SHOULDN’T THE PALESTINIANS BE TERRIFIED OF IRAN?
[This Monday’s Archive was first published on December 8, 2005. In response to last week’s HFR (11/17), TTPer Brant asked on the Forum: “What is Israel’s future when one nuclear bomb could destroy the heart of the country in what would be the Jews second Holocaust? This is being morally set up by the general rise in anti-Semitism especially in the United States.” This essay of 18 years ago may help to provide an answer.]
TTP, December 8, 2005
The current insult to the Nobel Peace Prize is International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei. This week he announced that “the global community is beginning to lose patience” with the Iranian nuclear program. In an interview with the Arabic-language daily al-Hayat published Dec. 7, ElBaradei said the time period in which a solution to the crisis can be found is short, but that “a military solution is not an option.”
It’s as if ElBaradei was reading from a script written by South Park geniuses Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the sequel to their movie Team America. The greatest (and grossest) right-wing liberal-bashing film of modern times[1] has a scene where UN inspector Hans Blix warns North Korea’s Kim Jong-il to turn over his weapons of mass destruction “or else.”
“Or else what?” Kim asks.
“Or else the United Nations will be very angry with you and will send you a very strong letter of protest!” Blix answers. With that, Kim throws Blix into his shark tank, and potty-mouth curses as he watches Blix chewed to bloody shreds. Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has the same regard for ElBaradei.
The fear that Ahmadinejad will make good on his threat – made in a public speech in Tehran on October 26 – to “wipe Israel off the map,” is growing by the day in Jerusalem. In response to Ariel Sharon’s declaring on December 1st that Israel “will not be able to accept a nuclear-armed Iran,” Iran’s Guardian Council that controls the country stated on December 3rd that any attempt by UN teams to inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities will be blocked.
Israeli military intelligence now states that Iran may have the capacity to build a nuclear bomb by March, 2006.
That’s less than four months away.
Thus the pressure for Israel to mount an attack on Iranian facilities is getting intense. Yet they are dispersed and dug in deep fortified subterranean tunnels. Sabotage, rather than a missile attack, seems the only option – but the frightening reality is that Mossad, the Israeli CIA, can’t pull it off.
Some sort of military assault, covert or overt, may be attempted anyway, but let’s also watch out for Sharon to deal a card from the bottom of the deck as well. This sure is a good time he thinks, for some Psy-Ops – directed at the Palestinians, and all Sunni Moslems worldwide.
It is a very good time to point out to them that there is no way to make a nuclear bomb that just kills Jews. There is no way to “wipe Israel off the map” in a Nuclear Armageddon without wiping out the Palestinians as well.
Granted, Shiite Iranian mullahs don’t care about Sunni Palestinians. As a matter of fact, it is a little known dark Middle Eastern secret that Palestinians are despised by their fellow Arabs. The Palestinians are the (pardon the vulgarity, but it expresses the contemptuous reality) n*ggers of the Arab World.
Their “plight” over which Arabs pretend to agonize is only an excuse to focus Arabs’ Nazi-type hatred of Jewish Israel.
So millions of Arabs would rejoice over the nuclear slaughter of millions of Palestinians if millions of Jews were slaughtered as well. But the Palestinian survivors sure wouldn’t rejoice.
Yes, the terrorist leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, et al, are eager to find some stupid schmuck willing to blow himself up to serve their purposes. But neither they, nor Palestinians as a whole, are suicidal.
A nuclear fireball detonated over Jerusalem would kill a substantial fraction of the city’s half-million Jews – and the city’s quarter-million Palestinians. But not only lives would be destroyed. Next to the Kaaba in Mecca, the most sacred site to Sunni Moslems in the world is the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which comprise the Haram esh-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary on top of Temple Mount.
A nuke would turn the Noble Sanctuary into radioactive dust. This is what Iran’s terrorist leaders are threatening to do. So all you Palestinians, all you Moslems out there, wherever you are , get the picture: Wiping Israel off the map means wiping your sacred Noble Sanctuary[2] off the map as well. It’s an inescapable package deal. Still think Iran is on your side?
