ISRAELIS ON IRANIAN NUKES.

ISRAELIS ON IRANIAN NUKES. "Contra Iran", Halevi and Oren's article in The New Republic, purported to express Israeli alarm on the status of the Iranian nuclear program. In the midst of painting a dire picture, Halevi and Oren suggested that

a Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons -- by a country that denies the genocide against Europe's six million Jews while threatening Israel's six million Jews -- will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history.

In the real world, of course, Israeli strategic analysts understand that the rational response to Iranian nuclear weapons isn't simply to pack up and move away. From "Thinking the Unthinkable" at Defense News (subscription required):

According to [Ephraim] Kam, a retired Israeli military intelligence official who has spent the past 14 years assessing the emerging Iranian threat, �there are no facts or even credible indications to ascertain what Iran�s nuclear policy might be.� Nevertheless, despite tremendous reservations, he said that he and [Institute for National Security Studies] researchers have concluded that Iran would most likely use its nuclear status for defensive, rather than offensive, purposes.

�There are some good reasons why Iran would not use the bomb against Israel or anybody else in the region,� Kam said. �Originally, they wanted it as a last-resort means of deterring Iraq, and later, the United States. Israel -- despite the rhetoric of the extremist Iranian regime -- is not viewed as a critical target.�

Not long ago, Jacques Chirac made the same stunningly obvious point. Since the Revolution, Iranian behavior has displayed the same sensitivity to costs as the behavior of any other state. Contentions that deterrence won't work are simply absurd.

This also reinforces the shoddiness and transparency of Halevi and Oren's article. There are, in fact, strategic thinkers in Israel who don't believe that Iranian nukes will be the end of the Zionist project. Oren and Halevi just didn't bother to talk to any of them.

--Robert Farley