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Israel May Just Nuke Iran
Nuking Iran would be an unmitigated disaster. But anyone with a passing familiarity with Israel’s government of Islamophobes knows well its hatred of Muslims.
Israel is a country consumed by its own malice, and blinded by its commitment to militarism.
Israel like no other nation is driven by a narcissistic sense of entitlement that sees its very existence as evidence of God’s favoritism, and Israel will not let a little thing like nuclear Holocaust get in the way of its divine destiny.
Israel sees itself as a force under siege and you are either with Israel or against this manichean, fundamentalist state.
Count me as against.
Nuking the Mullahs
by Philip GiraldiBack in August 2005, I broke the story that Dick Cheney and the Pentagon were working on a contingency plan to use tactical nuclear weapons in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The nukes would be used because they were the only effective way to destroy the hardened sites, many of which are located deep underground. I also reported that the contingency plan would kick in if there were another major terrorist attack against the United States, whether or not Iran was actually involved. It would use the terrorist action as a justification for taking preemptive action and employing nukes would serve as a warning to Iran that any retaliation would result in possible additional nuclear strikes. If implemented, it would have constituted the first use of nuclear weapons since the end of the Second World War.
It would be convenient to assume that the Dick Cheney school of international relations no longer exists. In truth, the summer of 2005 seems almost like ancient history, part and parcel of a very different world, where Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, and Rumsfeld were still running amok scarcely reined in by the more moderate but equally ghastly Condi Rice. Iraq was just starting to implode and Afghanistan was on a back burner but the hubris that drove the Bush Administration to look for enemies to destroy seems dated at the present due to economic and political deterioration in the United States. Even many of those who saw America as the essential nation five years ago now recognize decline when they see it and are arguing for retrenchment.
But some things don’t change and the theory that just a few really big bombs can change the Middle East for the better has again surfaced. Two weeks ago the non-partisan Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) issued a study suggesting that low yield tactical nuclear weapons are just the ticket for destroying Iran’s nuclear plants. The report states that “some believe that nuclear weapons are the only weapons that can destroy targets deep underground or in tunnels.” “Options in Dealing with Iran’s Nuclear Program” was written by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman, both highly respected analysts and commentators. The authors and CSIS do not exactly endorse the use of nuclear weapons and they note that there would be major political consequences, but they accept that there is a high likelihood that Israel is planning an attack of some kind and also observe that Tel Aviv’s only other options would not be very effective. Israel has no heavy bombers and only a limited supply of bunker buster bombs. F-16 fighter bombers launched from Israel would have little time on target and only limited conventional payloads that could not do much damage to the dispersed and deeply dug-in Iranian facilities. Iranian air defenses, which have been enhanced over the past few years, might also prove to be a formidable obstacle. At best, the Israelis would only be able to delay an Iranian nuclear program for six months to a year and the attack itself would guarantee Tehran’s commitment to develop its own nuclear deterrent as quickly as possible.
An Israeli nuclear strike could, on the other hand, be launched using ballistic missiles that Tel Aviv already has or from cruise missiles on submarines, which are also already in the country’s arsenal, meaning that Israeli warplanes would not have to cross hostile territory and face antiaircraft fire. The targeting would also be more accurate using missiles that could be carefully aimed rather than unstable and possibly under attack aircraft and the results, compared to a conventional attack, would be devastating.
Two issues likely will determine whether Israel will use nuclear weapons against Iran. The first relates to the ultimate objective of the Israeli attack. An attack with conventional weapons will hardly cripple the presumed Iranian nuclear program and would be designed rather to send a message and to bring the United States into the conflict to finish the job. But if the Israelis were to make the judgment that the United States will somehow refuse to cooperate or be drawn in, they might just be tempted to use the tactical nuclear weapons reported to be in their arsenal to destroy the Iranian nuclear infrastructure.
The second issue is Israeli isolation and irrationality, something that is harder to assess but which is becoming more evident. Israel continues to be protected by the United States in the UN through its veto power and also in other international fora, but there should be no doubt that President Obama has a visceral dislike for Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and everything he represents. And the feeling is mutual, but given the vulnerability of Israel if the US were to withdraw its support, the actions of Netanyahu to goad and defy Obama have to be seen as those of a man whose ability to behave rationally might well be questioned.