The Palestinians have more to fear from a nuclear attack on Israel than the Jews. Iran might be able to build a handful of firecracker fission (“atom bomb”) nukes in the 10 to 20 kiloton range. Set any of these off in an above-ground airburst to maximize lethality and the heat fries everyone within a mile radius, the neutrons travel about a mile and a half, the gamma rays much less, killing folks with radiation poisoning.
The radiation effects are very localized. Anyone five miles away would just get a sunburn. The greatest danger more than a few miles away is flying glass from blown-out windows caused by the shock wave. (That was the purpose of duck-and cover practice diving under your desk in school back in the 50s: avoiding the flying glass.)
Any effective nuking of Israel would thus have to score multiple detonations in Israel’s population centers. There is no way to do this in a country the size of New Jersey without devastating the Palestinian population at least as much as the Israeli.
In any nuclear attack on Israel, Iran would have to make a choice: use their handful of bombs to hit the population centers, or the Zechariah nuclear missile base southeast of Tel Aviv. They cannot do both. It will take multiple direct hits to incapacitate Zechariah, collapsing the underground tunnels for the TELs (transporter-erector-launchers).
These launch the Jericho-2 missile with a range of 2,000 miles carrying a nuke far more lethal than an Iranian firecracker.
Israel has at least 200, and possibly as many as 400 nuclear warheads, many of which are fusion (“hydrogen bomb”) in the range of 150 kilotons, many times more destructive than whatever the Iranians come up with. The Jericho-2 can easily reach Tehran or any other location in Iran. A nuclear strike by Iran upon Israel will precipitate the nuclear retaliatory annihilation of Iran.
The mullahs need to realize the name of Zechariah was chosen with a purpose for Israel’s missile base. It is Hebrew for: “God remembers with a vengeance.”
It is Moslems, Sunni Moslems in particular, who need to be terrified of a nuclear Iran. And indeed, Amahdinejad’s wipe-off-the-map bluster may be misdirection, for he must know that Israel and the Jews will survive his attack, and he and his country will not survive theirs.
No, Amahdinejad intends to be an 800 pound Shiite Nuclear Gorilla, pushing around the Sunnis of the Middle East.
Sunni Saudi Arabia – hated by Iran’s mullacracy – would be defenseless. So would Sunni Jordan – hated by the mullahs. So would Dubai and the Emirates. So would Kuwait.
Iran is going to aim its nukes at them. They either become colonial subjects of Iran – or (get ready for this) make a deal with Israel and be placed under the protection of an Israeli nuclear umbrella.
They could try this with another nuclear neighbor, and a Sunni Moslem one at that: Pakistan. But Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is devoted to protection from India, and it is limited (around 25 or so low-kiloton fission warheads). An Israeli umbrella may prove an irresistible option.
You can be sure than Ariel Sharon is aware of this. It may have been a motivating factor for him to politically nuke Likud, form his own party, Kadima (Forward), and persuade Labor legend Shimon Peres and Likud Chairman Tzachi Hanegbi to bolt their parties and join him.
Could the threat of Iranian nukes drive the Saudis into recognizing Israel’s existence in exchange for Israeli nuclear protection? That’s what Arik (Sharon’s nickname) is going for. Getting Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist crazies to look upon Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah as a dangerous enemy rather than an anti-Zionist ally will be a tougher sell.
Nonetheless, Sharon sees the cosmic irony of Iranian nukes being of benefit to Israel. That’s why the publicity of Israel’s successful test of the Arrow ABM (anti-ballistic missile) last week, shooting down over the Mediterranean a mock Iranian Shahab-3 missile, was directed not just at the Iranians – but the Saudis, the Kuwaitis – and the Palestinians.
“Israel can protect you from Iran,” is Sharon’s message to them. “The only price for our protection is peace between us.”
[1] My review of Team America is Bill Anthony’s Dream Come True (October 2004).
[2] Notwithstanding that the religious importance of Jerusalem to Islam is a made-up myth. See The Moslem Myth of Jerusalem (December 2003).