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Nuclear War in the Middle East
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visits the Iranian centrifuges in Tehran, Iran, June 11, 2023. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Contrary to conventional wisdom, Israel’s “Iran nuclear problem” is not principally about enemy leaders who might go mad. The more worrisome existential problem for Israel is sane, rational enemies who experience miscalculation, poor reasoning or mechanical/electrical/computer malfunction. Other nuclear hazards that could coincide with Iranian sanity and rationality include accidental firing, unauthorized launch and coup d’état.
While it is true that decisions made by a mad Iranian nuclear adversary could have catastrophic consequences for Israel (even, indeed, by a mad pre-nuclear Iran), the likelihood of such decisions is lower than what could be expected of a sane and rational Iranian enemy. Because a nuclear war would be a unique event, such a likelihood cannot be expressed numerically or statistically but is still supportable by analytic argument.
Logic-based calculations suggest that the dispersion of nuclear dangers among multiple Iranian decisionmakers would be more perilous for Israel than the threat posed by a single authoritative Iranian leader who is mad or irrational. Here, madness and irrationality would include Iranian decisionmakers driven by jihadist theologies and principles.
In all circumstances, whether the greater danger to Israel is Iranian decisional madness or Iranian decisional sanity, Jerusalem must stay mindful of a possible “black swan” event. This need will be much greater if Iran is allowed to become a nuclear weapons state. Even at this late date, Israel should remain preemption-ready.
For Jerusalem, there are also time-urgent geopolitical considerations. Iran is approaching nuclear weapons capability concurrently with the acceleration by its jihadist proxies – Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, Islamic Jihad and Fatah – of terrorist crimes against Israel. Iran, which is steadily expanding its ties with Russia, China and North Korea, repeatedly declares its genocidal intentions toward Israel. And Israel is a state with no “strategic depth.”
Prima facie, Middle Eastern geopolitics are a system. Potentially related scenarios of superpower conflict may be dense or even opaque, but they remain relevant. Among other things, the continuously changing iterations of “Cold War II” could embrace international conflicts that involve Israel with North Korea, China, India or Pakistan. Such a dangerous embrace could be sudden or incremental.
For Israel to proceed purposefully, some primary and subsidiary distinctions need further clarification. One concerns the vital differences between a deliberate or intentional nuclear war and a nuclear war that is unintentional or inadvertent. Without considering this distinction, little of value can be determined about the likelihood of a nuclear conflict.
The greatest dangers of an unintentional nuclear war are decision-making errors, underestimations or overestimations of enemy intent, or simple miscalculations. As classical military theorist Carl von Clausewitz observed, “Everything is very simple in war, but even the simplest thing is difficult.”
There are other nuances to be considered. With regard to growing nuclear war risks in the Middle East, no concept could prove more clarifying than “synergy”. Synergistic interactions are those wherein the whole of nuclear war risk effects is greater than the sum of its parts. Unless such interactions are accurately assessed and evaluated in time, Israeli leaders could either underestimate or overestimate the cumulative impact of superpower competition on risk-taking. This suggests circumstances in which Russia and the United States (and perhaps China) struggle for escalation dominance in extremis – that is, during high-value crisis situations.
In the United States, allegedly reliable safeguards have been incorporated from the beginning into all operational nuclear command/control decisions. These safeguards do not apply, however, at the presidential level. In 1976, to gather informed policy clarifications regarding madness, irrationality and nuclear war, I reached out to retired General Maxwell D. Taylor, a former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Taylor sent a handwritten reply in which he concluded: “As to those dangers arising from an irrational American president, the only protection is not to elect one.”
In today’s convulsive world order, General Taylor’s succinct 1976 warning takes on even greater meaning. Based on both ascertainable facts and logic-based derivations, it is reasonable to assume that if an American president were to exhibit signs of emotional instability, irrationality or “mad” behavior, he/she could still lawfully order the use of American nuclear weapons. More worrisome, an American, Russian or Chinese president could become emotionally unstable, irrational or delusional, but not conspicuously exhibit such liabilities.
In all matters concerning nuclear war in the Middle East, there exist no histories from which to draw inferences. This is a fortunate absence, of course, but it still stands in the way of rendering reliable conflict predictions. The irony of this situation is obvious and problematic. Still, whatever the science-based obstacles to reliable prediction in this explosive region, Israel should approach the problem as an intellectual rather than a political challenge.
It must always be remembered that a nuclear war in the Middle East could occur as a spillover effect of nuclear war in Europe. To protect Israel’s survival, an American president should avoid strategic postures that neglect potential synergies with Russian, Chinese and/or North Korean postures. North Korea is a nuclear ally of Iran that built a nuclear reactor for Syria – the Al Kibar reactor, which was destroyed by Israel’s Operation Orchard on September 6, 2007. In law, that operation was a permissible act of anticipatory self-defense.