The truth is that Israel is fast becoming a pariah nation, like South Africa before the final collapse of apartheid, because no one any longer accepts the legitimacy of its settlement growth and occupation policies. Like South Africa, the Israeli response to criticism has been to become more reactionary and inward looking, constructing a police state internally and waging unending war against its neighbors to maintain cohesion against foreign enemies. The program to divest from Israel is gathering steam both in Europe and the US and even traditional allies of Tel Aviv like Britain have begun to react to Israeli rogue behavior. The recent expulsion of Israel’s Mossad chief from London over the issue of copying fifteen British passports for use in assassination operations was significant. Visitors to Israel have now been warned that surrendering passports at immigration could lead to their being cloned to support illegal activities, a warning that is literally without precedent. Several European countries that claim universal jurisdiction in war crime cases, including Spain, appear to be prepared to arrest traveling Israeli officials for civilian deaths in Gaza.
Israel demonstrated both its increasing isolation and its irrational side in response to the British expulsion of its intelligence chief. Two Israeli parliamentarians compared the British to dogs, one adding that the “British may be dogs, but they are not loyal to us, but rather to an anti-Semitic system.” What system he had in mind was not exactly clear and it is also interesting to note that an Israeli legislator would expect loyalty from the British government. There was some speculation in the media that at least some of the anger might be directed against British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who is Jewish and has family in Israel. Miliband has generally been regarded as a good friend of Israel, having blocked legal moves to arrest visiting Israeli politicians and generals as war criminals, but even he had to take steps when the integrity of British passports was being undermined.
To be sure, there is a certain danger in isolating the Israelis too much as it could easily feed the always present Masada complex that might influence a dangerously unstable government to take action that might include exploiting its nuclear arsenal in search of Armageddon. And make no mistake that Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman are not to be trusted by anyone. Netanyahu’s deceptions and evasions were too much even for markedly pro-Israeli US President Bill Clinton, who became angry with him after being repeatedly lectured on policy, asking whether Netanyahu thought that he represented the superpower. King Hussein of Jordan similarly finally gave up on achieving anything with a stonewalling and lying Netanyahu in the 1990s. The fact is, Bibi Netanyahu has never been interested in peace and his policies of creeping annexation of the West Bank and ethnic cleansing are instead designed to create a unitary Israeli state without Palestinians.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is even worse than Netanyahu and is a symbol of the kleptocratic impulses that characterize the extreme right in Israel. He is a racist who has openly advocated executing Arab members of the Knesset and drowning Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea. At one time he called for bombing the Aswan dam to punish Egypt for supporting the Palestinians and he was behind a bill in the Knesset that would have required all Israeli citizens of Arab descent to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state or face expulsion. That he is the Foreign Minister of a country that pretends to have western-style democratic political values is itself telling.
It all adds up to a toxic brew. If the US refuses to cooperate in bombing Iran conventionally, Israel might well accept the view that the Iranian nuclear program can only be destroyed by using other nuclear weapons. Tel Aviv, controlling its own nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver the bombs on target, would be able to stage such an attack unilaterally. An increasingly isolated Israel headed by reactionary and irrational politicians who are influenced by their own sense of racial superiority just might decide that the gamble is worth it. It would be a very bad decision for Israel, Iran, and for the United States.
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=26123
Posted by Yanira Farray on Apr 9 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Dr. Condi Rice, PhD, for President! We’ll stick her incredible credentials of the left-wing bigots’ collective, upturned, elitists noses.
Love to see it, Tom.
Condi would start out high, and then drop like a stone.
Some of those who knew Rice at Stanford say she was just a figure head. Not much to her, other then her race and sex to the university. It looked good for Stanford to have her there. Other people did her work.
Basically she was a Phd closed mouth Sarah Palin at the State Department able to keep her mouth shut while people like Rumsfeld tried to destroy the military with his neocon friends.
She was personally tutored by Henry Kissinger the man who will not go away on the old Soviet Union. She was out of her depth on the middle east and it’s intrigue. I am guessing much of her middle east knowledge like Bush and other Neoconservatives came from the bible.
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
Good read. Well written and easy to understand. In fact it should scare the bejesus out of Americans, Japan, and Europe. You can bet any attack on Iran, tactical or nuclear would certainly stop or slow the flow of oil into the worlds economies causing deep anger.
Would Israel benefit from this? Only if they think like evangelical Christians it is destined to happen because of the bible. If the the end of the world certainly the end of Wall Street and western economics A real economic Armageddon.
Remember the iranian hostage crisis? Light em, up, Fire in the hole!
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
[...] Israel May Just Nuke Iran : Veterans Today [...]
Michael,
I think there are so many countries that would see the nuking of Iran as the last straw and who would react like never before.
