Mehdi Hasan: If you lived in Iran, wouldn't you want the Nuclear Bomb?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Iranian mullah, sitting cross-legged on your Persian rug in Tehran, sipping a cup of chai, You glance at the map of the Middle East on the wall. It is a disturbing image: Your country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies and regional rivals, both nuclear and non-nuclear. On your eastern border, the United States has 100,000 troops serving in Afghanistan. On your western border, the US has been occupying Iraq since 2003,and plans to retain a small force of military contractors and CIA operatives even after its official withdrawal next month. Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation, is to the south-east. Turkey, America's NATO ally, to the north-west, Turkmenistan, which has acted as a refueling base for US military transport planes since 2002, to the north-east. To the south, across the Persian Gulf, you see a cluster of US client states: Bahrain, home of the US Fifth Fleet, Qatar, host to a forward headquarters of US Central Command, Saudi Arabia, whose king has exhorted America to "attack Iran" and "cut off the head of the snake". Then, of course, less than a thousand miles to the west, there is Israel, your mortal enemy, in possession of over a hundred nuclear warheads, and with a history of preemptive aggression against its opponents. The map is clear, Iran is literally encircled by the United States and its allies.