During the Cold War, MAD (mutually assured
destruction) was the key to deterrence between the nuclear powers, who
understood that since each had the capacity to destroy the others many times
over, none of them would dare to initiate an attack. The assumption was that
the actors in both parts of the equation were rational and out fear of bringing
disaster upon their peoples and countries would certainly refrain from
precipitating a nuclear conflict. For that reason, paradoxically, it was the
presence of the ultimate weapons that assured they would not be used. But in
Iran, the situation may be totally different. We know from Ahmadinejad’s past
in the Basij militia
that he is a fanatic believer of the imminent return of the imam to earth,
something that he had prepared for as a mayor of Tehran, when he ordered the
widening of the main avenues of the city to absorb all the millions who would
flock to the streets to watch the return of the Hidden One. He also said that, when
speaking to the UN General Assembly as president of Iran, he could feel the
aura of the imam hovering over him and inspiring his speech. Since in Shi’ite
eschatology the imam would choose to return, after a millennium of hiding, at
precisely the worst moment of misery, injustice and oppression—what in other
eschatologies are called the “pangs of the Messiah”—precipitating his return by
an extreme and desperate tour de force, like using nuclear arms, could be
thought the best and most feasible avenue by mad rulers who do not subscribe to
the MAD theory. In other words, in the minds of irrational leaders, whose
considerations and reasoning are obscured by religious fanaticism, mutual
deterrence would not simply work.
Why would the Iranians wish to attack, and whom?
Usually, when leaders concoct a plan of attack, they keep mute about it for the
sake of the surprise effect, and they even try to create a reverse impression that
they harbor no aggressive intent toward their victim. Ahmadinejad, since his
advent to power, did not stop proclaiming his ambition to destroy Israel; to
put an end to Zionism, which is another wording for the same; to deny the
Holocaust; to instigate and dispatch terrorists against Israel and Jewish
targets; to convene international conferences about Holocaust denial; to
address the United Nations about his mad plan; to finance and instigate Hamas
and Hizbullah against Israel; and to convene and host annual meetings of Islamic
Terrorism International in his capital. On the contrary. Is anything else
needed to prove his intentions, and to see to it that the lunatic man who was put
at the helm of Iran must not possess nuclear arms? His intent against another
member state of the UN is clearly aggressive. Instead of the nations and the
secretary general initiating harsh reprisals by ejecting Iran from the UN until
it repents, they on the contrary attend the conferences convened by UN bodies
or under their auspices and listen courteously to Ahmadinejad’s convoluted
speeches of nonsense and incitement at the UN headquarters. An attack of the
sort threatened against Israel would be one of indiscriminate extermination and
genocide, motivated by hate and fanaticism, while a preventive Israeli attack
geared to preempt such a disaster would be directed only against the
threatening nuclear installations of Iran, though collateral damage will
unfortunately remain inevitable.
IDF chief of staff, Lieutenant General Benny
Gantz, declared in an interview broadcast on Israel’s sixty-fourth Independence
Day (May 2012) that “The IDF is ready to move against Iran the minute it
receives the green light.” “The Iranians are determined to build a nuclear weapon
while they continue to dupe the international community,” Minister of Defense
Ehud Barak added the following day. These very fateful declarations were not
gratuitous, for Israel’s leaders have been facing a series of existential
questions: should Israel attack Iran or pursue the diplomatic track? When, if
ever, is the right time to launch an attack? How should it be executed? How
will Iran’s leaders react to an onslaught on their nuclear facilities? The most
likely day-after scenario, as the international media sees it, is a devastating
Iranian response based mainly, though not entirely, on its long-range missile
arsenal. This attack would be coupled with terrorist strikes against Jewish and
Israeli targets abroad, and backed by Hizbullah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon, and perhaps
Hamas, its agent in Gaza.
If Israel initiates a military strike, something
that is not likely to pass without response, it will face an unprecedented
security challenge. Similarly, the Iranians will be confronting Israel and the
West for the first time. An attack against Iran would be far different than the
bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq or the air strike against the reactor in
Syria because for Israel, the element of surprise is already gone with the
Iranians putting their nation in a virtual state of preparedness. We should assume that the regime in Tehran
will make every effort to cause Israel such severe damage as to impute to
itself the status of a regional power, for Iran cannot allow the campaign to
end with it appearing ruined and humiliated. Iran will also seek to safeguard
its nuclear project so that it can quickly resume operations if damaged. Those
that believe Iran’s geographical distance from Israel will limit the Iranian
response, and that it will consist mainly of long-range counter fire, fail to
take into account the Iran-Syria-Hizbullah axis that enables Iran to bridge
great distances, despite the current Syrian turmoil that has curtailed that
capacity. The Syrian situation allowing, the Iranian Republican Guard ground
forces could be deployed along Israel’s northern border and even engage the IDF
in a protracted guerilla campaign on the frontlines.
