes only by mobi­liz­ing parts of the pop­u­la­tion that have not pre­vi­ous­ly been an orga­nized polit­i­cal force. Among them are extrem­ist evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians, now prob­a­bly a major­i­ty of Repub­li­can vot­ers; rem­nants of the for­mer slave-hold­ing states; nativists who are ter­ri­fied that ​“they” are tak­ing our white Chris­t­ian Anglo-Sax­on coun­try away from us; and oth­ers who turn the Repub­li­can pri­maries into spec­ta­cles remote from the main­stream of mod­ern soci­ety — though not from the main­stream of the most pow­er­ful coun­try in world history.

The depar­ture from glob­al stan­dards, how­ev­er, goes far beyond the bounds of the Repub­li­can rad­i­cal insur­gency. Across the spec­trum, there is, for instance, gen­er­al agree­ment with the ​“prag­mat­ic” con­clu­sion of Gen­er­al Mar­tin Dempsey, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Vien­na deal does not ​“pre­vent the Unit­ed States from strik­ing Iran­ian facil­i­ties if offi­cials decide that it is cheat­ing on the agree­ment,” even though a uni­lat­er­al mil­i­tary strike is ​“far less like­ly” if Iran behaves.

For­mer Clin­ton and Oba­ma Mid­dle East nego­tia­tor Den­nis Ross typ­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that ​“Iran must have no doubts that if we see it mov­ing towards a weapon, that would trig­ger the use of force” even after the ter­mi­na­tion of the deal, when Iran is the­o­ret­i­cal­ly free to do what it wants. In fact, the exis­tence of a ter­mi­na­tion point 15 years hence is, he adds, ​“the great­est sin­gle prob­lem with the agree­ment.” He also sug­gests that the U.S. pro­vide Israel with spe­cial­ly out­fit­ted B‑52 bombers and bunker-bust­ing bombs to pro­tect itself before that ter­ri­fy­ing date arrives.

“ The Great­est Threat”

Oppo­nents of the nuclear deal charge that it does not go far enough. Some sup­port­ers agree, hold­ing that ​“if the Vien­na deal is to mean any­thing, the whole of the Mid­dle East must rid itself of weapons of mass destruc­tion.” The author of those words, Iran’s Min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs Javad Zarif, added that ​“Iran, in its nation­al capac­i­ty and as cur­rent chair­man of the Non-Aligned Move­ment [the gov­ern­ments of the large major­i­ty of the world’s pop­u­la­tion], is pre­pared to work with the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to achieve these goals, know­ing full well that, along the way, it will prob­a­bly run into many hur­dles raised by the skep­tics of peace and diplo­ma­cy.” Iran has signed ​“a his­toric nuclear deal,” he con­tin­ues, and now it is the turn of Israel, ​“the holdout.”

Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear pow­ers, along with India and Pak­istan, whose weapons pro­grams have been abet­ted by the Unit­ed States and that refuse to sign the Non­pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty (NPT).

Zarif was refer­ring to the reg­u­lar five-year NPT review con­fer­ence, which end­ed in fail­ure in April when the U.S. (joined by Cana­da and Great Britain) once again blocked efforts to move toward a weapons-of-mass-destruc­tion-free zone in the Mid­dle East. Such efforts have been led by Egypt and oth­er Arab states for 20 years. As Jayan­tha Dhana­pala and Ser­gio Duarte, lead­ing fig­ures in the pro­mo­tion of such efforts at the NPT and oth­er U.N. agen­cies, observe in ​“Is There a Future for the NPT?,” an arti­cle in the jour­nal of the Arms Con­trol Asso­ci­a­tion: ​“The suc­cess­ful adop­tion in 1995 of the res­o­lu­tion on the estab­lish­ment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruc­tion (WMD) in the Mid­dle East was the main ele­ment of a pack­age that per­mit­ted the indef­i­nite exten­sion of the NPT.” The NPT, in turn, is the most impor­tant arms con­trol treaty of all. If it were adhered to, it could end the scourge of nuclear weapons.

