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Foreign Affairs
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The Root of All Fears
Why Is Israel So Afraid of Iranian Nukes?Ariel Ilan Roth
 ARIEL ILAN ROTH is the Associate Director of National Security Studies at the JohnsHopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
The special relationship between Israel and the United States is about to enter perhapsits rockiest patch ever. Israel is growing exasperated with the Obama administration’seffort to use diplomacy to roll back Iran’s growing uranium-enrichment program.Israelis know better than anyone else that the trick to developing a nuclear weapon as asmall power is to drag out the process of diplomacy and inspections long enough toproduce sufficient quantities of fissionable material. Israel should know: in the 1960s, itdeliberately misled U.S. inspectors and repeatedly delayed site visits, providing the timeto construct its Dimona reactor and reprocess enough plutonium to build a bomb. NorthKorea has followed a similar path, with similar results. And now, Israel suspects, Iran isdoing the same, only with highly enriched uranium instead of plutonium.Most observers believe that Israel’s preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program stemsfrom the fear that Iran would either use a nuclear weapon against Israel or give thebomb to one of its direct proxies, most likely Hezbollah. Given Tehran’s open hostilitytoward Jerusalem, such foreboding makes sense. But such a scenario is highlyimprobable.Tehran’s profound dislike of the Jewish state notwithstanding, it is unlikely to attackIsrael with a nuclear weapon because Israel’s atomic arsenal is orders of magnitudelarger than whatever infant capability Iran could muster in the foreseeable future.Moreover, Israel is believed to possess a secure submarine-based second-strikecapability that could devastate Iran.Nor would Iran readily supply Hezbollah with atomic weapons. No nuclear state hasever turned over its most prized military asset to a subsidiary actor or surrendered itsexclusive control over a weapon that it worked so hard to obtain. More important, if Hezbollah were to acquire and use a nuclear weapon against Israel, there would be nodoubt about the weapon’s provenance and Iran would immediately face devastatingretaliation. An attack on Israel, in other words, would mean the end of Iran.Although many analysts question the rationality of the Iranian regime, it is in fact fairly
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conservative in its foreign policy. Iran has two long-range goals, achieving regionalhegemony and spreading fundamentalist Islam, neither of which will be achieved if Iraninitiates a nuclear exchange with Israel. Tehran’s expanding influence in Iraq and thefear that it inspires in the Persian Gulf states are already advancing the first goal. Iranneeds only to possess nuclear weapons, not to use them, in order to further enhance itsinternational prestige and force adversaries to take it seriously. Likewise, the deterrentpower of an unused nuclear capability would allow the regime to spread its ideologywithout the constant worry of regime change imposed from abroad.Since it is doubtful that Iran will use nuclear weapons against Israel or surrender controlof the ultimate weapon to Hezbollah -- a point made recently by retired General ShlomoGazit in Ma’arachot, the quarterly journal published by the Israeli military -- one cansafely assume that the root of Israel’s Iranian obsession lies elsewhere.Israel fears that Iran’s nuclear ambitions could undermine its qualitative superiority of arms and its consistent ability to inflict disproportionate casualties on adversaries -- thecornerstones of Israel’s defense strategy. Although some idealists dream of reconciliation in the Middle East based on a genuine and mutual recognition of allparties’ legitimate rights, most Israelis believe the key to enduring peace in the MiddleEast is convincing Israel’s adversaries that ejecting Israel through force is an impossibletask not worth pursuing.Essential to inducing that sense of despair is Israel’s ability to continuously trounce itsenemies on the battlefield and suffer far fewer losses than it inflicts. The Iranian nuclearprogram threatens Israel’s ability to do this in two ways. First, an Iranian nuclearcapability would likely force Israel to restrain itself due to fears that Iran’s nuclearweapons could provide an implied security guarantee to other anti-Zionist forces -- thesort of guarantee that would prevent Israel from causing the massive losses it has inthe past, while giving anti-Israel forces the confidence to keep up the fight.Israeli restraint during a war could take many forms, but it is unlikely that theunmitigated rout of the 1967 Six-Day War or the direct threat posed to Arab capitals atthe end of the 1973 Yom Kippur War would have occurred if a nuclear guarantee hadbeen forthcoming from a true regional adversary such as Iran, rather than from adistant superpower such as the Soviet Union, whose chief interest lay in the humiliationof its rival, not the destruction of Israel.The even greater threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program is its potential to unleash acascade of proliferation in the Middle East, beginning with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Forboth of these states, the idea that Jews and Persians could have a monopoly on nuclearweapons in a region demographically and culturally dominated by Arabs is shameful.For Saudi Arabia, a security motivation will be at play as well, given its physicalproximity to Iran and the strategic imperative of deterring any Iranian threat to SaudiArabia’s oil-production facilities.The development of nuclear weapons by Egypt or Saudi Arabia would pose a gravedanger to the Jewish state, despite the fact that Egypt has signed a peace treaty withIsrael. This is because leaders who have reconciled themselves to Israel’s existence --including those of Egypt, Jordan, and certain segments of the Palestinian nationalmovement -- have done so because they believed Israel was strong but unlikely to
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