| Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption. Thus an Israeli nuclear strike to prevent the Iranians from taking the final steps toward getting the bomb is probable. The alternative is letting Tehran have its bomb. In either case, a Middle Eastern nuclear holocaust would be in the cards. Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Bar this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland. Some Iranians may believe that this is a worthwhile gamble if the prospect is Israel’s demise. But most Iranians probably don’t. |
Why on Gore's green earth should a private foreign person, a subject of the Tel Aviv statelet, [1] appear in the ever-august columns of the New York Times Company to utter threats of violence that his neorégime obviously ought to make for itself officially?
Alio modo, has Aunt Nitsy suddenly decided that her proper rôle in life is to serve as a message drop, a glorified Whittaker Chambers pumpkin?
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[1] "Benny Morris, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion University, is the author, most recently, of 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War."
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