There's no moral right to make people fulfill their legal obligations?
No - unless those obligations are moral in themselves, in which case the moral right exists whether or not their obligations are legal ones. Unjust laws are fairly common - and there's no moral right to make people fulfil obligations that unjust law imposes upon them.
It
is a two-way street. Iran has gotten plenty of help developing its civilian nuclear program. Mostly from Russia and Western Europe, but that satisfies the treaty. The NPT doesn't require every single nuclear-weapons state to help every single non-nuclear-weapons state.
The cancellation of the deal brokered by the Obama administration represents a breach of that treaty by the USA.
You say that as though the NPT depends on the Obama deal. The NPT is a treaty commitment to the entire world, minus the half-dozen-odd countries that haven't signed on. It doesn't go away just because two member countries have a falling out.
True; But equally it is not for a single nation that has fallen out with another signatory to enforce.
If the US has a problem with Iranian compliance (or non-compliance) with the NPT, that justifies a complaint to the UN; perhaps even a proposal in the UN to take military action. But it doesn't justify unilateral military action by the US against Iran.
In any event, the Obama deal only existed in the first place because Iran had already breached the NPT.
everyone in the world has a moral right to restrict ownership of nuclear weapons by gangs of criminals.
Perhaps - but they don't have the right to military action on the basis of suspicion alone (and bear in mind that Iran is talking about low enrichment; They are not (yet) making weapons grade material, nor are they likely to be able to do so in the short to medium term. If stopping gangs of criminals from having nukes is your thing, there are several such gangs who should be ahead of Iran's government on your list. The DPRK is one; China is probably another; And Pakistan too. All are actually in possession of nukes, and none have governments that are noticeably more legitimate than Iran's.
That's a genuine moral right - but not a point of difference between the USA and Iran. Hence my charge of hypocrisy.
What's your point? Hey, you want to accuse the U.S. government of hypocrisy, knock yourself out. If you ever come across a government that isn't hypocritical, let the world know miracles are real. And if you want to argue that our government is a criminal gang too and others have a moral right to stop the U.S. from having nuclear weapons, I won't dispute it. But those claims hardly support your contention. What, does being a hypocrite and/or a criminal mean you lose the right to stop other criminals from their wrongdoing? What kind of morality is that?
Theocratic [bad places] with illegitimate governments in power through electoral manipulation should not have nuclear weapons. But the US does have them, nevertheless.
... and has the moral right to restrict ownership of nuclear weapons by Iran, nevertheless.
I am unconvinced. It seems to me that nuclear armed diplomacy is polite diplomacy. People tend not to engage in serious military conflicts against nuclear armed nations. Even India and Pakistan have been keeping their skirmishes in Kashmir down to a dull roar since they obtained nukes.
The Iranian regime is far from being ideal - or even from being tolerable. But they're also far from the worst - even amongst the short list of those nations with nuclear weapons or the clear intention to obtain them.
There may, at some point, be an action by Iran that justifies a US military strike, or even outright war. But their pursuit of nuclear weapons isn't it. And nor is their shooting down of an unmanned drone.
If war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means, then the spat between the US and Iran is still firmly in the diplomatic phase, and to jump straight to war, without exhausting the diplomatic option, on the basis of a nuclear weapons program that is at least as justified as that of Israel, and rather more so than that of North Korea; or on the basis of the destruction of a fairly expensive bit of technology, is immoral.
The US should ask Iran to pay for the drone (and IMO the smart response from Iran would be to pay in crude oil). Then they should attempt to reinstate the deal done by Obama, which was effectively hobbling the Iranian nuclear program, by making the pursuit of a weapon by Iran both more costly, and less urgent.
Iran only wants nuclear weapons for self defence (unless the regime is suicidal). I see no moral reason to deny them that defence - particularly given the current aggressively hostile attitude of the USA.
Nobody (other than the USA and
perhaps the UK) is in any doubt that first use of nuclear weapons would provoke a massive response from the USA. It seems to me that nukes serve to safeguard countries against invasion; And that absent an existential threat from an invading force, the only nation on Earth that would even consider their first use is the US herself.
The mullahs are bad; Some may even be mad. But they're not suicidal.
