It was perplexing to read Saritha Prabhu's torturously titled column, "Human nature dictates Iran wants nukes," (Tennessean, Oct. 2).

Ms. Prabhu seeks to convince us that we should cater to the tantrums thrown by Iran's authoritarian despots over being denied thermonuclear bombs. Perhaps she forgot the ruling mandate from Ayatollah Khomeini: "We will export our revolution throughout the world ... until the calls 'There is no god but Allah,' and 'Muhammad is the messenger of Allah' are echoed all over the world."

Perhaps it slipped her mind that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be wiped off the face of the earth, that he denies the Holocaust, or that Israel is threatened by several Arab states and transnational terrorist groups like al-Qaida that vow to destroy "the Zionist entity" once and for all.

Perhaps she didn't pause to reflect that Iranian thermonuclear missiles would threaten not only Israel, but Russia, India, Europe and the United States itself. Her comparison of Iran and Israel to Pakistan and India is perverse and a stinging insult to the millions from her home country who have suffered unspeakable oppression and atrocities at the hands of Pakistan-sponsored terrorists.

India is the world's largest secular democracy, and successive Pakistani governments have waged war against India — a primary campaign of universal jihad. It is precisely because of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons extortion that India has been stymied in combating Pakistani-sponsored terrorism.

As a columnist, Ms. Prabhu seems to define herself best by what she never says. She does not write about the expulsion of her fellow Hindus from Kashmir, refugees in their own country being systematically destroyed by Islamic terrorist groups based in Pakistan. She expresses no concern over the nearly 500 million Hindus in India who subsist with an income of $1 a day or the suicides of thousands of farmers each year in India because of economic loss.

Perhaps Saritha Prabhu considers it fashionable and a mark of intellectual liberalism to sit in the comfort and safety of heartland America and take up her pen to champion the cause of the "rights" of totalitarian regimes, while criticizing conservative Christians and Jews in the American South. Of course, she doesn't criticize the Iranian regime because she is astutely aware of what happened to Salman Rushdie, a fellow Indian writer.