Why an Israeli strike on Iran could turn nuclear

Dr. Denis MacEoin

I think Morris's and Forsyth's observations are correct. A combined onslaught of Iranian, Hizbullahi, and Hamasi missiles could cause untold damage to Israel. Everything depends on what sort of umbrella Israel has in place. If there is a first-class system of interceptor missiles trained on their targets by radar or something more up to date, then Israel could easily survive an attack. But there didn’t seem to be any system like that in place during the last Lebanon war. The idea that a non-nuclear retaliation would not destroy Israel is only true if there really is an effective anti-missile system in place. Iran is much too big a country, with cities spread about among mountains and desert, for an Israeli non-nuclear attack to be effective. If Israel fired a sizeable nuclear device on Tehran, which has an enormous population, the rest of the world, which already hates Israel, would take steps to dismantle the country in some way and put Israeli leaders on trial before the ICC. Ahmadinezhad, who would be in a bunker somewhere, and would emerge as the battered survivor of the Israeli Holocaust. An all-out war against Iran would be disastrous. If Israel couldn’t beat Hizbullah on its borders, it couldn’t take on the very large numbers of the Iranian army, navy, air force, and basij troops. A joint attack with the US might have worked years ago, but the great blunder of Iraq would make it difficult for another US president (especially if it’s Obama) to risk another quagmire (which is what Iran would be).

I can’t answer this dilemma. I think the first step, in the next year or two, would be for Israel to finish Hamas and Hizbullah entirely and for good. I think that’s do-able, provided world opinion doesn’t tie Israel’s hand behind its back. With them out of the way and a good missile intercept system in place, an attack on the military nuclear sites in Iran using bunker-buster weapons would have a better chance of succeeding. Iran won’t risk sending ground troops across Iraq and Syria or through Saudi Arabia (which is very well armed), it has a lousy air force, and if it knows its missiles will be blown out of the air, it will bide its time. If that gives time for the regime to be overthrown, we could be in a very different position. If enough of the population turns on the mullas, the regime may crumble away in the shortest possible time.

TColvin

You and MacEoin are crazy.
There is in fact no dilemma.
The answer to Iranian nuclear armament, and to global concerns about Israeli nuclear weapons,is Israeli nuclear disarmament in exchange for a nuclear-free Middle East.
This can be negotiated through the UN with the backing of the USA and the EU.
Nuclear war and blockade are no answer.
Tony

Stephen Rothbart

Tony, you must be dilusional. Have you just seen how well the EU and the UN handled a simple situation like Zimbabwe?

How can anyone rely on these 'august' bodies, when countries like China and Russia are involved? Let alone the Arab states. And Iran circumvents the UN by fighting aproxy war with Hamas and Hezbollah as their agents.

Nuclear attacks by missiles will kill as many Palestinians as Israelis, so possibly that is not an option anyway, but smuggling a device into Israel and exploding it by electronic signal in, say, Tel Aviv would be more accurate and kill fewer Arabs.

Israel and the US should tell the rulers of Iran, Hezbollah and any other regime that intends to use nuclear weapons on Israel and/or the United States, that to attack either one of them will result, not in an attack on them personally, but an attack by nuclear missiles on every holy site dedicated to Islam. Messina, Mecca etc. would be obliterated.

Thus the religious lunatics in Iran, Saudi Arabia or wherever would know that their indiscriminate slaughter of either Israeli or US citizens would wipe off the face of the earth their holiest sites and that they will have been the cause of it.

I can see no other alternative to making these idiots see sense. Its probably the only thing they fear and they could not bury Mecca or Messina in a deep bunker.

Hysteria

I think we are also over-stating the impact/threat from Iranian nuclear devices. We throw words aroundlike "nuclear holocaust" and "wiped off the map" rather too easily in my view.

The recent exercises by Iran showed to the world that their delivery capacity is pretty woeful.

Making a viable nuclear weapon is very different from making one that will go into a small enough space to be put into a missile.

How many (probably small yield) devices do we think Iram can make? Think about the N Korean device - bad enough but not devastating even if dropped on a city.

If they send one missile it would not destroy Tel-Aviv, far less "wipe Israel off the map".

Of course this would be a terrible event - but would at last convince the anti-Israel lobby of the error of their ways ( you would think anyway?), and demonstrate also the intent of the mullahs in Iran.

I agree that a really strong blockade action to force a regime change from within is a preferred and more realistic option.

TColvin

Stephen.
The UN could enforce Middle East nuclear disarmament if Russia and China agreed. Has anyone asked them?
And the Iranians are not idiots. They know that only nuclear-armed states with oil are free from attack by the USA and its clients Israel and the UK.
Tony

Chris M

And if not - the Iranians have to be hit with that which they would deal out.

I cannot comprehend the moral equivocation of Western governments (the left is beyond the pale and will back ANYONE against us). Iran WILL use nuclear weapons. No doubt about it. Either through missiles or via a client terror group - they will be used if they are acquired.

Tiberius

The least worst option I have read about is a bunker busting missile attack, either by Israel or the US, on the locations housing the delicate centrifuges, without which Iran cannot make a nuclear device. Such locations are detectible by satellite, but it is possible not all would be located. A successful attack of this kind would set back the development of Iran's nuclear ambitions by years.

While no compromise on stopping Iran going nuclear is allowable, what would happen if it did succeed? If it went ahead with a nuclear attack on Israel, the response would come back with sufficient interest to make sure they didn't do it again. With no Iran, there's no Hamas or Hizbollah either. And while the nutters are happy to send teenagers to meet the 72 virgins, I'm not so sure that they are anxious to experience so much out-of-body carnal pleasure themselves. Mutual deterrence has worked so far in the history of nuclear weapons...

