Jamie

Weinstein

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December 16, 2008

Obama’s ‘Umbrella’ No Protection Against Iranian Nuclear Storm

According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, President-elect Barack Obama plans to offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" to protect it from the rain – the rain in this case being a potential Iranian nuclear missile. In other words, Obama will promise Israel that if it is destroyed by a nuclear Iran, the United States will avenge its death by taking out its murderer in a nuclear wonderland.

A nice gesture, for sure. But I don't imagine such a proposal is particularly comforting for the Jewish state.

The worst kept secret in the Middle East is that Israel has its own stockpile of nuclear weapons. If Iran were to acquire nukes and use them on Israel, the Jewish state would be plenty capable of launching a nuclear response as it breathed its last breaths.

Israel knows that the Iranian regime understands this. The Iranian regime itself has acknowledged the threat of a nuclear counterattack in the event it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. If we were dealing with rational actors, this would probably be enough to ensure that nuclear holocaust wouldn't occur. We all remember the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction from the Cold War.

But the problem of course is that we are not sure we are dealing with rational actors in Iran, or at least rational in the sense they want to preserve their country at all costs. The Iranian regime is religiously inspired. It is ruled by clerics who seem to see the destruction of the Jewish state as a holy mission.

We have all heard Iranian President Mahmoud "wipe Israel off the map" Ahmadinejad's thoughts about Israel, or as he playfully calls it, the "Zionist entity." But what does Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini think about the Jewish state? After all, he holds all the real power in the country.

Well, in 2000 CNN reported that the Ayatollah made these lovely comments: "Iran's stance has always been clear on this ugly phenomenon (Israel). We have repeatedly said that this cancerous tumor of a state should be removed from the region."

Now, just like Ahmadinejad's comments, you can interpret this however you want if you are not Israel. You can conclude, if you like, that all Khameini meant was that he wanted regime change in Palestine. But for a tiny, strategically vulnerable state like Israel, there is only one way you can interpret the Ayatollah's words, and it is that the Iranian regime literally wants to destroy you. 

But would Iran really be willing to risk its own destruction in order to destroy Israel? That is a good question, one no one can answer with absolute certainty. But if former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is to be believed, the answer to that query, in the words of everyone's favorite Alaskan Governor, is, "You betcha."

"If one day the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession – on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end," Rafsanjani has said. He then added this humdinger, "This is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam."

And therein lies the problem. Is the Iranian leadership so enraptured with the idea of destroying Israel, because of some perceived religious mandate, that they couldn’t care less about causing massive damage to their own country in the process? I would hope not, but how can we expect Israel to take a chance with its own survival?

So Barack Obama's pledge that he will cover Israel with a nuclear umbrella is meaningless to Israel's security considering a) Israel already has a nuclear deterrent and b) it is not clear Iran is a rational actor who could be deterred by possible nuclear retaliation.

In fact, more than just being a useless policy proposal, it may even be a detrimental proposal if it means that Obama has accepted the concept of a nuclear Iran as something that can't be prevented.

In the end, this is not only about Israel. Sure, Israel is the most likely target of the first Iranian nuclear missile. A nuclear Iran, however, threatens the entire world. A nuclear-empowered Iran would cause regimes across the Arab world to begin developing their own nuclear weapons programs.

Nuclear weapons sprouting up all over the Middle East would hardly be in America's interest.

More crucially, in a post-9/11 world, how can we possibly countenance for our own security an active state sponsor of terrorism like Iran in possession of a nuclear arsenal, especially when the Iranian regime has called for our destruction as well. No matter the foreign policy and economic crises that face us, we cannot take the eye off the ball when it comes to preventing the Islamic Republic of Iran from attaining nuclear weapons capability.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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