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Iranians Ought To Be Clear on the Price of Going Nuclear
Opinion
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More in Forward ForumHillary Clinton recently asserted that if she were president and Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel, the United States would retaliate with strikes that could “totally obliterate” Iran. Here in America her pledge has ignited a flurry of commentary, most of which is likely to be forgotten after the presidential campaign is over. In Iran, it ought to have a sobering, long-term impact.
Iranians appear to have been surprised, even shocked, by Clinton’s stark language. Apologists for the mullahs’ regime and anti-regime exiles alike have filled the blogosphere with offended criticism; some even went so far as to accuse Clinton of espousing “genocide.” Such reactions demonstrate a naive failure to understand the real consequences of acquiring nuclear weapons.
Clinton’s language may seem bellicose, but the substance is hardly new. For decades it has been fundamental to American strategic policy that any country that attacked an American ally with nuclear weapons would face the possibility of nuclear retaliation from us.
This is true whether the ally is Iceland, Australia, Canada, Turkey or Israel. And it is true regardless of the identity, motivation or religious conviction of the attacker. Clinton was asked about Iran, but her answer could be equally applicable to, for example, North Korea.
Iran denies that it is seeking nuclear weapons. It can only be hoped that those denials represent the truth, but if they do not, Clinton’s comments should represent a forceful reality check for Tehran: To possess such weapons is to create the possibility of massive retaliation if you use them, or preemptive strikes if you threaten to use them.
Iranians of every political persuasion need to understand that the development of nuclear weapons would ipso facto propel their country into a dangerous environment in which it would be not only possible but inevitable that their use would bring on reprisals in kind, and in which fatal mistakes could be made.
That reality of the nuclear age was baldly stated and fully understood during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were constrained from attacking each other by the certainty of Mutual Assured Destruction. It is the reason why both sides stood down in the Cuban missile crisis.
And it is why Pakistan backed away from nuclear confrontation with India in their glacier war a decade ago. India developed its weapons in response to a threat from nuclear-armed China; when Pakistan unwisely followed India’s lead in developing nuclear weapons, it exposed itself to a risk of an Indian nuclear strike that would otherwise not have arisen.
The chilling calculus of mass death and destruction of entire civilizations is the reason no country has used nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. At that time, no other country had nuclear weapons, and thus the United States had no fear of nuclear reprisal. Once the Soviet Union and China developed nuclear capability, the strategic calculus changed.
The certainty of horrifying consequences underlies a fundamental premise of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a party — namely, that the existing nuclear powers will try to manage the world in such a way that it is not necessary or desirable for other nations to acquire nuclear weapons.
India, Pakistan and probably Israel placed themselves outside the treaty’s framework and went ahead with nuclear development. But several countries that had, or could have had, nuclear weapons accepted the treaty’s premise and refrained from acquiring or maintaining nuclear arsenals, among them Japan, South Africa, Brazil and Ukraine. Because they are not nuclear-equipped, there is — and will likely be — no talk of “obliterating” them. Iran should follow the same course.
Clinton was responding on television to a question about what she would do in the event of an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. In another forum she might have declined to answer such a question as hypothetical, but in the heat of tightly-contested presidential race, she evidently felt the need to show her toughness.
The corollary of her remarks is that if an attack on an ally comes from a country that does not have nuclear weapons, as in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, the United States may take action, but not on a nuclear scale. By virtue of not having nuclear weapons, the attacking country would know that the United States would not reduce it to radioactive ruins.
Iran and Americans who wish for better relations with Iran have seized upon last fall’s National Intelligence Estimate as evidence that the country has no nuclear weapons program. But many specialists argue that the report has been misinterpreted. The report says that while Iran had suspended its effort to build warheads, other aspects of nuclear development were continuing, including enrichment of uranium, and could be applied to the production of warheads with relative ease.
Hillary Clinton appears to understand that no president takes any weapons off the table when confronting an adversary. Whether or not she would really do what she said may be open to question. But what is not open to question is that Iranian acquisition of a nuclear arsenal would cast a mushroom cloud of suspicion and fear over the Iranian people.