Repeat­ed­ly, imple­men­ta­tion of the res­o­lu­tion has been blocked by the U.S., most recent­ly by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma in 2010 and again in 2015, as Dhana­pala and Duarte point out, ​“on behalf of a state that is not a par­ty to the NPT and is wide­ly believed to be the only one in the region pos­sess­ing nuclear weapons” — a polite and under­stat­ed ref­er­ence to Israel. This fail­ure, they hope, ​“will not be the coup de grâce to the two long­stand­ing NPT objec­tives of accel­er­at­ed progress on nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment and estab­lish­ing a Mid­dle East­ern WMD-free zone.”

A nuclear-weapons-free Mid­dle East would be a straight­for­ward way to address what­ev­er threat Iran alleged­ly pos­es, but a great deal more is at stake in Washington’s con­tin­u­ing sab­o­tage of the effort in order to pro­tect its Israeli client. After all, this is not the only case in which oppor­tu­ni­ties to end the alleged Iran­ian threat have been under­mined by Wash­ing­ton, rais­ing fur­ther ques­tions about just what is actu­al­ly at stake.

In con­sid­er­ing this mat­ter, it is instruc­tive to exam­ine both the unspo­ken assump­tions in the sit­u­a­tion and the ques­tions that are rarely asked. Let us con­sid­er a few of these assump­tions, begin­ning with the most seri­ous: that Iran is the gravest threat to world peace.

In the U.S., it is a vir­tu­al cliché among high offi­cials and com­men­ta­tors that Iran wins that grim prize. There is also a world out­side the U.S. and although its views are not report­ed in the main­stream here, per­haps they are of some inter­est. Accord­ing to the lead­ing west­ern polling agen­cies (WIN/​Gallup Inter­na­tion­al), the prize for ​“great­est threat” is won by the Unit­ed States. The rest of the world regards it as the gravest threat to world peace by a large mar­gin. In sec­ond place, far below, is Pak­istan, its rank­ing prob­a­bly inflat­ed by the Indi­an vote. Iran is ranked below those two, along with Chi­na, Israel, North Korea, and Afghanistan.

“ The World’s Lead­ing Sup­port­er of Terrorism”

Turn­ing to the next obvi­ous ques­tion, what in fact is the Iran­ian threat? Why, for exam­ple, are Israel and Sau­di Ara­bia trem­bling in fear over that coun­try? What­ev­er the threat is, it can hard­ly be mil­i­tary. Years ago, U.S. intel­li­gence informed Con­gress that Iran has very low mil­i­tary expen­di­tures by the stan­dards of the region and that its strate­gic doc­trines are defen­sive — designed, that is, to deter aggres­sion. The U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty has also report­ed that it has no evi­dence Iran is pur­su­ing an actu­al nuclear weapons pro­gram and that ​“Iran’s nuclear pro­gram and its will­ing­ness to keep open the pos­si­bil­i­ty of devel­op­ing nuclear weapons is a cen­tral part of its deter­rent strategy.”

The author­i­ta­tive SIPRI review of glob­al arma­ments ranks the U.S., as usu­al, way in the lead in mil­i­tary expen­di­tures. Chi­na comes in sec­ond with about one-third of U.S. expen­di­tures. Far below are Rus­sia and Sau­di Ara­bia, which are nonethe­less well above any west­ern Euro­pean state. Iran is scarce­ly men­tioned. Full details are pro­vid­ed in an April report from the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS), which finds ​“a con­clu­sive case that the Arab Gulf states have… an over­whelm­ing advan­tage of Iran in both mil­i­tary spend­ing and access to mod­ern arms.”

Iran’s mil­i­tary spend­ing, for instance, is a frac­tion of Sau­di Arabia’s and far below even the spend­ing of the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates (UAE). Alto­geth­er, the Gulf Coop­er­a­tion Coun­cil states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Sau­di Ara­bia, and the UAE—out­spend Iran on arms by a fac­tor of eight, an imbal­ance that goes back decades. The CSIS report adds: ​“The Arab Gulf states have acquired and are acquir­ing some of the most advanced and effec­tive weapons in the world [while] Iran has essen­tial­ly been forced to live in the past, often rely­ing on sys­tems orig­i­nal­ly deliv­ered at the time of the Shah.” In oth­er words, they are vir­tu­al­ly obso­lete. When it comes to Israel, of course, the imbal­ance is even greater. Pos­sess­ing the most advanced U.S. weapon­ry and a vir­tu­al off­shore mil­i­tary base for the glob­al super­pow­er, it also has a huge stock of nuclear weapons.

