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As Threats Rise, Israel Must Get Rid of Its Nuclear Ambiguity
Listening to Iran’s repeated threats to initiate aggressive war with Israel, something seems to have been overlooked: Israel is a nuclear power; Iran is not. Iran is hardly in a credible strategic position to make such threats. After all, any actual follow-through on these arguably incoherent threats could produce potentially unendurable Iranian losses.
What is going on here? Why such an ironic disconnect between relative national power capacities and the country issuing existential threats? It seems that in any direct and protracted war with Iran, only Israel would be in a position of “escalation dominance.”
The factor that could substantially change such Israeli superiority would be direct North Korean military involvement. This is because Iran’s belligerent ally in Pyongyang is “already nuclear,” and because Israel is a “fifty target state.” In short, Israel is a geographically small adversary with no meaningful strategic depth. Absent a recognizable nuclear advantage, this is anything but an enviable survival position for an imperiled nation.
The remedy, for Israel, should be an immediate policy shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (Amimut in Hebrew) to “selective nuclear disclosure.
For decision-makers in Jerusalem, a core commitment of national strategic policy has always been to keep last-resort nuclear assets (aka “The Bomb”) shrouded in the “basement.” Until now, at least, nuclear ambiguity (sometimes called “opacity”) has managed to work. Though this success has seemingly done little to deter ordinary conventional aggressions or criminal acts of terror, it has succeeded in keeping the country’s enemies from launching any conceivable existential aggressions.
How should Israel accurately assess pertinent state and sub-state perils? In all such critical security matters, Israel has no science-based methods to determine useful probabilities. In science, such judgments must stem from the determinable frequency of relevant past events.
There are associated legal issues. Choosing the nuclear option as a last resort would not necessarily be a violation of international law. Among other things, this is because of an International Court of Justice (IJC) Advisory Opinion issued on July 8, 1996. This landmark ICJ ruling concluded that while “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict….,” this finding might not obtain “in an extreme circumstance of self-defense, in which the very survival of a State would be at stake.”
Nonetheless, the most urgent considerations in any such impending narratives would be broadly operational, not narrowly jurisprudential. In more expressly military nuclear matters, any national security strategy based upon whispered or sotto voce threats would have conspicuous limits. Israel’s longstanding policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity may not remain persuasive. To be reliably deterred, an Iranian nuclear adversary would require readily verifiable assurances that Israel’s nuclear weapons were effectively (1) invulnerable and (2) “penetration-capable.” This second expectation means that Israel’s nuclear weapons would not only be well-protected from adversarial first-strikes, but would also be able to “get through” Iran’s active defenses.
There is more. Any adversary’s judgments concerning Israel’s willingness to retaliate with nuclear weapons would depend in good measure upon useable foreknowledge of these weapons as well as their presumptive operational capabilities. There would also be some clarifying ironies.
Looking ahead, Iranian perceptions of only mega-destructive, high-yield Israeli nuclear weapons could effectively undermine the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrence. Expressed formally, in making such calculations, Israel’s strategic deterrence could sometime vary inversely with the perceived destructiveness of its nuclear arms. While seemingly counter-intuitive, this argument suggests not only that Israel should have available a wide range of nuclear retaliatory options, but also that it should take properly refined steps to ensure that such an expansive range of options be instantly recognizable.
In the future, if Iran should decide to share some of its offensive nuclear assets with a surrogate jihadist terrorist group (e.g., Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthis), Jerusalem would need to have prepared for the nuclear deterrence of assorted non-state adversaries. In all such scenarios, what will first need to be calculated, among other things, is the precise extent of subtlety with which Israel should be communicating its nuclear positions, intentions, and capabilities to Iran and various other categories of possible adversaries.
A refined doctrine is necessarily antecedent to any sound nuclear strategy. The core rationale for Israeli nuclear disclosure would inhere in the basic and immutable understanding that nuclear weapons can serve Israel’s security in several specific ways. Once it is faced with a nuclear fait accompli in Tehran or elsewhere, Israel would need to convince its then-relevant enemy or enemies that it possessed both the will and the capacity to make any intended adversarial nuclear aggression more harmful than gainful. By definition, however, no Israeli move from ambiguity to disclosure could help in the unprecedented case of an irrational nuclear enemy.
To protect itself against enemy military strikes, particularly those attacks that could potentially carry authentic existential costs, Israel should quickly and correctly exploit every aspect and function of its still opaque nuclear arsenal. In this connection, the success of Israel’s efforts will depend not only upon its carefully selected configuration of “counterforce” and “counter value” operations, but also on the extent to which this critical choice was made known in advance to Iran and certain Iranian sub-state/terrorist surrogates. The point of any shift from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would be to signal that Israel’s “bomb” (1) is safely beyond any preemptive enemy reach; and (2) is calibrated to variously credible levels of enemy aggression.
