WarSclerotic

#3 Holocaust denial and Holocaust fears

Visitors walk under pictures of Jews killed in the Holocaust, in the Hall of Names at the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem.
(Gil Cohen Magen/Reuters/File)

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. But Israel quite simply doesn’t believe the Islamic Republic and fears what a nuclear weapon in the hands of a government with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the top of the heap could mean for them.

Israel is a country whose national psyche was crafted by the Holocaust and has said time and again that it will take preemptive action if it thinks the nation is threatened. Fear of Iran has been a long-running theme for the country – in the wake of 9/11 Israeli officials mused that Iran might have had a hand in the attack (it didn’t) and since, they’ve kept up a steady stream of warnings about what a nuclear-armed Iran would mean for the Jewish state’s future.

“Iran is developing nuclear weapons and poses the greatest threat to our existence since the war of independence. Iran’s terror wings surround us from the north and south,” Benjamin Netanyahu said shortly after regaining the premiership last year.

The “never again” credo of Israel drives alarm inside the country’s security establishment. While most Iran watchers believe that an Iran with a few nuclear weapons wouldn’t launch a first strike on Israel – something sure to bring withering retaliation – the presence of Mr. Ahmadinejad at the top of the government (thought he’s still subordinate to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader) has some Israelis fearing irrational behavior.

#2 Fear that Iran is ‘meshugana’

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attends an official meeting with his Ginea Bissau counterpart Malam Bacai Sanha in Tehran Monday.
(Morteza Nikoubazl/Reuters)

If the public statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a number of Israeli officials are taken at face value, they believe irrational behavior on the part of Iranian officials could lead them to use a nuclear weapon if they ever obtain it.

Iran says it has no intention of building a bomb, and senior clerics there have said the use of nuclear weapons are un-Islamic and forbidden, but many Israeli leaders don’t buy that.

Mr. Netanyahu told Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg for a separate article last year: “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs… When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and that’s what is happening in Iran.”

While that seems an extreme characterization, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never seems to pass up a chance to fuel Israeli fears. Mr. Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust “a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim” and once referred to Israel as a “tumor” that should be “wiped off the map” – though some say that’s a mistranslation, and a better one would be “vanish from the map of time.”

Wayne White, a former senior State Department intelligence analyst focusing on the Middle East, says that the Iranian government isn’t monolithic in its views and that “regime survival” is a top priority for most senior figures, including Ayatollah Ali Khamanei. But he says the antics of Ahmadinejad are a constant irritant that increase the likelihood of conflict. “He’s absolutely the worst nightmare for anyone trying to move this forward,” he says. “His rhetoric has been outrageous since 2005.”

To be sure, some Israeli officials don’t precisely share Prime Minister Netanyahu’s view. In a speech last year, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said his fear was that a nuclear armed Iran would some day arm a stateless terrorist group. As for the regime itself? “I don’t think that the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, they are going to drop it immediately on some neighbor. They fully understand what might follow. They are radicals but not total meshuganas,” he said, using a Yiddish word that means “crazies.”

#1 A nuclear Iran would shift the regional strategic balance

In this Nov 2009 photo released by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency, Iranian technicians work with foreign colleagues at the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, just outside the southern port city of Bushehr, Iran.
(Mehdi Ghasemi/ISNA/AP)

One thing everyone who debates whether Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb, and what to do about stopping them if they are, agrees on is this: A nuclear-armed Iran would profoundly shift the strategic balance of the Middle East.

Israel, with an arsenal of 100 or so nuclear bombs and the missiles to deliver them, is the region’s only current nuclear power. While that sole status doesn’t give it carte blanche to do as it pleases, the day Iran has a nuclear weapon is the day Israel’s ability to directly attack Iran – or perhaps other regional countries – is taken off the table.

Iran in turn would be able to act with greater freedom in what it sees as its own sphere of influence. This alarms many of Arab states in the region, who many predict would start considering nuclear weapons programs of their own in response. The last thing Israel wants is a nuclear arms race in a neighborhood where a number of regimes still don’t recognize its right to exist.

The more nuclear countries there are, the greater the chance, however unlikely, that someone will push the button first, or that a terrorist group could somehow get its hands on a bomb. Defense Minister Ehud Barak explained one of Israel’s greatest fears this way last year: “It’s not just the end of any nonproliferation regime,” he said of Iran obtaining a bomb. “I believe that it starts the countdown that… would lead, within another half a generation, to a crude nuclear device in the hands of some terrorist group.”