To be sure, Israel faces the ​“exis­ten­tial threat” of Iran­ian pro­nounce­ments: Supreme Leader Khamenei and for­mer pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad famous­ly threat­ened it with destruc­tion. Except that they didn’t—and if they had, it would be of lit­tle moment. Ahmadine­jad, for instance, pre­dict­ed that ​“under God’s grace [the Zion­ist régime] will be wiped off the map.” In oth­er words, he hoped that régime change would some­day take place. Even that falls far short of the direct calls in both Wash­ing­ton and Tel Aviv for régime change in Iran, not to speak of the actions tak­en to imple­ment régime change. These, of course, go back to the actu­al ​“régime change” of 1953, when the U.S. and Britain orga­nized a mil­i­tary coup to over­throw Iran’s par­lia­men­tary gov­ern­ment and install the dic­ta­tor­ship of the Shah, who pro­ceed­ed to amass one of the worst human rights records on the planet.

These crimes were cer­tain­ly known to read­ers of the reports of Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al and oth­er human rights orga­ni­za­tions, but not to read­ers of the U.S. press, which has devot­ed plen­ty of space to Iran­ian human rights vio­la­tions — but only since 1979 when the Shah’s régime was over­thrown. (To check the facts on this, read The U.S. Press and Iran, a care­ful­ly doc­u­ment­ed study by Man­sour Farhang and William Dorman.)

None of this is a depar­ture from the norm. The Unit­ed States, as is well known, holds the world cham­pi­onship title in régime change and Israel is no lag­gard either. The most destruc­tive of its inva­sions of Lebanon in 1982 was explic­it­ly aimed at régime change, as well as at secur­ing its hold on the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries. The pre­texts offered were thin indeed and col­lapsed at once. That, too, is not unusu­al and pret­ty much inde­pen­dent of the nature of the soci­ety — from the laments in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence about the ​“mer­ci­less Indi­an sav­ages” to Hitler’s defense of Ger­many from the ​“wild ter­ror” of the Poles.

No seri­ous ana­lyst believes that Iran would ever use, or even threat­en to use, a nuclear weapon if it had one, and so face instant destruc­tion. There is, how­ev­er, real con­cern that a nuclear weapon might fall into jiha­di hands — not thanks to Iran, but via U.S. ally Pak­istan. In the jour­nal of the Roy­al Insti­tute of Inter­na­tion­al Affairs, two lead­ing Pak­istani nuclear sci­en­tists, Per­vez Hoodb­hoy and Zia Mian, write that increas­ing fears of ​“mil­i­tants seiz­ing nuclear weapons or mate­ri­als and unleash­ing nuclear ter­ror­ism [have led to]… the cre­ation of a ded­i­cat­ed force of over 20,000 troops to guard nuclear facil­i­ties. There is no rea­son to assume, how­ev­er, that this force would be immune to the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with the units guard­ing reg­u­lar mil­i­tary facil­i­ties,” which have fre­quent­ly suf­fered attacks with ​“insid­er help.” In brief, the prob­lem is real, just dis­placed to Iran thanks to fan­tasies con­coct­ed for oth­er reasons.

Oth­er con­cerns about the Iran­ian threat include its role as ​“the world’s lead­ing sup­port­er of ter­ror­ism,” which pri­mar­i­ly refers to its sup­port for Hezbol­lah and Hamas. Both of those move­ments emerged in resis­tance to U.S.-backed Israeli vio­lence and aggres­sion, which vast­ly exceeds any­thing attrib­uted to these vil­lains, let alone the nor­mal prac­tice of the hege­mon­ic pow­er whose glob­al drone assas­si­na­tion cam­paign alone dom­i­nates (and helps to fos­ter) inter­na­tion­al terrorism.

