Iranian nuke vs. Israeli nuke: Which is the problem and which is the solution?

Most of mankind's experience with nuclear weapons has been with nations pointing them at one another. My nuke deters you from using your nuke and vice versa. I don't have a degree in strategic thermonuclear war but I don't think I need one to suggest that most of the nuclear weapons being deployed today are themselves pointed at other nuclear weapons. To find an example of a nation that doesn't aim their nukes at other nukes you would have to go to Israel. Israeli nukes appear to know no other nuke as a target, being deployed instead to deter conventional assault by one or more of any number of enemies it has in the region. Given the disparities in population, land area and wealth (oil) between Israel and its enemies, it isn't very difficult to see why Israel would want to have these kinds of weapons.

But at the same time it isn't difficult to see how such a unilateral deployment of nuclear weapons goes well beyond providing deterrence, it constitutes a threat to the other side greater than the one it was designed to meet; that it doesn't do anything to address an imbalance in power between Israel and its neighbors, indeed, it only makes the problem worse.

What I can't help thinking is that if Israel's emergence as a regional power were balanced by similar progress by one of its neighbors we'd be in a much better position today in moving towards peace in the region.

It's hard to see how Israel would have been able to justify the risk of establishing more and more settlements, deeper and deeper into Palestinian territory, if there was a nation that was simultaneously sympathetic to the Palestinians' plight and in possession of nuclear weapons.

And if the same stalemate that ultimately gave way to a better relationship between the U.S. and Russia only succeeded at putting an end to the cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, it would be the beginning of hope for that part of the world. There are bitter disagreements that go beyond the occupied territories, but none of these are given the kind of fuel the atrocity-of-the-day in the occupied territories provides. These other disagreements eventually fade from memory. But the occupation, it keeps going. It keeps the wounds fresh. And every day it continues we are given another day we have to wait before we can ever hope it will stop.

Israel's advocates want to ascribe all criticism of the state as anti-Semitism, but really, I think it has more to do with the fact that there seems to be no end-game that causes so much concern. Congratulations, you guys have succeeded in pissing off all of Islam... and in making them pissed off at us too! Now what? Kill more Palestinians? Take more land away from them? Destroy more lives?

Does anybody seriously believe that this is going to solve anything?

A nuclear Iran is therefore a good thing I think. It returns the nuclear equation in the region to one more in line with the status quo — mutual assured destruction — and could actually put a check on Israel's aggression towards the Palestinians; and that in turn could mean an end to provocative behavior on all sides. You need a day of peace before you can have two days of peace, and so on. Stop the violence and attitudes will change... over time.

The alternative is to intertwine the stereotype of the Arab suicide bomber with the caricature being crafted of Iran's President and assume that a nuclear Iran must mean an Iran that will seek to use nuclear weapons first, even though it knows that the inevitable response would utterly destroy it. That a nation goes through the inexorably slow process of creating these weapons, just to commit national suicide.

Obviously it would be better to keep the number of buttons that can be pushed to start a nuclear war down to as few as possible. A new nuclear state isn't something to cheer about.

But decades of abusive U.S. foreign policy in the region created these conditions and made the events we are seeing unfold today inevitable. If we were truly concerned with proliferation we would have seen the Israeli arsenal for what it was — a challenge to other nations in the region to create something similar — and we would have taken steps then to address that threat.

Better yet, we'd continue to look for ways to safely disarm; Israel, the U.S., ... everybody. The very best way you can convince others to not build bombs is to not threaten them with bombs in the first place.

So, I think it goes without saying that the now deafening drumbeat for war against Muslims is more of exactly the same idiocy that has us floundering in Iraq today. They can't bring themselves to confess to the fact of Israel's nuclear arsenal, but they can employ almost every dirty trick in the English language to make you believe that Iran is going to attack the moment it has a bomb, even as we have no evidence of the intent to build that bomb, let alone that they already have one or are planning to use one if they had it.

Indeed, the Iranians are in lawful compliance of international law on this matter. Why is so much attention then paid on their non-existent weapons program even as Israel — which not only possesses these weapons but flouts international law in doing so — is given a free pass, even as it is committing acts of violence daily?

Well, of course, I've answered that here before.

One last point... disregarding the fact of Israel's nuclear arsenal for the moment, why isn't anyone asking about its size? Some estimates see Israel's nuclear arsenal consisting of hundreds of bombs in 1980, well before they had the means to deliver these weapons outside the region. And certainly, hundreds of weapons is far in excess of the number required to deter conventional attack.

This isn't a minor detail. If the number of weapons exceeds the means of delivering them during a time of war, it suggests that the weapons may have instead been deployed during a time of peace, transported via conventional transport and hidden in the target country, waiting to be set off.

A responsible media would be asking Israel's government whether at any time any such weapons were forward deployed, here in America or in an allied nation, and if so, how many, where, when, and why?