Status Updates From Arms and Influence (The Hen...

"What else can Iran accomplish, except possibly the destruction of its own system, with a few nuclear warheads? ....What nuclear weapons have been used for, effectively, successfully, since August 1945, has not been on the battlefield or on population targets: they have been used for influence."

"I expect that we may come to a new respect for deterrence. If Iran should, despite every diplomatic effort or economic pressure to prevent it, acquire a few nuclear weapons, we may discover again what it is like to be the deterred one, not the one doing the deterring.... I also consider it crucial that Iran's leaders, civilian and military, learn to think... in terms of deterrence."

"We depend on nonproliferation efforts to restrain the production and deployment of weapons by more and more countries; we may depend even more on universally shared inhibitions on nuclear use. Preserving those inhibitions and extending them, if we know how to preserve and extend them, to cultures and national interests that may not currently share those inhibitions will be a crucial part of our nuclear policy."

"...there are perceptual and symbolic phenomena that persist and recur and that help to make the nuclear phenomenon less puzzling. And I find it remarkable how these perceptual constraints and inhibitions cross cultural boundaries."