Those two vil­lain­ous Iran­ian clients also share the crime of win­ning the pop­u­lar vote in the only free elec­tions in the Arab world. Hezbol­lah is guilty of the even more heinous crime of com­pelling Israel to with­draw from its occu­pa­tion of south­ern Lebanon, which took place in vio­la­tion of U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil orders dat­ing back decades and involved an ille­gal régime of ter­ror and some­times extreme vio­lence. What­ev­er one thinks of Hezbol­lah, Hamas, or oth­er ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Iran­ian sup­port, Iran hard­ly ranks high in sup­port of ter­ror worldwide.

“ Fuel­ing Instability”

Anoth­er con­cern, voiced at the U.N. by U.S. Ambas­sador Saman­tha Pow­er, is the ​“insta­bil­i­ty that Iran fuels beyond its nuclear pro­gram.” The U.S. will con­tin­ue to scru­ti­nize this mis­be­hav­ior, she declared. In that, she echoed the assur­ance Defense Sec­re­tary Ash­ton Carter offered while stand­ing on Israel’s north­ern bor­der that ​“we will con­tin­ue to help Israel counter Iran’s malign influ­ence” in sup­port­ing Hezbol­lah, and that the U.S. reserves the right to use mil­i­tary force against Iran as it deems appropriate.

The way Iran ​“fuels insta­bil­i­ty” can be seen par­tic­u­lar­ly dra­mat­i­cal­ly in Iraq where, among oth­er crimes, it alone at once came to the aid of Kurds defend­ing them­selves from the inva­sion of Islam­ic State mil­i­tants, even as it is build­ing a $2.5 bil­lion pow­er plant in the south­ern port city of Bas­ra to try to bring elec­tri­cal pow­er back to the lev­el reached before the 2003 inva­sion. Ambas­sador Power’s usage is, how­ev­er, stan­dard: Thanks to that inva­sion, hun­dreds of thou­sands were killed and mil­lions of refugees gen­er­at­ed, bar­barous acts of tor­ture were com­mit­ted – Iraqis have com­pared the destruc­tion to the Mon­gol inva­sion of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry – leav­ing Iraq the unhap­pi­est coun­try in the world accord­ing to WIN/​Gallup polls. Mean­while, sec­tar­i­an con­flict was ignit­ed, tear­ing the region to shreds and lay­ing the basis for the cre­ation of the mon­stros­i­ty that is ISIS. And all of that is called ​“sta­bi­liza­tion.”

Only Iran’s shame­ful actions, how­ev­er, ​“fuel insta­bil­i­ty.” The stan­dard usage some­times reach­es lev­els that are almost sur­re­al, as when lib­er­al com­men­ta­tor James Chace, for­mer edi­tor of For­eign Affairs, explained that the U.S. sought to ​“desta­bi­lize a freely elect­ed Marx­ist gov­ern­ment in Chile” because ​“we were deter­mined to seek sta­bil­i­ty” under the Pinochet dictatorship.

Oth­ers are out­raged that Wash­ing­ton should nego­ti­ate at all with a ​“con­temptible” régime like Iran’s with its hor­ri­fy­ing human rights record and urge instead that we pur­sue ​“an Amer­i­can-spon­sored alliance between Israel and the Sun­ni states.” So writes Leon Wieselti­er, con­tribut­ing edi­tor to the ven­er­a­ble lib­er­al jour­nal the Atlantic, who can bare­ly con­ceal his vis­cer­al hatred for all things Iran­ian. With a straight face, this respect­ed lib­er­al intel­lec­tu­al rec­om­mends that Sau­di Ara­bia, which makes Iran look like a vir­tu­al par­adise, and Israel, with its vicious crimes in Gaza and else­where, should ally to teach that coun­try good behav­ior. Per­haps the rec­om­men­da­tion is not entire­ly unrea­son­able when we con­sid­er the human rights records of the regimes the U.S. has imposed and sup­port­ed through­out the world.

Though the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment is no doubt a threat to its own peo­ple, it regret­tably breaks no records in this regard, not descend­ing to the lev­el of favored U.S. allies. That, how­ev­er, can­not be the con­cern of Wash­ing­ton, and sure­ly not Tel Aviv or Riyadh.

