china confidential
Friday, May 15, 2009
Israel's Terrible Dilemma
An Israeli attack on Iran's key nuclear facilities will have to be swift and decisive, given Iran's arsenal of long-range missiles, chemical warheads, and vows to "burn Tel Aviv" and shut down the Persian Gulf.
In other words, an Israeli attack will have to include wiping out Iranian missile installations and elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guard; and the outcome of the conflict will have to be decided in minutes. The war will have to be won in six-hours instead of six-days.
Israel will have to attack with both missiles and aircraft if it wants to prevent Iran from retaliating in ways that could force Israel to respond with nuclear weapons.
Israel will also have to preemptively strike Iran's forward army in Lebanon, the Hitlerian Hezbollah, which is bristling with an estimated 40,000 rockets--an arsenal, 10 times larger than that which Hezbollah had before the 2006 Lebanese war, capable of flattening Haifa and Tel Aviv. Israel has no defense against this threat.
Hezbollah and Hamas can be expected to send waves of suicide bombers into Israel in response to an Israeli attack on Iran; so devastating attacks on the Gaza-based terrorist army will also be necessary.
Syria, armed with missiles and chemical weapons, will not join the losing side. Hence the need for a quick, crushing victory.
Israel's challenge is enormous; the downside risk of a botched or semi-successful campaign, terrifying. Barring a miracle--e.g. regime change in Iran, or a united stand by the world community to impose truly tough sanctions on Iran--the only apparent alternative to military action is to allow the monstrous mullahocracy to develop nuclear weapons and to rely on Israel's nuclear deterrent power--the threat of mutual assured destruction--to dissuade the Islamist regime from using its weapons or handing them off to terrorists. Some alternative.
How did it come to this? How the did the United States and its European allies allow Iran to approach the threshold of nuclear might? Have we learned nothing from the history of the Second World War?
POSTSCRIPT: Click here or scroll for the China Confidential analysis of how and why the U.S. could be a nuclear Iran's first target.
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