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No civilization, American, Israeli or otherwise, can long exist with a series of 9/11-like attacks that destroy its centers of financial and military power, and in a matter of seconds inflict a trillion dollars of economic damage not to mention the cost in human lives and the suffering caused by nuclear fallout for generations to come.
When it comes to the subject of Iran, the Iranians have made their intentions clear. Iran is governed by religiously fanatical mullahs who do not shrink from any sacrifice or wreaking any destruction, if they believe that it will bring their Islamic-inspired goals to fruition. Not only are they (together with the Saudis) one of the primary financial benefactors of worldwide Islamic jihad and global terrorism, but they have restated on many occasions that the primary targets of their religious fanaticism are the U.S. (the “big Satan”) and Israel (the “little Satan”), perceived as being America’s agent in the Middle East.
In a series of national sermons on December 15, 2000 and later in January 2001, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that "The cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region....and the perpetual aim of Iran is the obliteration of Israel." On December 14, 2001, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said that it might be a good thing to strike Israel with nuclear weapons. "The application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world," Mr. Rafsanjani said. "Jews shall expect to be once again scattered and wandering around the globe the day when this appendix [Israel] is extracted from the region and the Muslim world." 1
He added that a bomb used against Israel "would leave nothing on the ground" and would rid the world of much "extraneous matter," by which he appears to mean the almost seven million Jews living in Israel (and untold millions of Arabs in the surrounding areas). Rafsanjani openly speculated, (at Tehran University) that Israel could be destroyed with nuclear weapons since the Islamic world could absorb any Israeli response - the implication being that absorbing a nuclear response from Israel was strategically acceptable as the price for Israel's destruction!
After years of deception, it is now apparent to those in the field that all attempts at dialogue (pushed primarily by the Europeans), sanctions (by the U.S.) and threatened punitive action (by Israel) to preempt Iran’s nuclear ambitions have not managed to dissuade the mullahs from their not-so-secret goal.
If anything, these international efforts have reinforced the belief of the mullahs that the West is weak and decadent, and if they can offer sufficient “carrots” to the Western powers, they will acquire the time necessary to develop operational nuclear weapons.
Since most international intelligence agencies now universally acknowledge that Iran already possesses the advanced Shahib-5 missile (with a range of 3,500 miles – well within the range of Israel) necessary to deliver nuclear payloads, the issue comes down a matter of time before their nuclear capability becomes operational…..and to this - either a nuclear Iran (under its current regime) will be permitted to become another rogue nuclear power (like North Korea) to threaten Western security in order to achieve its future expansionist goals and create a nuclear arms race in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, (who have been secretly pursuing their own nuclear weapons programs), or Iran must be prevented, at all costs, from achieving nuclear capability by a collective or individual preemptive strike.
What follows is a true and horrifying panorama of what could occur should an Iranian nuclear missile penetrate the Israeli Arrow II missile defense shield. It is a scenario reflected in an article that appeared in the Washington Times, by Prof. Louis Rene Beres of Perdue University (Chairman of Project Daniel, a small high-level group advising Israel's prime minister on nuclear issues) and described the stark realities that would befall any nation (in this case, Israel) in the aftermath of a nuclear strike:
"The anticipated physical and biological effects could involve temperature changes; contamination of food and water by radionuclides; disease epidemics in crops, domesticated animals and humans due to ionizing radiation; shortening of growing seasons; irreversible injuries to aquatic species; widespread and long-term cancers due to inhalation of plutonium particles; radiation-induced developmental anomalies in persons in utero at the time of detonations; a vast growth in incidence of skin cancers; and an increasing incidence of genetic disease...
Overwhelming health problems would afflict the survivors of a nuclear attack upon Israel. These problems would extend far beyond the consequences of prompt burn injuries. Retinal burns would occur in the eyes of persons far from the explosions. Israelis would be crushed by collapsing buildings and torn to shreds by flying glass. Others would fall victim to raging firestorms. Fallout injuries would include whole-body radiation injury, produced by penetrating, hard gamma radiations; superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations; and injuries produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body.