The fact that America is now a puppet to the pariah state of Israel is very sad indeed. It would seem that the greatest majority of the US people are not aware of how they are already captive to the ideas and policies of Netanyahu through Israel’s state-controlled corruption arm, AIPAC, US-based, still proudly celebrating their confirmed ownership of the US Congress.
This is indeed a well written article, but it needs to be read by another 150 million more Americans so that they, like the regular readers of articles such as this, become aware of how the country that was once regarded as the ‘home of the brave’ is now the ‘home of the weak’.
If the US does not shake the Jewish shackles by forcing a loyalty vote on the Congress, soon, then the Empire will continue to crumble.
We have all been used for 65 years. I for one, am heartily sick of it all.
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/
“Russia Military Chief: U.S., Israeli attack on Iran would be ‘unacceptable’ In other words an Israeli and/or U.S. military strike on Iran has the potential to escalate into a world war.”
U.S., Israeli attack on Iran would be ‘unacceptable’
RIA Novosti – April 12, 2010
Any airstrike against Iran by the United States or Israel would be “unacceptable,” the chief of the Russian General Staff Nikolai Makarov said on Monday.
“This is a last resort that exists in the plans of both the United States and Israel,” Nikolai Makarov said.
Western powers suspect that Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at making weapons, while Tehran claims it is pursuing nuclear technology for its civilian energy needs.
Makarov said that the Iranian leadership should also take into account that “the whole world is concerned about the [nuclear] problem.”
“We should hear Iran and Iran should hear us and the global community, and undertake measures,” Makarov added.
He also said that other states are likely to follow suit if Iran develops nuclear weapons.
“If Iran gets nuclear weapons, it might become an impetus for other states, and lead to further expansion of the nuclear club,” he said, adding the Russian military department was against such a scenario.
He added that Russia’s decision on whether to deliver S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Iran should be made by the country’s leaders.
“This decision should be made at state level. We, the military, will follow the leadership’s commands,” Makarov said.
Russia signed a contract with Iran on the supply of at least five S-300 air defense systems to Tehran in December 2005. However, Moscow has not so far honored the contract, which many experts say is due to pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv.
Both the United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program and have expressed concern over S-300 deliveries, which would significantly strengthen Iran’s air defenses.”
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100412/158538895.html
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=12503
‘Fury as Russia sells its Missile System to Iran
Chris Hughes – Mirror.co.uk April 12, 2010
Iran is buying an ultra-sophisticated missile system from Russia to protect its nuclear sites.
The S-300′s surface-to-air rockets can hit many targets at once, including in-coming cruise missiles, making any Western or Israeli strike on Iran much more difficult.
News of the multi-billion pound deal with Moscow has caused fury and fear among Western powers as they desperately try to stop the country developing nuclear weapons. An intelligence source told The Mirror: “In the game of bluff and counter-bluff this is bad news for Israel and the West.
“The new missile system will hugely empower Tehran which already has a fairly inflated view of its military and defence capability.
“This has everyone worried -Israel because it knows the US is currently not up for attacking Tehran and the US because it knows Tehran has the upper hand.”
The S-300, which Iran has been trying to buy since 2005, can hit a target at 100 miles and will be delivered to them within months.
It is a massive blow to Israeli defence chiefs who fear Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, below, is building up a nuclear capability to attack them.
Pentagon chiefs have already written up a detailed plan to strike as many as 100 targets if they have to destroy Tehran’s nuclear installations.
Bunker-buster bombs would hit underground complexes and Hellfire missiles targeted to kill the country’s top scientists.
Mikhail Dmitriyev, head of the Russian Federal Agency for Military Co-operation confirmed delivery of the S-300 is imminent. Russia’s stateowned news agency RIA Novosti said: “Contracts have been signed.”
US NUKE ROW
Iran will complain to the UN after President Barack Obama failed to rule out a nuclear attack on it.
The US leader has left Iran off a list of countries it has pledged not to target with atomic weapons.
Washington accuses Iran and North Korea of exceeding international limits on nuclear arsenals.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Obama’s “remarks mean the US government is a villain government that can’t be trusted”.
Nuke the bastards. Lets not kid ourselves, the muslims (as they dislike being called) will not rest until every non-muslim has been exterminated. They have no time limit so time is on their side. One generation or ten or a thousand, its all the same.
NUKE THE BASTARDS and DeProgram their children.
Israel should what it must to eliminate a nuclear threat by a radical government headed by an insane leader seeking to destroy her. Most of the civilized world recognizes Iran’s plan to develop nuclear weapons – not for ‘peaceful’ purposes – but rather to use against Israel and any other country that stands in its way. As usual, Israel, with G-d’s help will succeed in eliminating this threat.