Strategist Herman Kahn wrote in the early 1960s that in the aftermath of a nuclear conflict, “survivors might envy the dead”. This is true whether the catastrophe was intentional or unintentional – in other words, whether it was spawned by base motives or by miscalculation, computer error, hacking, or a weapon system or infrastructure accident. Whatever else can be determined by Israel’s national security decisionmakers, they should understand that nuclear strategy is ultimately a high-stakes struggle between intentionality, uncertainty and calamity. Even if both Israel and a newly nuclear Iran were to undertake “sane” risk-taking measures during a crisis, the cumulative effect could still be mutually unwanted and “mad.”
For Israel, the only successful outcome of protracted military conflict with Iran would be a tangible reduction of Iran’s nuclear war-fighting capabilities and intentions. Optimally, this point will be understood and operationalized while Iran is still pre-nuclear.
Once it is at war with either a nuclear Iran or a pre-nuclear Iran with a willing nuclear proxy (e.g., North Korea), Israel could be mortally wounded by rational decisions made by sane enemy leaders. Even now, though Iran is not yet nuclear, it could use radiation dispersal weapons against the Jewish State and/or launch non-nuclear missiles at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.
In world politics, the most significant risks of nuclear war are not those of madness or irrationality. They are the cumulatively catastrophic risks of sane and rational decisions. For Israel, this means the worst-case Iranian nuclear war scenario is not the popular narrative of mad leadership in Tehran, but one of sane adversaries operating in opposition to sane adversaries in Jerusalem.
In this bewildering world order, the accumulated risks of a mutually sane search for escalation dominance could include nuclear war. Israeli leaders should be wary of mad or prospectively mad Iranian leaders, but even more wary of the nuclear consequences posed by sane and rational Iranian decision-makers.
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018). A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Examining Three Remarkable Women From Jewish History in These Turbulent Times
A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.
Anyone interested in history will know that the Yalta Conference was a meeting between the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union that took place in February 1945 towards the end of the Second World War. There is a famous photograph of Roosevelt and Stalin sitting next to an unhappy Winston Churchill, who realized he was being marginalized. As we now know, Stalin suckered Roosevelt into believing him to be someone that could be worked with, when he was actually a murderous fanatic. And it seems so far that Putin is going to sucker Trump over Ukraine, and I fear Iran will too.
Like Roosevelt, Trump wants a deal. But as Barack Obama has shown, naive appeasement is the road to disaster. Only time will tell if the case with Iran is going to be another example.
But here, by way of distraction, I am writing about a person. This Yalta was a distinguished lady from a noble and wealthy family who lived in Babylon between the end of the Second and the Third centuries. She had a strong sense of self-worth, and self-confidence in an era of almost total male dominance. She was, according to Rashi, the daughter of the Exilarch, the head of the Jewish community in Babylon. She was familiar with Jewish law. But she had a temper. When she thought she was being slighted, she smashed four hundred barrels of wine after a guest offended her and women in general (TB Brachot 51b.)
Yalta showed her expertise in kashrut matters. In a debate that hinted at current questions of what constitutes meat if it is produced artificially, she asked her husband about kosher food that would taste like meat cooked in milk. She argued the halachic case expertly. And he accepted the argument (TB Chullin 109b). She also argued the law in other matters such as purity.
Yalta was a doctor too. She personally took Rav Amram to the bathhouse to soak in hot water for a cure when he was stricken with an unknown disease (TB Gittin 67b). And she offered her husband counsel on how to deal with someone who was arguing with him disrespectfully (TB Kidushin 70b). Perhaps these were not in themselves major issues — but they were indicative of her importance in that society, where the only chance women had beyond the home depended either on independent wealth or a compliant husband.
The more famous Talmudic woman however, was Bruria, the daughter of the saintly Chaninah Ben Teradion (an outstanding scholar, from a very wealthy family and martyred by the Romans). She was the wife of Rebbi Meir, who lived in Israel during the second century CE. He is the third most frequently mentioned rabbi in the Mishnah.
She was admired for her breadth of knowledge. She was said to have learned 300 laws from the rabbis on a single cloudy day (TB Pesachim 62b) and was happy to challenge rabbis she thought less knowledgeable than she was. She was also renowned for her sharp wit and often caustic jibes, attacking males for underestimating women. Rebbi Meir was sorely troubled by local louts and prayed that they should die. Bruria argued that he should rather pray that evil disappear. Not people.
