As more fiery rrhetoric surfaces from Iranian officials and news about Iran’s quest to join (along with North Korea) the world’s increasingly less exclusive Nuke Club, is Israel facing it’s own version of JFK’s Cuban Missile Crisis?
Our Quote of the Day comes from historian Victor Davis Hanson, writing in RealClearWorld, thinks so — and argues that it’s a crisis “all the time.”
Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars on trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?
A lot of reasons have been offered by various experts.
He then rattles off a slew of reasons. But what does he think is the “real” reason?
Yet, the real reason may be otherwise.
More likely, Iran wishes to break Israel’s will – not necessarily by a nuclear strike. Instead, periodic threats from a nuclear theocracy, it may recognize, would do well enough.
Once armed with the bomb, Iran will likely increase the frequency of its now-familiar denial of the Holocaust. In between such well-publicized lunacy, some Iranians like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will periodically threaten to wipe Israel off the map – or promise Armageddon if Israel retaliates against Hamas or Hezbollah.
The net effect would be for half the world’s Jews to hear constantly two messages – there was no Holocaust, but there might well be one soon. It would be analogous to the American public reliving the threats of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 – every day.
A recent poll revealed that a fourth of Israel’s population quite understandably might emigrate if Iran gets the bomb. And it seems likely that within a decade or two, a nuclear Iran could so demoralize the Israelis by such psychological intimidation that it could unravel Israel demographically without dropping a bomb.
Countries around the world would continue to sit idly by as they profit from lucrative trade with oil-rich Iran – now and then warning the Israelis not to be the preemptive aggressor and “start” a war.
Already, the Obama administration – through pro-Palestinian Middle East affairs nominations like Charles Freeman and Samantha Power, its pledge to help rebuild Gaza, its outreach to Syria and Iran, and its irritation with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu – seems to be telling Israel that it is increasingly on its own.
Given demographic realities in the Middle East, if a large minority of Israelis emigrates, then the end of the Jewish state becomes possible without Iran ever dropping the bomb that it now so eagerly wishes to acquire.
The real long term strategy? And, if this is it, how does Israel prepare for it and counter it?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.