It might also be use­ful to recall — sure­ly Ira­ni­ans do — that not a day has passed since 1953 in which the U.S. was not harm­ing Ira­ni­ans. After all, as soon as they over­threw the hat­ed U.S.-imposed régime of the Shah in 1979, Wash­ing­ton put its sup­port behind Iraqi leader Sad­dam Hus­sein, who would, in 1980, launch a mur­der­ous assault on their coun­try. Pres­i­dent Rea­gan went so far as to deny Saddam’s major crime, his chem­i­cal war­fare assault on Iraq’s Kur­dish pop­u­la­tion, which he blamed on Iran instead. When Sad­dam was tried for crimes under U.S. aus­pices, that hor­ren­dous crime, as well as oth­ers in which the U.S. was com­plic­it, was care­ful­ly exclud­ed from the charges, which were restrict­ed to one of his minor crimes, the mur­der of 148 Shi’ites in 1982, a foot­note to his grue­some record.

Sad­dam was such a val­ued friend of Wash­ing­ton that he was even grant­ed a priv­i­lege oth­er­wise accord­ed only to Israel. In 1987, his forces were allowed to attack a U.S. naval ves­sel, the USS Stark, with impuni­ty, killing 37 crew­men. (Israel had act­ed sim­i­lar­ly in its 1967 attack on the USS Lib­er­ty.) Iran pret­ty much con­ced­ed defeat short­ly after, when the U.S. launched Oper­a­tion Pray­ing Man­tis against Iran­ian ships and oil plat­forms in Iran­ian ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters. That oper­a­tion cul­mi­nat­ed when the USS Vin­cennes, under no cred­i­ble threat, shot down an Iran­ian civil­ian air­lin­er in Iran­ian air­space, with 290 killed – and the sub­se­quent grant­i­ng of a Legion of Mer­it award to the com­man­der of the Vin­cennes for ​“excep­tion­al­ly mer­i­to­ri­ous con­duct” and for main­tain­ing a ​“calm and pro­fes­sion­al atmos­phere” dur­ing the peri­od when the attack on the air­lin­er took place. Com­ments philoso­pher Thill Raghu, ​“We can only stand in awe of such dis­play of Amer­i­can exceptionalism!”

After the war end­ed, the U.S. con­tin­ued to sup­port Sad­dam Hus­sein, Iran’s pri­ma­ry ene­my. Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush even invit­ed Iraqi nuclear engi­neers to the U.S. for advanced train­ing in weapons pro­duc­tion, an extreme­ly seri­ous threat to Iran. Sanc­tions against that coun­try were inten­si­fied, includ­ing against for­eign firms deal­ing with it, and actions were ini­ti­at­ed to bar it from the inter­na­tion­al finan­cial system.

In recent years the hos­til­i­ty has extend­ed to sab­o­tage, the mur­der of nuclear sci­en­tists (pre­sum­ably by Israel), and cyber­war, open­ly pro­claimed with pride. The Pen­ta­gon regards cyber­war as an act of war, jus­ti­fy­ing a mil­i­tary response, as does NATO, which affirmed in Sep­tem­ber 2014 that cyber attacks may trig­ger the col­lec­tive defense oblig­a­tions of the NATO pow­ers — when we are the tar­get that is, not the perpetrators.

“ The Prime Rogue State”

It is only fair to add that there have been breaks in this pat­tern. Pres­i­dent George W. Bush, for exam­ple, offered sev­er­al sig­nif­i­cant gifts to Iran by destroy­ing its major ene­mies, Sad­dam Hus­sein and the Tal­iban. He even placed Iran’s Iraqi ene­my under its influ­ence after the U.S. defeat, which was so severe that Wash­ing­ton had to aban­don its offi­cial­ly declared goals of estab­lish­ing per­ma­nent mil­i­tary bases (“endur­ing camps”) and ensur­ing that U.S. cor­po­ra­tions would have priv­i­leged access to Iraq’s vast oil resources.