After an Arab and/or Iranian nuclear attack, even a "small" one, those few medical facilities that might still exist in Israel would be taxed well beyond capacity. Water supplies would become altogether unusable. Housing and shelter could be unavailable for hundreds of thousands - perhaps even millions - of survivors. Transportation would break down to rudimentary levels. Food shortages would be critical and long term... Israel's complex network of exchange systems would be shattered. Virtually everyone would be deprived of the most basic means of livelihood. Emergency police and fire services would be decimated. All systems dependent upon electrical power could stop functioning. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychiatric disorders for which there would be absolutely no therapeutic services... Normal human society would cease.
The Report goes on... The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry would augment plague and epidemics. Many of the survivors would expect an increase in serious degenerative diseases. They would also expect premature death, impairment of vision and sterility. An increased incidence of leukemia and cancers of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary and uterine cervix would be unavoidable... Many balanced relationships in nature would be upset by the extensive fallout. Israelis who survive the nuclear attack would have to deal with enlarged insect populations. Like the locusts of biblical times, mushrooming insect hordes would spread from the radiation-damaged areas in which they arose... Insects are generally more resistant to radiation than humans. This fact, coupled with the prevalence of unburied corpses, uncontrolled waste and untreated sewage, would generate tens of trillions of flies and mosquitoes. Breeding in the dead bodies, these insects would make it impossible to control typhus, malaria, dengue fever and encephalitis."2
In short, the effects of a nuclear attack on Israel are too horrible to consider. Even the description given above cannot begin to do justice to the devastation and total destruction that would be wrought. Israeli intelligence believes that its Iranian tormentor is prepared to convert the entire Middle East into a hell in order to achieve its objectives.
It is clear that that has to be prevented at all costs. If persuasion and diplomacy fail, the United States or Israel (with or without the tacit approval of the United States) would have to preempt Iran, by whatever means possible, from acquiring nuclear weapons and using them for political blackmail.
As we enter the 21st century, both our way of life and our resolve to survive as a viable society are being tested by a new barbarian who seeks to open the gates of Armageddon. This is the most critical political cause of our time and we are being tested.
FOOTNOTES
1. Douglas Frantz, "Iran Closes In On Ability to Build a Nuclear Bomb," LA Times, August 4, 2003.
1. Louis Rene Beres, "Israel's Must-Have," The Washington Times, July 22, 2004
Mark Silverberg is a former member of the Canadian Justice Department, a past Director of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Western Office) based in Vancouver, and served as a Consultant to the Secretary General of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem during the first Palestinian intifada.
Debkafile recently disclosed that it was Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, not the Obama administration, who decided to postpone the largest joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise Austere Challenge 12 ever planned between the two countries. That exercise had been scheduled for April 2012, and was to have tested the level of coordination between the two armies in missile defense in the event of a war with Iran or a regional conflict. Netanyahu’s concern was and is that the presence of a large U.S. military contingent in Israel would inhibit his country’s ability to conduct a preemptive strike on the Iranian nuclear reactors. It would seem that Israeli military strategists have concluded that the U.S. is unwilling to undertake such a strike regardless of how many “red lines” are crossed.
A just released 68-page Study produced by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists argues that Iranian President Ahmadinejad's declaration that "Israel should be wiped off the map" is part of a hate campaign that is punishable under the 1948 UN Genocide Convention. The Study comes on the heels of an Iranian-sponsored international “Holocaust-cartoon contest†last August in which the “fictitious event†(the Holocaust) served as material for the cartoonists’ creations and follows an Iranian government-sponsored two-day Conference in December 2006 titled "Review of the Holocaust: A Global Perspective" - a Conference dedicated to the proposition that the Holocaust is an historical myth perpetrated by the Jewish people to extract reparations from Germany (thereby making the Germans the true victims) and to establish an illegitimate state.
Amid reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is purging reformist professors from Iranian universities, Mohammed Khatami, the former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran is winding his way through American cathedrals, cities and think-tanks shaking hands, giving interviews, buying more time for the Ayatollahs back home to complete their Islamic bomb and lecturing Americans on the ethics of tolerance - an interesting topic coming as it does from a former leader of one of the world's least tolerant regimes.
As Gerard Baker wrote recently in the Times of London: "Those who say war with Iran is unthinkable are right. Military strikes, even limited, targeted, and accurate ones, will have devastating consequences for the region and for the world. There are many fearfully powerful arguments against the use of the military option. But multiplied together, squared, and then cubed, the weight of these arguments does not come close to matching the case for us to stop, by whatever means may be necessary, Iran from becoming a nuclear power."
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