The third important woman is Rav Chisda’s daughter. Her actual name is never mentioned. She was gifted with the power of prophecy. She predicted her marriage to her father’s two students (consecutively). First, she was the wife of the Rami Bar Chama, and after his death she married Rava (both were Amoraim of the third generation). She is mentioned many times in the Talmud and commentaries in the Talmud and its commentaries only as “the daughter of Rav Chisda.” The Talmud (TB Bava Batra 12b) says she sat on her father’s lap as he taught Torah in the academy and taught her and her sisters Torah and laws, personally. There were rabbis in those days and later who recognized the value of female scholarship and empowerment — even in times when the rest of the world resolutely refused to encourage it.
Right now, we need people who demonstrate leadership through creativity and flexibility. Most are being silenced by the plague of conformity and the fear of stepping out of line. But the reality is that more and more women within the Orthodox world are studying to the highest levels and making their mark. There are signs of their campaigning to achieve political power too. More power to their elbows (so long as they are covered of course)! You can’t keep a good woman down forever. And more young men are volunteering to serve in the army.
Trump seems to have learnt the lesson of Yalta. But will his natural desire for a long-term deal end up with his being suckered by Iran’s ideology of deceit to achieve victory? Time will tell. Meanwhile, I pray Israel will take a long hard look at its divisive politics.
The author is a writer and rabbi, currently based in New York.
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Battling to Survive, Hamas Faces Defiant Clans and Doubts Over Iran
Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
Short of commanders, deprived of much of its tunnel network, and unsure of support from its ally Iran, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is battling to survive in Gaza in the face of rebellious local clans and relentless Israeli military pressure.
Hamas fighters are operating autonomously under orders to hold out as long as possible, but the Islamist group is struggling to maintain its grip as Israel openly backs tribes opposing it, three sources close to Hamas said.
With a humanitarian crisis in Gaza intensifying international pressure for a ceasefire, Hamas badly needs a pause in the fighting, one of the people said.
Not only would a ceasefire offer respite to weary Gazans, who are growing increasingly critical of Hamas, but it would also allow the Islamist group to crush rogue elements, including some clans and looters who have been stealing aid, the person said.
To counter the immediate threat, Hamas has sent some of its top fighters to kill one rebellious leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, but so far he has remained beyond their reach in the Rafah area held by Israeli troops, according to two Hamas sources and two other sources familiar with the situation.
Reuters spoke to 16 sources including people close to Hamas, Israeli security sources, and diplomats who painted a picture of a severely weakened group, retaining some sway and operational capacity in Gaza despite its setbacks, but facing stiff challenges.
Hamas is still capable of landing blows: it killed seven Israeli soldiers in an attack in southern Gaza on Tuesday. But three diplomats in the Middle East said intelligence assessments showed it had lost its centralized command and control and was reduced to limited, surprise attacks.
An Israeli military official estimated Israel had killed 20,000 or more Hamas fighters and destroyed or rendered unusable hundreds of miles of tunnels under the coastal strip. Much of Gaza has been turned to rubble in 20 months of conflict.
One Israeli security source said the average age of Hamas fighters was “getting lower by the day.” Israeli security sources say Hamas is recruiting from hundreds of thousands of impoverished, unemployed, displaced young men.
Hamas does not disclose how many of its fighters have died.
“They’re hiding because they are being instantly hit by planes, but they appear here and there, organizing queues in front of bakeries, protecting aid trucks, or punishing criminals,” said Essam, 57 a construction worker in Gaza City.
“They’re not like before the war, but they exist.”
Asked for comment for this story, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said the group was working for an agreement to end the war with Israel but “surrender is not an option.”
Hamas remained committed to negotiations and was “ready to release all prisoners at once,” he said, referring to Israeli hostages, but it wanted the killing to stop and Israel to withdraw.
‘IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD’
Hamas is a shadow of the group that attacked Israel in 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking another 251 hostages. Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas.
The damage inflicted by Israel is unlike anything Hamas has suffered since its creation, with most of its top military commanders in Gaza killed. Founded in 1987, Hamas had gradually established itself as the main rival of the Fatah faction led by President Mahmoud Abbas and finally seized Gaza from his control in 2007.
With a US-brokered truce in the Iran-Israel war holding, attention has switched back to the possibility of a Gaza deal that might end the conflict and release the remaining hostages.
One of the people close to Hamas told Reuters it would welcome a truce, even for a couple of months, to confront the local clans that are gaining influence.
But he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s terms for ending the war – including Hamas leaders leaving Gaza – would amount to total defeat, and Hamas would never surrender.
“We keep the faith, but in reality it doesn’t look good,” the source said.
Yezid Sayigh, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, said he believed Hamas was simply trying to survive. That was not just a physical challenge of holding out militarily, he said, but above all a political one.
“They face being eliminated on the ground in Gaza if the war doesn’t stop, but they also face being erased from any governing formula that ends the war in Gaza (if such a thing can be found),” he wrote in response to Reuters’ questions.
