Soccer Dad

Preventing the next holocaust

The other day I wrote about Charles Krauthammer's most recent column. He argued that since it's clear that negotiation and sandtions have failed to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb, the United States had to expressly state its support for defending Israel. I had thought that the column wasn't the greatest I read. On the other hand, Krauthammer didn't seem to be operating with the luxury of alternatives.

At Contentions, Gordon Chang thinks that American deterrence is still possible. Noah Pollak thinks that such a declaration will have the exact opposite effect.

David Hazony, though, takes a different tack. He links to a Ze'ev Chafets column arguing that the Iranian bomb is out of American hands, however:

What’s more, it is fair to say that Israel is not a weak country. It has developed a powerful set of strategic options. In the best case, it would be able to act on its own to degrade and retard the Iranian nuclear program as it did in Iraq (and, more recently, Syria). In a worse case, if the Iranians do get the bomb, Iranian leaders might be deterred by rational considerations. If so, Israel’s own arsenal — and its manifest willingness to respond to a nuclear attack — ought to suffice.

If, on the other hand, the Iranian leadership simply can’t resist the itch to “wipe Israel off the map” — or to make such a thing appear imminent — then it would be up to Israel to make its own calculations. What is the price of 100,000 dead in Tel Aviv? Or twice that? The cost to Iran would certainly be ghastly. It would be wrong for Israel to expect other nations to shoulder this moral and geopolitical responsibility.

Note that this isn't just a discussion of an Osirak like strike, but of first use of nuclear weapons if necessary. I don't believe that an Osirak like strike is possible: Iran is farther away than Iraq and the surprise factor can't be as great anymore.

I would add that if it comes to that, and I hope it doesn't, it's not just the failure of the United States. There are many nations and world bodies who have been quite happy to humor Tehran and pretend that its extremism was just for public consumption. Sometimes it pays to take fanatics to heart.

Crossposted at Yourish.

Israel, iran.