In essence, removing the bomb from Israel’s basement could enhance the imperiled nation’s strategic deterrence only to the extent that it would heighten enemy perceptions of secure and capable Israeli nuclear forces. Any calculated end to deliberate nuclear ambiguity could also underscore Israel’s presumptive willingness to use its nuclear forces in sudden or incremental reprisal for enemy first-strike and/or retaliatory attacks.
In the final analysis, any Israeli shift from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would need to convince Iran of Jerusalem’s ultimate willingness to use nuclear forces against a non-nuclear adversary with exterminatory intentions and capacities.
Though generally misunderstood and inexpertly discussed, a “Samson Option” could gainfully support this obligatory task of Israeli strategic dissuasion. An explicitly-revealed Samson Option would multiply and magnify the survival benefits of selective nuclear disclosure not by threatening gratuitous Israeli spasms of revenge-based harms, but by reminding Iran that Israel’s nuclear force calibrations would be operational even at the 11th-hour.
There is more. In assessing its optimal levels of deliberate nuclear disclosure, Israel should continuously bear in mind the country’s overriding strategic nuclear objective: This goal is deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.
If, however, nuclear weapons should somehow be introduced into an impending conflict with Iran (most plausibly, via military participation of North Korea), one form or other of nuclear war fighting could ensue. This conclusion would be unassailable so long as: (a) enemy state first strike attacks against Israel would not destroy the Jewish State’s second-strike nuclear capability; (b) enemy state retaliations for Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy Israel’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli strikes would not destroy enemy state second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliations for enemy state conventional first strikes would not destroy enemy state nuclear counter-retaliatory capacities. This means that Israel should promptly take appropriately steps to ensure the likelihood of (a) and (b), above, and the reciprocal unlikelihood of (c) and (d).
If for any reason Iranian nuclear deployments were permitted to take place, Israel could forfeit any non-nuclear preemption options. At that stage, Jerusalem’s only remaining alternatives to exercising a nuclear preemption option would be: (1) a no-longer viable conventional preemption; or (2) a decision to do nothing preemptively, thereby choosing to existentially rely upon some form or other of nuclear deterrence and the corollary protections of ballistic missile defense. Ipso facto, any prior decisions having to do with tangible shifts to “selective nuclear disclosure” and also a “Samson Option” would be all important.
For Israel, the time to end its traditional policy of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” is now. The intellectually lazy argument that it has worked thus far and would therefore work in the future is a classic example of logical fallacy at its worst.
Left unrevised by a more carefully calculated and prudent Israeli nuclear policy, such fallacious reasoning could produce largely unimaginable levels of human harm. As all humans are ultimately creatures of biology, it could even bring millions into the predatory embrace of a “final epidemic.”
Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books, monographs, and scholarly articles dealing with military nuclear strategy. In Israel, he was Chair of Project Daniel. Over recent years, he has published on nuclear warfare issues in Harvard National Security Journal (Harvard Law School); Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists; International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs; and more.
The post As Threats Rise, Israel Must Get Rid of Its Nuclear Ambiguity first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Argentine Jews Express Outrage After Venezuela’s Maduro Blasts Argentina Government as ‘Nazi and Zionist’
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a march amid the disputed presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela, Aug. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Maxwell Briceno
The Jewish community in Argentina lambasted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro this week after he described Argentina’s government as “Nazi and Zionist” while addressing on ongoing dispute between the two countries over the arrest of an Argentine military officer in Venezuela.
“A terrorist like this famous Argentine has been captured. The Nazi and Zionist government of Argentina wants us to award him a decoration,” Maduro said during an event on Wednesday in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
Maduro was addressing the situation of Nahuel Gallo, a corporal in Argentina’s Gendarmería security force who was arrested in Venezuela last month and charged with terrorism. The socialist Venezuelan government accused Gallo of “being part of a group of people who tried to commit destabilizing and terrorist acts [in Venezuela] with the support of international far-right groups.”
Argentina is currently governed by the right-wing administration of President Javier Milei, whose security minister, Patricia Bullrich, described the charges as “another lie” by Venezuela’s government and said that Gallo should be returned to Argentina “immediately.”
Gallo’s relatives said that he had traveled to Venezuela to visit his wife, who is Venezuelan and was reportedly in the country to spend time with her mother.
Venezuela broke diplomatic relations with Argentina in August after Milei and several other Latin American leaders refused to recognize Maduro’s reelection in July. While Argentina’s diplomats were expelled, some Venezuelan opposition activists, who had sought refuge at the ambassador’s residence to avoid arrest, have since then remained in the building, having been denied safe passage in Venezuela and seeking political asylum in Argentina.
On Monday, Maduro accused Gallo of being part of a plot to assassinate his vice president, Delcy Rodríguez. The next day, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said that Gallo is being held “hostage” by Maduro’s government.
