The core argument that critics of deterrence make is that Iran is undeterrable — because Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and other leaders are fanatics who believe in religious apocalypse. Nuclear war could suit their purposes, this argument goes, even if Iran used the bomb and the U.S. retaliated.
Thomas Fingar, former deputy director of national intelligence and now a scholar at Stanford University, disagrees.
“I don’t think this is a suicidal regime. I don’t dismiss out of hand at all the idea that they could be deterred,” he says.
The picture of Iran as a suicidal regime doesn’t work for Muhammad Sahimi either. Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California who writes for the Web site Tehran Bureau, is a longtime critic of Iran’s conservative government.
“They know that if they, for example, attack Israel, the Israelis and the United States would have the capability to completely destroy Iran and in the process completely destroy the regime,” he says.
