Transcript:
Peter Robinson:
Norman Podhoretz, in an interview in Arutz Sheva, how is it pronounced? -
Norman Podhoretz:
Aruttz Sheva
Peter Robinson:
Quote, quoting you .. If Iran gets the bomb it is hard, if not impossible, to see how a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel could be avoided". Close quote.
Now you know the answer to that . The Soviet Union had the bomb and we had the bomb and we sat facing each other for four and a half decades and did not engage in a nuclear exchange.
Norman Podhoretz:
I will give you Bernard Lewis's answer to that question, and then I will give you my own. Bernard Lewis points out that deterrence worked with the Soviets and the Chinese because the Soviets were not suicidal and they knew that if they launched a first strike there would be a second strike tha which would annihilate them --- mutual assured destruction
Peter Robinson:
And it worked
Norman Podhoretz
Mutual Assured Destruction can't work in relation to Iran because these are people who are in love with death
Bernard Lewis:
For them it is not a deterrent, it is an inducement
Peter Robinson:
Truly? Truly?
Norman Podhoretz:
Now I will give you my answer to this. That's' Bernard's answer to the question. My answer to the question is to imagine a scenario which most people are horrified. I've tried this in speeches all the time, people shy away from it. Imagine that Iran gets the bomb. OK and the Israelis are sitting there and asking themselves, do we wait for them to hit us and then retaliate out of the rubble or do we preempt it first? The Iranians are asking themselves the same question. Do we wait for the Israelis to hit us or do we hit them first. We've never had a hair trigger situation like that since the invention of nuclear weapons . If you just imagine the rulers of Iran asking themselves that question. Somebody is gonna beat the other to the punch. And I can't see that unstable situation lasting for very long, maybe even as along as a few weeks or months.
Peter Robinson:
And you would agree, here is what I find so striking.
You will hear it said among people who are not deep students of this situation that the notion that glorious death is an inducement to the radicals in the Muslim world, not a deterrent, and here I sit across the man who has devoted his life to the study of Islam, who is universally regarded as the greatest living historian in the world of Islam, and he says, yes as a matter of fact, that's exactly right, it is an inducement, deterrence would not work. You confirm that?
Bernard Lewis
Yes I would do, yes, with those who are committed believers in the old sense.
Norman Podhoretz, in an interview in Arutz Sheva, how is it pronounced? -
Norman Podhoretz:
Aruttz Sheva
Peter Robinson:
Quote, quoting you .. If Iran gets the bomb it is hard, if not impossible, to see how a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel could be avoided". Close quote.
Now you know the answer to that . The Soviet Union had the bomb and we had the bomb and we sat facing each other for four and a half decades and did not engage in a nuclear exchange.
Norman Podhoretz:
I will give you Bernard Lewis's answer to that question, and then I will give you my own. Bernard Lewis points out that deterrence worked with the Soviets and the Chinese because the Soviets were not suicidal and they knew that if they launched a first strike there would be a second strike tha which would annihilate them --- mutual assured destruction
Peter Robinson:
And it worked
Norman Podhoretz
Mutual Assured Destruction can't work in relation to Iran because these are people who are in love with death
Bernard Lewis:
For them it is not a deterrent, it is an inducement
Peter Robinson:
Truly? Truly?
Norman Podhoretz:
Now I will give you my answer to this. That's' Bernard's answer to the question. My answer to the question is to imagine a scenario which most people are horrified. I've tried this in speeches all the time, people shy away from it. Imagine that Iran gets the bomb. OK and the Israelis are sitting there and asking themselves, do we wait for them to hit us and then retaliate out of the rubble or do we preempt it first? The Iranians are asking themselves the same question. Do we wait for the Israelis to hit us or do we hit them first. We've never had a hair trigger situation like that since the invention of nuclear weapons . If you just imagine the rulers of Iran asking themselves that question. Somebody is gonna beat the other to the punch. And I can't see that unstable situation lasting for very long, maybe even as along as a few weeks or months.
Peter Robinson:
And you would agree, here is what I find so striking.
You will hear it said among people who are not deep students of this situation that the notion that glorious death is an inducement to the radicals in the Muslim world, not a deterrent, and here I sit across the man who has devoted his life to the study of Islam, who is universally regarded as the greatest living historian in the world of Islam, and he says, yes as a matter of fact, that's exactly right, it is an inducement, deterrence would not work. You confirm that?
Bernard Lewis
Yes I would do, yes, with those who are committed believers in the old sense.
