Jacques Chirac's Irrationality

Jacques Chirac shows the world just how irrational and incompetent he is.

PARIS, Jan. 31 — President Jacques Chirac said this week that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran.

The remarks, made in an interview on Monday with The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune and Le Nouvel Observateur, a weekly magazine, were vastly different from stated French policy and what Mr. Chirac has often said.

Chirac, before the supposed retraction and extension of his comments, believes that the Iranians are going to behave like all other countries in the world. He forgets or ignores the key difference: religious ideology.

The mullahs in charge, and specifically Ahmadinejad, seek to initiate the coming of the Mahdi - an apocalypse of epic proportions to fulfill his religious ideology. Chirac doesn't take this into account at all.

It doesn't matter that Iran would cease to exist if they launch their nukes at Israel. They'd be fulfilling their religious obligation/delusional visions. That means that rational actors, like France or the West at large, cannot assume that Iran would act like other rational actors. Chirac is irrationally assuming that Iran would act like any other nation in the same position, and that's a mistake that would have epic consequences.

Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons not only to annihilate Israel, which is already one of its stated goals, but to fulfill a religious interpretation that would see the coming of the 12th Mahdi. You cannot deter someone from their religious belief simply by buying them off. All you succeed in doing is showing your weakness in the face of the threat.

This also shows that France cannot be trusted with national security matters and will continue to undermine efforts to hem in Iran's nuclear ambitions through international organizations like the UN or the IAEA, just as it did during the runup to the Iraq war, when it ran interference for Saddam and the Iraqis.

His off the cuff comments show that Chirac does not understand that Iran is fundamentally different because Iran operates as a theocracy. The theological nature of Iran puts nuclear weapons in the hands of a nation will to use them to spark the conflict necessary and central to its theology. Deterrence does not work because threats of mutually assured destruction are actually welcomed, not a threat that keeps the parties from engaging in devastating conflict.