Iran doesn't want to go out in an atomic fireball.
Daniel Larison highlights this from Matt Duss:
In a 2009 article for the Brown Journal of World Affairs, national security analyst Andrew Grotto probed the question â??Is Iran a Martyr State?â? and found that such claims are unsupported by anything like evidence, but rather have achieved the status of conventional wisdom simply by repetition.â?The martyr state view rests on bold, even radical claims about Iranâ??s goals and behavior that defy conventional expectations of statesâ?? actions,â? wrote Grotto, â??but no government in recorded history has willfully pursued policies it knows will proximately cause its own destruction.â?â??Given the novelty of the martyr state argument,â? Grotto continued, â??and how unequivocally its proponents present it, one would expect to encounter an avalanche of credible evidence. Yet that is not the case.â? Finding both that â??references are scarce in this line of writings, and certain references are cited with striking regularity,â? Grotto determined that the â??martyr stateâ? view essentially rests upon a few neoconservative op-eds and a report by a right-wing Israeli think tank, whose claims have been bounced endlessly around the internet.
The other thing to point out is that the supposedly deranged, fanatical and undeterrable leaders of Iran have been ruling the country for 30 years -- more than enough time to do any number of stupid things to court their own destruction and usher in the end times we're told they're waiting for. They don't appear overly eager to end it all in an atomic fireball.
(AP Photo)
