(The Diplomat-Japan) Michael Rubin - While the international community has been targeting banks, the Iranians have been able to play a shell game, creating new banks faster than we're able to designate banks as subject to sanctions. We need to sanction much more the Iranian central bank. Iran with a nuclear weapon would embolden Iran and its proxies. It would also set the Middle East down a cascade of proliferation. If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia will want it; Egypt has already told us they want it. For Israel, it's seen as an existential threat. The Israelis say, if the Islamic Republic was about to fall, what is to stop the Islamic Revolutionary Guard from launching a nuclear weapon at Israel in pursuit of its ideological goals, knowing that the regime is going to be gone the next day anyway and that the world isn't going to retaliate against a country that has just had regime change? That's where the idea of mutually assured destruction doesn't hold up. The writer is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School.
2010-12-16 10:01:39Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive