The debate on whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons draws from these arguments. Republican candidate and former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani argued that “the reality is the use of military force against Iran would be very dangerous. . . . It would be very provocative. The only thing worse would be Iran being a nuclear power. It’s the worst nightmare of the Cold War, isn’t it? The nuclear weapons in the hands of an irrational person, an irrational force. Ahmadinejad is clearly irrational.” These lines of demarcation are familiar: “irrational” Iran and the “rational” West. Little discussion is devoted to why Iran, as a rational political actor, might want to acquire nuclear weapons; it is, after all, surrounded by nuclear powers such as India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and Israel, and by US bases in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, any of which might harbor nuclear weapons.

XREF: Connects to security dilemma theory and nuclear proliferation debates, where states seek weapons for security rather than irrational aggression.

Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politi…, loc. 184