Amid all the discussion of Iran’s nuclear program, and Israeli and U.S. efforts to destroy it, one fact remains largely ignored: Iran scarcely needs a nuclear arsenal.
To begin with, any detonation of such a weapon against Israel, which reportedly has hundreds of nuclear weapons and clearly has the ability and credibility to deliver them, would be a disaster for Iran. Israel’s inevitable counterattack would likely destroy not only Iran’s unpopular regime, but also the ancient Persian civilization in which it is embedded.
Second, Iran doesn’t need to keep a few nuclear weapons around to deter a nuclear attack initiated by Israel out of the blue. Israel is much more likely to apply its superiority in conventional weaponry, which, as has been seen of late, can be very damaging and much more focused. Israel would have no need to escalate to the nuclear level.
And third, the value of nuclear weapons to deter conventional attacks is severely undercut by recent experience. Although Israel (and the U.S.) might have hesitated if Iran had had nuclear weapons, they likely would have attacked anyway, relying on their ability to devastate Iran in retaliation for any use of Iran’s nukes. It is also relevant to note that nuclear weapons do not have an impressive record at deterring conventional attacks, as the United Kingdom found in 1982 when Argentina seized Britain’s Falkland Islands, leading to a short war fought entirely with conventional weapons. In the present case, Israel has repeatedly been attacked by non-nuclear countries and entities; its extensive nuclear arsenal appears to have been irrelevant to its responses, which have relied entirely on conventional weapons and methods.
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