"For By Wise Counsel, Thou Shalt Make Thy War."
Proverbs, 24,6
For the moment, of course, an Israel-Iran nuclear war is logically out of the question, and thereby not meaningfully subject to any tangible calculations. After all, Iran is not yet an operational nuclear power, and there is literally no point in presuming any useful possibilities for systematic or genuinely scientific investigation. Nonetheless, in prospectively existential matters, prudence can (and should) take assorted innovative forms, and the July 14, 2015 Vienna Pact (JCPOA) concerning Iranian nuclear weapons will not constrain Tehran indefinitely.[1]
Inevitably, therefore, Jerusalem will have to plan accordingly, including at least residual preparations for a still-suitable but plausibly limited preemption option.
This assessment is pertinent because, at this already late date, launching any tactically comprehensive preemption against pertinent Iranian weapons and infrastructures is likely no longer achievable. In this connection, even back in 2003, when my ownProject Daniel Group had offered a very early report on Iranian nuclearization to then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, Iranian targets were already more daunting than was Iraq's Osiraq reactor on June 7, 1981.[2]
In any event, to the limited extent that they may even be usefully estimated, the calculable risks of a future Israel-Iran nuclear war would depend upon whether such conflict were intentional, unintentional, or accidental. Apart from applying this critical tripartite distinction, there could be no supportable reason to expect any systematic and purposeful strategic assessments from Tel Aviv. Always, however, once applied, Israeli planners must proceed with an unassailably core understanding that their enormously complex subject is sui generis, "wide open" to multiple non-verifiable assumptions and theories.[3]
Nonetheless, it remains essential that competent Israeli strategic analysts soon do their available best to examine and measure all current and future nuclear risks originating from Iran. In this connection, it may make good sense to study what is currently happening between Washington and Pyongyang as a partial "model" for ascertaining Israel's long-term existential threats from Iran. To wit, in examining the more-or-less overheated rhetoric coming from both US President Trump and North Korean President Kim Jung-Un, it appears that neither leader is currently paying appropriately close attention to the very particular risks of an unintentional or accidental nuclear war. READ MORE