Dirty bombs are a different issue of course, but so far have proved too difficult to use.

Hysteria

Tiberius - as someone said elsewhere - MAD only works with two rational actors with shared world views. (not the least being your view on personal survival)

MAD may not work where one side has a completely different, and to us incomprehensible, paradigm

Stephen Rothbart

Tony, unlike Iran, Israel has never threatened to use nuclear weapons on any State, nor has it ever gone to war against anyone, except in self-defence.

Whatever your allegiances or beliefs about Israel, only a foolish people would believe their is any sense in a country of the size and population of Israel attacking the hundreds of millions of people on its borders, and whatever you might think about Israelis (which does not look like much) they are not fools.

The history and experience of Jews in Europe over the last two thousand years has not been a happy one.

There is not a country in Europe who has not had the stain of their blood on their hands at some point, and the world turned its back on them during the systematic slaughter by the Nazis and their collaborators. Those that did not actually join in, that is.

Just why Israel should now trust their very existence on the goodwill of Russia, China, even the US let alone the EU, is beyond my imagination.

Iran is not developing WMD's to defend itself from Israel, but because its leader is on record as saying that he is the twelfth imam and is one of the agents to bring about the end of the world, in order to bring about the ascendancy of Islam and the return of the Prophet.

While religious nuts may well exist in Israel and the USA, none of them are the President of their country.

It's not just Israel that should be afraid about Iran's intentions.

Everyone, including the Iranians and the Palestinians and especially you, should be terrified. I know I am.

BiBiJon

Check out
http://www.bibijon.org/iranimage/
When you get a chance.

Eva Jlassi

There is nothing more dangerous than a paranoid country with nuclear weapons but this is what the world is facing in Israel today.

While plotting the best way of attacking another country that may, possibly, maybe, sometime, if nothing changes, one day attack them, they are displaying the logic that fully justifies the poll, conducted in 2004, that placed Israel as the country most dangerous to the world peace in the eyes of Europeans.

There is something spectacular in the theocratic country, that firmly believes that it has divine right to exist, while annexing, colonizing and sequestrating the land of its neighbours using the argument that another country is uniquely dangerous by virtue of being theocratic, even if it didn't annex, colonize, or sequestrate anybody's land in the last 200 years or so. Never has the inner working of Israeli psyche been so openly displayed for leisurely perusal as in Benny Morris' NYTimes op-ed today.

" We have been attacked as a race, so we will be attacked as a race, so we will attack first, whatever the consequences because other people may be more paranoid than us and will attack because everybody attacks us deus ex machina, amen. "

And to think that with a single person with those symptoms one can get couple of orderlies and solve the problem with massive dose of haloperidol, but with the paranoid country one need to wait for the nuclear dust to bring non-racially motivated equality into the middle east.

Herbert Thornton

Dr. Denis MacEoin mentions U.S. reluctance to be drawn into a war with Iran. From what I have read of recent contacts of between the U.S. and Iran, I have the impression that President Bush is already at considerable pains to make that reluctance clear and I see no likelihood of the next President - whether McCain or Obama - taking any different position.

Benny Morris’s gloomy forecast seems, to me, to be very likely to come true.

Tiberius

Hysteria: I merely raise the point that the mad mullahs and Mr DJ may stop and think if they face the prospect of sea-launched, nuclear tipped cruise missiles accompanying their after dinner mints, but, yes, I wouldn't necessarily want to put the theory to the test.

Sarah J

To Eva,
Don’t be so angry, i am sure that your wishes of an Islamic globe will come true eventually and will take us back to the Stone Age, where women like your self will not be able to use a laptop. Iran armed with Mass destruction weapons is not an Israeli problem, its a problem of all of us ( I say all of, I meant excluding you ). ignorant is a bliss.

Ian C

The danger from Iran becoming nuclear capable is not that it will overtly attack Israel (colateral damage to Palestinians and Lebanon, retaliation from all) or any one else. It is the ability to deliver nuclear covertly. if they are allowed to obtain the overt capability, then by definition they will becoem covertly capable soon after.

Even if I am wrong, which would we rather - an Iran with overt intent or covert capability? What's the difference? There is none.

This is the question facing the rest of the world - what are we prepared to do, and when, to avert either possibility arising? The rest is hot air.

Stephen Rothbart

Bibijon. Chcked out your web-site. In the Shah's time Iran was a firm friend of Israel and much of what you have shown is true. I have read Ebadi's book and while she voted for the end of the Shah, her life as a lawyer in Iran changed drastically for the worst.

It is not all bed and roses there, and there will be many anomolies in the workings of a country as large as Iran.

My point is that Iran is led by a religious nutcase, and while there are several different power bases in Iran, he still has huge abilities to fund and arm terrorists and fundamentalist movements throughout the world.

Let us not forget that Hitler was not supported by more than 30% of the German voters when he siezed power and this led to deaths of over 30 million people in Europe.

No one in the EU, who speak against Iran while trying hard to trade with her, or China or Russia, who are happy to use Iran to destabilize the US and her allies, will stand up to her leaders seriously, and like Saddam Hussein, they think they are inviolate.

This is the danger for the world. The spiritual leader of Iran is religious nut and can not be removed while he is winning the 'phoney war' with the West.

In 1936, leaders of German's military might came to France and Britain and told them that if they stood up to Hitler over Czechoslavakia, Hitler would have to back down, because he was not strong enough to take them and Czechoslavakia on. This would give the Generals the chance to remove Hitler and restore peace.

Chamberlain's response is history. Within 8 years 30 million people had died and Germany was destroyed, and not all German's were Nazis.

The lesson has not been learned.