Why Israel Will Bomb Iran
Apr. 23rd, 2009 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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By David Samuels - Apr 09, 2009, Slate
The more Israeli leaders huff and puff about their determination to stop Iran`s nuclear program, the more sophisticated analysts are inclined to believe that Israel is bluffing. After all, if George W. Bush refused to provide Israel with the bunker busters and refueling capacity to take out Iran`s nukes in 2008, the chance that Barack Obama will give Israel the green light anytime soon seems quite remote—this being the same President Obama who greeted North Korea`s recent missile launch with a speech outlining his plan to dismantle America`s nuclear arsenal on the way to realizing his dream of a nuclear-free world.
Israel`s performance in the 2006 war in Lebanon was widely depicted as catastrophic, and with Israel`s diplomatic standing hitting new lows after the stomach-turning images of destruction from Gaza, the diplomatic consequences of a successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities might be worse than the prospect of military failure. There is also the fact that no one knows exactly where Iran`s nuclear assets are.
Many perfectly reasonable people chalk up the rhetorical excesses of both parties to the hot desert sun and assume that nothing particularly awful will happen whether Iran becomes a nuclear power or not. From a U.S. point of view, at least, there is little reason to doubt the analysis that a nuclear Iran with a few dozen bombs can be contained at relatively limited cost using the same strategies that successfully constrained an aggressive Soviet Empire armed with nearly 45,000 nuclear warheads at the height of the Cold War.
What the nuclear optimists miss is that it is not the United States that is directly threatened by the Iranian nuclear program but Israel—and the calculations that drive our Middle Eastern client state are very different from those that guide the behavior of its superpower patron.
Full article at http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=3922
By David Samuels - Apr 09, 2009, Slate
The more Israeli leaders huff and puff about their determination to stop Iran`s nuclear program, the more sophisticated analysts are inclined to believe that Israel is bluffing. After all, if George W. Bush refused to provide Israel with the bunker busters and refueling capacity to take out Iran`s nukes in 2008, the chance that Barack Obama will give Israel the green light anytime soon seems quite remote—this being the same President Obama who greeted North Korea`s recent missile launch with a speech outlining his plan to dismantle America`s nuclear arsenal on the way to realizing his dream of a nuclear-free world.
Israel`s performance in the 2006 war in Lebanon was widely depicted as catastrophic, and with Israel`s diplomatic standing hitting new lows after the stomach-turning images of destruction from Gaza, the diplomatic consequences of a successful attack on Iranian nuclear facilities might be worse than the prospect of military failure. There is also the fact that no one knows exactly where Iran`s nuclear assets are.
Many perfectly reasonable people chalk up the rhetorical excesses of both parties to the hot desert sun and assume that nothing particularly awful will happen whether Iran becomes a nuclear power or not. From a U.S. point of view, at least, there is little reason to doubt the analysis that a nuclear Iran with a few dozen bombs can be contained at relatively limited cost using the same strategies that successfully constrained an aggressive Soviet Empire armed with nearly 45,000 nuclear warheads at the height of the Cold War.
What the nuclear optimists miss is that it is not the United States that is directly threatened by the Iranian nuclear program but Israel—and the calculations that drive our Middle Eastern client state are very different from those that guide the behavior of its superpower patron.
Full article at http://www.israelunitycoalition.org/news/article.php?id=3922
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-23 06:41 pm (UTC)is the triumph of his imbecility.
They did not go about building their autonomy - why would they all of a sudden start building a state?!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-23 09:16 pm (UTC)Even so, Israel might wind up bombing Iran, no?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-23 10:25 pm (UTC)but the ostentatiously cynical "analysis" in the text neither predicts nor explains anything.
"the text is both new and correct; alas, what is new is incorrect, and what is correct is not new" (c)...