Thomas Lippman, an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute, is a former national security reporter for the Washington Post.
Comments
Unfortunately, Hillary avoided the real issue upon which Israel's existence depends: bombing Iran's nuclear facilities BEFORE it obtains a nuclear weapon. The mullahs are willing to "martyr" millions of Muslims in order to destroy the "Zionist entity". Iran is about to obtain its bomb, and McCain seems to be Israel's best hope of survival.
why did hamas indorse abama if it did not feel that obama was more supportive of hamas policy???????
Mr. Lippman's screed is a sad commentary on how American Jews are treated like cattle to be stampeded at AIPAC's beck and call. Instead of writing for FORWARD readers-- intellectual thinkers and well informed-- who expect a "scholar" peddling his Middle East Institute credentials to be more informative, not behave like Chicken Little as if he too were calling for a steer stampede. The Iran nuclear issue has been exploited ad nauseum, as is Lippman's his commentary by the add next to it, disregarding the *real* Israeli analysis of the threat it faces from a nuclear Iran. Israel stands to suffer far more loss of security from the FORWARD's "news story"--uninformed and unhelpful-- about PM Olmert's legal problems. Long before Israel is "wiped off the map" by Ahmadinejad (by strapping an atomic bomb to his chest) it will erode as a nation because of press slander followed by sudden silence over the sullying of the reputation of every Prime Minister in my lifetime. So either there's something there that should be fixed with something other than screaming charges followed by eerie silence, or the faith of American Jews is needlessly shaken with these non-substantial sensationalist articles. Israel's constant association in press with scams at the top is the business of Israelis not the American FORWARD...talk about Bloomberg instead and leave Israel to the Israelis.
Returning to nuclear Iran, every Israeli military-intel-academic analysis realizes that the Iranian bomb is meant as deterrent to others, not to wipe Israel off the map (see Jaffee Inst. STRATEGIC ASSESSMENTS 2005). More to the point, I wonder if Mr. Lippman would have written the same warning for Israel in the 1950s when it endangered the security of its US benefactor vis-a-vis the Soviets, in collusion with France and South Africa, building its nuclear arsenal when he wrote:
"Iranians of every political persuasion need to understand that the development of nuclear weapons would ipso facto propel their country into a dangerous environment in which it would be not only possible but inevitable that their use would bring on reprisals in kind, and in which fatal mistakes could be made.
Neocons and Lippman notwithstanding, the 2007 NIE appeared not by accident but to tell Israel to shut up with the dire prophesies about Iran because the US would rather jaw than fight. It is ironic that it was OK for Bush, in return for a $10 billions aid package, to push Olmert into a Lebanon-->Syria-->Iran war (Olmert was man enough to stop it when he realized too many IDF were dying for Bush's domestic political tactics), but not for Olmert to push Bush into an attack on Iran's nuclear installations. It is true that all nations have permanent interests but temporary allies, neocons and AIPAC notwithstanding. Iran knows that from Bush's last term to when the US leaves Iraq, *every* president will negotiate any possible "honorable" exit with Iran. The "leak" of the 2007 NIE said it loud and clear.
Mr. Lippman goes on to note that: "India, Pakistan and probably Israel placed themselves outside the treaty’s framework and went ahead with nuclear development." The "probably Israel" gives away the propaganda nature of his piece....so sure are we about Iran's "bomb" but to this day we still say "probably" about Israel's arsenal. Wow!
Hillary's pandering to neocons have failed to deliver Jewish votes as Jews are as outraged by the idea of exterminating Iranians as of exterminating Jews. That's why most of them take dovish positions and no amount of "get along little doggies" is going to stampede them. But all these vacuous articles about "criminal suspect" Olmert will turn them off to their duty to Israel.
