Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Iranian Issues

Question Numero Uno: What evidence is there for a nuclear program in Iran? (Clarification: nuclear *weapons* program)

Iran already has a nuclear program, which the government claims they are using solely for energy purposes. Many major western powers are trying to prevent Iran from gaining the power that comes with going nuclear.
A popular cleric in Iran claimed that Iran already had nuclear weapons, but I do not think that one man who speaks contrarily to everything his government says is likely to be entirely right. However, I do not think he is entirely wrong, either. If Iran already has nuclear power, there is very little doubt in my mind that they soon will or already to have nuclear weapons. This is mainly based on the nature of nuclear explosions: they are very powerful, and therefore can be tricky to contain and harvest usable energy from. It is much easier to make a big explosion than to contain one: the atomic bomb was created before nuclear energy was used as power.

Question Two:
How much of Iran actually gets internet and cellphone coverage? (I was interested because the article mentioned these two resources as methods of spreading the truth)

Iran has far less internet coverage than the US, with 10.8% of their population online as opposed to 68.6% in the United States. It is very interesting how even though the internet is not yet a part of every day life in Iran like it is in America, it still holds enough power to alter the course an entire country takes by making the suffering of a people known to the rest of the world.
According to this map (which does say it may not be correct, so don;t read too much into it), Iran has somewhere between 100,001 and 1,000,000 mobile cellphones in use. America is in the 'over 1,000,000' category, which is unsurprising. Iran, which has around 72 million people, therefore has at most 1.4% of its population using cell phones. AS with the internet, this is a relatively small number, yet it was still able to make a significant difference.

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