Palestinian tribes have emerged as part of Israel’s strategy to counter Hamas. Netanyahu has said publicly that Israel has been arming clans that oppose Hamas, but has not said which.
One of the most prominent challenges has come from Abu Shabab, a Palestinian Bedouin based in the Rafah area, which is under Israeli control.
Hamas wants Abu Shabab captured, dead or alive, accusing him of collaboration with Israel and planning attacks on the terrorist group, three Hamas sources told Reuters.
Abu Shabab controls eastern Rafah and his group is believed to have freedom of movement in the wider Rafah area. Images on their Facebook page show their armed men organizing the entry of aid trucks from the Kerem Shalom crossing.
Announcements by his group indicate that it is trying to build an independent administration in the area, though they deny trying to become a governing authority. The group has called on people from Rafah now in other areas of Gaza to return home, promising food and shelter.
In response to Reuters’ questions, Abu Shabab’s group denied getting support from Israel or contacts with the Israeli army, describing itself as a popular force protecting humanitarian aid from looting by escorting aid trucks.
It accused Hamas of violence and muzzling dissent.
A Hamas security official said the Palestinian security services would “strike with an iron fist to uproot the gangs of the collaborator Yasser Abu Shabab,” saying they would show no mercy or hesitation and accusing him of being part of “an effort to create chaos and lawlessness.”
Not all of Gaza’s clans are at odds with Hamas, however.
On Thursday, a tribal alliance said its men had protected aid trucks from looters in northern Gaza. Sources close to Hamas said the group had approved of the alliance’s involvement.
Israel said Hamas fighters had in fact commandeered the trucks, which both the clans and Hamas denied.
IRAN UNCERTAINTY
Palestinian analyst Akram Attallah said the emergence of Abu Shabab was a result of the weakness of Hamas, though he expected him to fail ultimately because Palestinians broadly reject any hint of collaboration with Israel.
Nevertheless, regardless of how small Abu Shabab’s group is, the fact Hamas has an enemy from the same culture was dangerous, he said. “It remains a threat until it is dealt with.”
Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran has added to the uncertainties facing Hamas. Tehran’s backing for Hamas played a big part in developing its armed wing into a force capable of shooting missiles deep into Israel.
While both Iran and Israel have claimed victory, Netanyahu on Sunday indicated the Israeli campaign against Tehran had further strengthened his hand in Gaza, saying it would “help us expedite our victory and the release of all our hostages.”
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that great progress was being made on Gaza, adding that the strike on Iran would help get the hostages released.
A Palestinian official close to Hamas said the group was weighing the risk of diminished Iranian backing, anticipating “the impact will be on the shape of funding and the expertise Iran used to give to the resistance and Hamas.”
One target of Israel’s campaign in Iran was a Revolutionary Guards officer who oversaw coordination with Hamas. Israel said Saeed Izadi, whose death it announced on Saturday, was the driving force behind the Iran–Hamas axis.
Hamas extended condolences to Iran on Thursday, calling Izadi a friend who was directly responsible for ties with “the leadership of the Palestinian resistance.”
A source from an Iran-backed group in the region said Izadi helped develop Hamas capabilities, including how to carry out complex attacks, including rocket launches, infiltration operations, and drones.
Asked about how the Israeli campaign against Iran might affect its support for Hamas, Abu Zuhri said Iran was a large and powerful country that would not be defeated.
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Israeli Strikes Targeting Hezbollah Pummel South Lebanon Hilltops
Smoke billows from the Nabatieh district, following Israeli strikes, as seen from Marjayoun, in southern Lebanon, June 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Karamallah Daher
More than a dozen Israeli air strikes battered a row of hilltops in southern Lebanon on Friday, security sources said, with the Israeli military saying it had attacked a damaged military site that terrorist group Hezbollah was seeking to restore.
The simultaneous strikes hit a mountainous strip near the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh, according to the Lebanese security sources, who said Iran-backed Hezbollah likely still had arms depots there. There was no immediate comment from the Islamist group.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets had attacked a site used to manage Hezbollah’s “fire and defense system.” It said the site was destroyed in last year’s war but that Hezbollah was attempting to resume activities there in breach of the November truce that ended the conflict.
Lebanon‘s President Joseph Aoun on Friday fired the same accusation back at Israel, saying it was continually violating the US-brokered ceasefire deal by keeping up strikes on Lebanon.
The ceasefire deal stipulates that southern Lebanon must be free of any non-state arms or fighters, Israeli troops must leave southern Lebanon as Lebanese troops deploy there. and all fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border must stop.
Israeli troops remain in at least five posts within Lebanese territory and its air force regularly kills rank-and-file Hezbollah members or people affiliated with the group.
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