Quote Originally Posted by Joemeek
Look at the bigger picture.If you think back to the cold war when America and Russia were producing thousands of nuclear weapons, being that nuclear weapons were never fired, a main part in this was that there was a "return address" if anyone launched first and knowing they would be wiped out also.

With terrorists now, we don't have that return address and this capability getting into their hands would be catastrophic and we know if they got it, they would use it, no question. Therefore shutting these kind of people down is a must.

If you remember, Iraq in 1987 tested several one ton radiological weapons designed to shower radioactive materials on target populations to induce radiation sickness and slow painful deaths.

A sophisticated terrorist group would be capable of designing and building a workable nuclear bomb from stolen plutonium or highly enriched uranium, with potential yields in the kiloton range. This risk must be taken seriously, particularly in light of documented attempts by al Qaeda to acquire nuclear material and nuclear-weapon design information.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the uncertain status of nuclear weapons, fissile materials and nuclear scientists in Russia and other former Soviet republics are widely regarded as posing perhaps the most immediate threat of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism. Despite significant assistance from the United States over the last ten years, many of Russias nuclear facilities seem poorly secured, and there is still no comprehensive, verifiable system of nuclear materials accountancy. No one even knows for certain how much nuclear weapons material the Soviet Union produced. With confirmed incidents of Russian-origin fissile materials turning up for sale on the black market, this danger is more than hypothetical.

Or maybe we should have just left them alone, afterall, if we never bothered them, they would leave us alone...right ?
Mutual assured destruction would work with Iran or any other Muslim country just like it work with the Russians and other nuclear powers. They would not give terrorists control of nukes anymore than the US or Russia would. The terrorists are not part of their government nor have allegiance to it and are often very hostile to middle eastern governments and want to overthrow many of these middle eastern governments. These terrorists could use nukes against the government that gave it to them or use it for blackmail or get use US recognition and support to overthrow the government. I haven't heard about Iraq testing radialogical weapons in 1987 but the US government didn't seem to be concerned if it was true because we were busy supporting Saddam in the Iran-Iraq war as well as when he was gassing the Kurds and Iranians.