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The Nuclear Defense of Israel

[Yahoo/RealClearPolitics] Gregory Scoblete - Iran's defiant pursuit of nuclear technology has raised the specter of a nuclear war in the Middle East. It has also led to a debate over what role, if any, the U.S. should play in securing Israel against what appears to be an inevitable nuclear threat from the Islamic Republic. Some argue that because Israel is small, any nuclear attack would incapacitate its ability to launch a counter-attack, thereby diminishing the credibility of Israel's nuclear deterrent. Such statements overlook the considerable investment Israel has made in insuring against precisely just such a scenario. Were Iran to precipitate a nuclear exchange with Israel, the results would be calamitous for both sides. In a study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in 2007, Anthony Cordesman concluded that Israel could lose between 200,000 and 800,000 people while Iran could suffer as many as 16 to 28 million fatalities. The large disparity in death toll derives in part from Israel's quantitative and qualitative nuclear superiority: they would deliver significantly more weapons at much higher yields (i.e. destructive force) than Iran, and far more accurately to boot. Though Iran is a large country, its vulnerabilities are numerous: Tehran, a city of some 15 million, sits in a "topographic basin with a mountain reflector," Cordesman wrote. "Nearly ideal nuclear killing ground." Iran also lacks the kind of medical, civil and missile defenses that the Israelis possess. These weaknesses led Cordesman to conclude that though Israel would suffer grievously, it could emerge from such an exchange. On the other hand, he wrote, "Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term."
2008-04-30 01:00:00
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