Do Iran­ian lead­ers intend to devel­op nuclear weapons today? We can decide for our­selves how cred­i­ble their denials are, but that they had such inten­tions in the past is beyond ques­tion. After all, it was assert­ed open­ly on the high­est author­i­ty and for­eign jour­nal­ists were informed that Iran would devel­op nuclear weapons ​“cer­tain­ly, and soon­er than one thinks.” The father of Iran’s nuclear ener­gy pro­gram and for­mer head of Iran’s Atom­ic Ener­gy Orga­ni­za­tion was con­fi­dent that the leadership’s plan ​“was to build a nuclear bomb.” The CIA also report­ed that it had ​“no doubt” Iran would devel­op nuclear weapons if neigh­bor­ing coun­tries did (as they have).

All of this was, of course, under the Shah, the ​“high­est author­i­ty” just quot­ed and at a time when top U.S. offi­cials — Dick Cheney, Don­ald Rums­feld, and Hen­ry Kissinger, among oth­ers — were urg­ing him to pro­ceed with his nuclear pro­grams and pres­sur­ing uni­ver­si­ties to accom­mo­date these efforts. Under such pres­sures, my own uni­ver­si­ty, MIT, made a deal with the Shah to admit Iran­ian stu­dents to the nuclear engi­neer­ing pro­gram in return for grants he offered and over the strong objec­tions of the stu­dent body, but with com­pa­ra­bly strong fac­ul­ty sup­port (in a meet­ing that old­er fac­ul­ty will doubt­less remem­ber well).

Asked lat­er why he sup­port­ed such pro­grams under the Shah but opposed them more recent­ly, Kissinger respond­ed hon­est­ly that Iran was an ally then.

Putting aside absur­di­ties, what is the real threat of Iran that inspires such fear and fury? A nat­ur­al place to turn for an answer is, again, U.S. intel­li­gence. Recall its analy­sis that Iran pos­es no mil­i­tary threat, that its strate­gic doc­trines are defen­sive, and that its nuclear pro­grams (with no effort to pro­duce bombs, as far as can be deter­mined) are ​“a cen­tral part of its deter­rent strategy.”

Who, then, would be con­cerned by an Iran­ian deter­rent? The answer is plain: the rogue states that ram­page in the region and do not want to tol­er­ate any imped­i­ment to their reliance on aggres­sion and vio­lence. In the lead in this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Sau­di Ara­bia try­ing its best to join the club with its inva­sion of Bahrain (to sup­port the crush­ing of a reform move­ment there) and now its mur­der­ous assault on Yemen, accel­er­at­ing a grow­ing human­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe in that country.

For the Unit­ed States, the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is famil­iar. Fif­teen years ago, the promi­nent polit­i­cal ana­lyst Samuel Hunt­ing­ton, pro­fes­sor of the sci­ence of gov­ern­ment at Har­vard, warned in the estab­lish­ment jour­nal For­eign Affairs that for much of the world the U.S. was ​“becom­ing the rogue super­pow­er… the sin­gle great­est exter­nal threat to their soci­eties.” Short­ly after, his words were echoed by Robert Jervis, the pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Asso­ci­a­tion: ​“In the eyes of much of the world, in fact, the prime rogue state today is the Unit­ed States.” As we have seen, glob­al opin­ion sup­ports this judg­ment by a sub­stan­tial margin.

Fur­ther­more, the man­tle is worn with pride. That is the clear mean­ing of the insis­tence of the polit­i­cal class that the U.S. reserves the right to resort to force if it uni­lat­er­al­ly deter­mines that Iran is vio­lat­ing some com­mit­ment. This pol­i­cy is of long stand­ing, espe­cial­ly for lib­er­al Democ­rats, and by no means restrict­ed to Iran. The Clin­ton Doc­trine, for instance, con­firmed that the U.S. was enti­tled to resort to the ​“uni­lat­er­al use of mil­i­tary pow­er” even to ensure ​“unin­hib­it­ed access to key mar­kets, ener­gy sup­plies, and strate­gic resources,” let alone alleged ​“secu­ri­ty” or ​“human­i­tar­i­an” con­cerns. Adher­ence to var­i­ous ver­sions of this doc­trine has been well con­firmed in prac­tice, as need hard­ly be dis­cussed among peo­ple will­ing to look at the facts of cur­rent history.

These are among the crit­i­cal mat­ters that should be the focus of atten­tion in ana­lyz­ing the nuclear deal at Vien­na, whether it stands or is sab­o­taged by Con­gress, as it may well be.