SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: There is an American think tank for every mystery that isn't a mystery. Why does Iran have a nuclear program?

https://x.com/nxt888/status/2071276033907761446

There is an American think tank for every mystery that isn't a mystery.

Why does Iran have a nuclear program? Twelve scholars, four reports, two conferences, one documentary on PBS.

Answer available without a think tank:

The United States overthrew their government in 1953, backed the Shah's secret police for more than two decades, supported Saddam Hussein when he used chemical weapons against Iranians in the 1980s, has maintained crushing economic sanctions for nearly half a century.

And two sovereign states that abandoned or dismantled their nuclear programs, Iraq and Libya, were subsequently invaded or bombed into chaos.

That's not analysis. That's a sequence of events that any Iranian government, of any ideology, would respond to in roughly the same way.

But the think tank exists because the answer cannot be we gave them every rational reason to want a deterrent.

That answer has consequences.

That answer implies accountability.

That answer walks five feet into common sense and common sense leads somewhere nobody in that building wants to go.

So instead:

Scholars. Reports. Conferences. Documentaries.

The mystery is maintained.

The machinery keeps running.

The budget gets renewed.