Israel Matzav: Obama's preparations

Obama's preparations

In a Thursday editorial, the Washington Times ripped President Obumbler's preparations for a nuclear Iran:

American planners are pondering whether Iran can be deterred from using nuclear weapons. This is the wrong question. They should instead examine how the United States will be deterred should Iran go nuclear.

Even under the current equation (the United States has nuclear weapons and Iran does not), Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorists, supplies Hamas and Hezbollah with rockets and conventional weapons, and gives materiel, training and intelligence support to extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of more American military personnel than any other country since the Vietnam War. Tehran does not lack the will to stand up to the United States even without nuclear weapons. It's chilling to consider how much more bold Iran will be with an atomic arsenal.

A nuclear Iran would not immediately launch a full-scale war. At the very least, Tehran would need time to enlarge its nuclear stockpile. But testing a nuclear weapon would give the Islamic Republic an instant insurance policy against regime change. They know that the United States would not respond to their new capability with vigor, so Iran will use nuclear leverage to pursue conflict at the lower ends of the conflict scale.

This is the most important lesson of Cold War-style nuclear deterrence: preventing warfare at the nuclear level encouraged conflict by other means. This was demonstrated by the explosion of unconventional wars from the 1950s to the 1980s.

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The United States should be planning for the more probable contingency of an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program. When Israel says something is unacceptable, it means it, and Israel is not afraid to back up its statements with force.

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Israel Matzav: Obama's preparations