PrintMarch 17, 2009
Study: Israel could use ballistic missiles against Iran
A newsflash in Ha'aretz caught my eye. It read "16:09 Study: Israel could use ballistic missiles against Iran (Reuters)"
I googled the report, Study on a Possible Israeli Strike on Iran's Nuclear Development Facilities from the well-known Center for Strategic and International Studies, and went through its 104 pages. I was amazed, at these two sentences in particular:
"Deterrence: Creation of military threats to Iran so great that no rational Iranian leader could see an advantage from using weapons of mass destruction."
The key word here is, of course, ‘rational'. Have Abdullah Toukan and Anthony H. Cordesman not read Bernard Lewis's assessment on how Iran cannot be deterred? Professor Lewis made these remarks at the sixth annual Jerusalem Conference last month: "For[Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and his group, with their apocalyptic mind-set, mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent but an inducement." Have they never read Ahmadinejad's speech at the General Assembly of the UN?
Suggested Steps Towards Iran: "There will be no lasting resolution to the Iranian nuclear program until the broader interests of Iran, the US, the region and the world are addressed."
What are the "broader interests of Iran" in the context of Ahmadinejad's eschatological beliefs? Would the writers have considered writing a report on Tibet and the Dalai Lama? Of course not. How can anybody write a 104 page report on Iran and fail to even mention what beliefs drive the leadership?
Some of us who are well under the range of the Shahab 3 are not only worried about the technical details, but about the mindset of the Iranian leadership that makes Iran so dangerous.
