Nuclear deterrence in the Middle East is based on the old Cold War formulation of Mutually Assured Destruction, but in this case MAD is on steroids and is literally mad. George Bush says Iran is a "global threat to world peace," but I don't think most Americans are looking at this "threat" the same way he or the Israelis are.
If we're going down the road to Armageddon for Israel, we'd better understand just how far they're prepared to go first. This is a pretty crazy neighborhood we're dealing with and we're already way over our heads in Iraq. Obviously, Ahmadinejad is as batty as they come, but Israel also has a few nuts of its own. The reason the Israelis see a nuclear Iran as such a dire threat is that they see there's little chance that any attack on Iran, even a nuclear one, would wipe that country off the face of the map. However, Israel could very easily be wiped off the map, hence the understandable fear of nukes in the hands of the Mullahs.
In his excellent book "The Gun and the Olive Branch," David Hersh quotes Hebrew University's professor Martin van Creveld and his pessimistic appraisal of Israel's potential reaction to another existential threat (at the time the second Intifada).
If Israel were going to be destroyed by the terrorists, there was only one thing to do:
"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force...Let me quote General Moshe Dayan: 'Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.' Our armed forces...are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that will happen, before Israel goes under."
Of course, van Creveld he was hoping this would never happen ... unlike Ephraim Kison, who wrote in the Jerusalem Post on April 26, 1975 that Israel needed the bomb because it could never win an arms race with all its Arab neighbors. Such a race, therefore, even with U.S. money and arms, was ultimately self-defeating:
"Our one and only alternative to our gradual destruction by arms race is to develop a nuclear deterrent of our own. It's our single chance for telling our enemies and our one friend: that's it, we're not playing anymore....Sooner or later we'll have to say it out loud. Sooner or later we'll have to announce: if any Arab army crosses this green line, we reserve the right to use atomic weapons, and if he crosses the red line, we'll drop the bomb automatically, even if this whole country is blown up by nuclear retaliation. You don't believe it? Try us!
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=7532097&postID=114469040621915498Looks like we're going to wind up
trying them whether we want to or not.
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