Iran is a threat to the Middle East as well as Israel and the West

By Aussiegirl

In an outstanding and must-read article in today's American Thinker, James Lewis lays out a sobering and alarming, yet sadly completely plausible scenario of what will happen after a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel. He correctly points out that Arab states have much to fear from such an eventuality. The fact, as he states, that even moderate Arab commentators are pooh-poohing the development of nuclear weopons by Iran, is alarming given the potentialities for disaster.

Stay tuned -- this is going to be a very interesting and scary year.

The American Thinker

The leaders of Iran and North Korea care little about losing a hundred thousand people, as Iran did in the war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and as North Korea has done, simply by criminal mismanagement of its economy. So the biggest problem isn’t their technology but their fanatical inclinations, combined with the means for one man to produce a catastrophe at the push of a button.

Mr. Taheri seems to hint that Iran could launch a nuke at Israel without harming anyone else. But that is utterly misguided. First, Iran has other enemies, including Sunni Arab nations, which could not retaliate against a nuclear attack. Second, Israel might well respond to an Iranian WMD attack with some of its 200 presumed nuclear weapons. That is a vital fact for anyone living in the neighborhood. Any nuclear attack on Israel is likely to trigger massive retaliation.

The effects would not be localized. If Israel were to bomb Tehran, Qom or Natanz, radioactive fallout could spread to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf States. Some readers of the Arab News would surely suffer. Further, an Iranian attack on Tel Aviv would devastate the Palestinians, who do not have fallout shelters and survival training, as the Israeli population does. The logic of Mutually Assured Destruction is precisely that: mutual.