Mr. Lippman should try and think positive. If Iran gets the bomb-- like all machines Iranian, held together by rubber bands-- the Sunni neighbors of Israel cannot afford the cost of going nuclear too. And so they would then seek Israel as their nuclear umbrella against the "Shite Crescent"(sic). If Israel comes to terms with the Palestinians, they will be salesman for Israel in the Arab World. Every Arab of consequence I ever spoke to admits that they are far more likely to trust their Jewish "cousins" that the West or Americans who made such a mess of their region. As we in the West go "green," Israel, whose high tech education is the world's best, can truly become "a light onto the [Arab] nations," weaning them from a one product economy, as the Zionist Founders hoped.
Iran with a bomb will become a mature state. And, Israel with peace will become a TRUE state: recognized borders, regional economic leadership and peace, peace, peace. Mr. Lippman's commentary is no less hype than the add next to it. BUT I WELCOME IT (FAR MORE THAN THE TABLOIDISH ARTICLE ABOUT OLMERT) BECAUSE, AS THE NEOCONS FADE INTO THE SHADOWS, RECOGNIZED AS SHYSTERS, THE FUTURE OF ISRAEL AS A LEADER IN THE MIDDLE EAST CAN BE ENTERTAINED FAR MORE REALISTICALLY NOW THAN EVER BEFORE. It can then also cease to be a forever fetus to attached to a US aid placenta that counts of AIPAC to stampede American Jews. The issue is not Iran but peace and prosperity for the next generation in the extremely cerebrally "fertile crescent that is the region's youth.
So tiring hearing this when your darling Israel has hundreds of nukes. Iran has not attacked Israel. Ahmadinejad NEVER said wipe Israel off the map and it is disgusting that anyone would deliberately mistranslate what he said to justify attacking Iran. It's pretty clear who the bad guy is.
He's the one with nukes and the only one that has used nukes on the general populace. He's the one who kicked hundreds of thousands of Palestinians off their land (even though Palestine had NOTHING to do with the Nazi regime - heck, Zionists had more to do with the Nazis than the Palestinians did).
The wickedness of the deception is mind blowing.
But G-d WILL get back to you on this. He will indeed go after those from Gog and Magog that are running Israel (you know who you are you little AshkeNAZIS). You are fakes, the false Jews the Bible warned us about.
I feel so sorry for the true Jews, the ones that really do have Semitic blood and really are believers in Judaism, not those fake atheists from the Caucasus region that chose Judaism as a political decision because the latter, the Theodor Herzl's of this world used the Jews for their own Zionist goals (as mentioned in his own diary).
Ironic the ones who pushed for the creation of Israel weren't even SEMITIC! So...I'm guessing the reason why they rejected other land first and insisted on Palestine was done for another different, political reason.
We're on to you and I swear, if you try to eliminate more true Jews than you tried to during the Holocaust (through the underground Zionists, working with Hitler, etc.), you WILL suffer an eternity in pain.
zionists can threaten all they want but the right to bear arms is yet another universal that zionist want to abrogate for peoples they don't like. and if i had been a russian, i'd not only urge iran to manufacture a bomb of their own but would have sold them some. then we would find how tough israel is and how it would change its continuous saberrattling.
Why are there so many antisemites (anti-Zionists) reading the Forward? For any actual Jews who might be reading this, consider carefully: Hillary avoided the real issue upon which Israel's continuing existence depends: bombing Iran's nuclear facilities BEFORE it obtains a nuclear weapon. The mullahs are willing to "martyr" millions of Muslims in order to destroy the "Zionist entity". Iran is about to obtain its bomb. McCain now appears to be Israel's best hope of survival.
if anyone wants to call me antisemitic, i'd be honored. however, i'm much, much more against what zionists do and say. i also very strongly reject the torah. so i'm anti-zionist and an antijudaist. i'm also against a state for jews only or mainly. i believe that this criminal state will perish. that's ur problem: possible end of this state. antisemitism being a mere shibboleth: atacking person and avoiding the facts. thank u.
Yes, but Hillary was just posing, pandering to Jewish voters. Hillary is a liar, a poser, a self-centered manipulator. So let's take what she promises as it comes from a dishonest, say-anything-to-get-your-vote candidate who is unable even to administer her own campaign, much less our country. Clinton is a proven prevaricator and hypocrite. More of what we've, it seems, gotten used to. Too bad for us.