Against this backdrop, Argentina’s Jewish umbrella organization, the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA), on Thursday released a statement slamming Maduro for using the term “Nazi and Zionist” to describe their government.
“In the context of the conflict with Argentina over the gendarme Nahuel Gallo detained in Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro called the government of our country ‘Nazi and Zionist.’ The phrase not only trivializes the tragedy of the Holocaust, diminishing its importance and impact, but also refers to Zionism as a disqualifying insult, even though it represents the legitimate existence of the State of Israel,” the DAIA said in its statement.
“At the same time,” the group continued, “it reveals the violent characteristics of the dictatorial regime that has subjected the Venezuelan people to slavery for years. It does so by exercising terror and oppression on those who fight to reestablish the path of democracy. DAIA condemns Maduro’s violent expressions and expresses its support for those who seek to live in a free and pluralistic society in which human rights are respected.”
Maduro has regularly used antisemitic rhetoric during his time in power in Venezuela. In August, for example, he blamed “international Zionism” for the protests against his reign following the country’s July 28 elections after which he claimed victory despite widespread suspicions of foul play.
The “extremist right,” referring to his opposition, “is supported by international Zionism,” Maduro claimed in an address at the time. “All the communication power of Zionism, who controls all social networks, the satellites, and all the power behind this coup d’état.”
Deborah Lipstadt, the US special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, called Maduro’s claims “absurd,” “antisemitic,” and “unacceptable.”
Maduro has been in power since 2013 and has overseen a dramatic economic decline in Venezuela. Redirecting personal failures as the fault of Jews, or, in this case, “international Zionism,” has long been a tactic of antisemites looking for a scapegoat.
Protests and unrest erupted in Venezuela after the presidential election in July, when Maduro’s government was accused by his political opposition, outside observers, and foreign governments of committing fraud to secure a victory.
Nonetheless, Maduro on Friday began his third term as Venezuela’s president, despite US Secretary of State Antony Blinken referring to his “illegitimate presidential inauguration in Venezuela” as a “desperate attempt” to seize power.
“The Venezuelan people and world know the truth — Maduro clearly lost the 2024 presidential election and has no right to claim the presidency,” Blinken said in a statement. “The United States rejects the National Electoral Council’s fraudulent announcement that Maduro won the presidential election and does not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the president of Venezuela.”
Edmundo González Urrutia should have been sworn in as the Venezuelan president, according to the US State Department.
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar agreed, posting on X/Twitter that the Jewish state “expresses concern over the political persecution and arbitrary arrests by the regime and joins the call of many in the international community to restore freedom and democracy in Venezuela.”
“Today, Jan. 10, Edmundo González Urrutia, the elected president of Venezuela, who won the presidential elections by a significant majority, was supposed to be inaugurated,” Sa’ar added. “However, the election results are not being respected, and his inauguration is not taking place. The ruler, Nicolás Maduro, an ally of Iran, must honor the will of the people in his country.”
In Argentina, meanwhile, Milei has expressed admiration for Judaism and support for Israel. He appointed Rabbi Axel Wahnish, who has served as his spiritual advisor for the last two years, as Argentina’s ambassador to Israel and has studied Torah and other Jewish texts. The Catholic Milei has previously said that were it not for the duties of his office, which require him to work on the Sabbath and on Jewish holidays, he would convert to Judaism.
Argentina has become a key player in organizing efforts to combat antisemitism in recent months. In July, for example, more than 30 countries led by the United States adopted “global guidelines for countering antisemitism” during a gathering of special envoys and other representatives from around the globe in Argentina.
The gathering came one day before Argentina’s Jewish community commemorated the 30th anniversary of the 1994 targeted bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Milei promised to right decades of inaction and inconsistencies in the investigations into the attack.
In April, Argentina’s top criminal court blamed Iran for the attack, saying it was carried out by Hezbollah terrorists responding to “a political and strategic design” by Iran.
Iran is the chief international sponsor of Hamas, providing the terror group with weapons, funding, and training.
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Tlaib Sports Palestinian Keffiyeh at Carter Funeral, Thanks Late President for ‘Speaking Out Against Apartheid’
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis
US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), one of the most strident opponents of Israel in Congress, wore a Palestinian keffiyeh to the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter, commemorating the late American leader’s advocacy against so-called “apartheid” in the Jewish state.
“Rest in peace, President Jimmy Carter. It was an honor to be there with your family. I wore my Palestinian keffiyeh to show my gratitude for your courageous stance in speaking out against apartheid and standing up for peace,” Tlaib posted on X/Twitter, along with a picture of her keffyeh.
Rest in peace, President Jimmy Carter. It was an honor to be there with your family. I wore my Palestinian keffiyeh to show my gratitude for your courageous stance in speaking out against apartheid and standing up for peace. pic.twitter.com/Vf0XLN2BtJ
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) January 9, 2025
The keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headscarf, has become known as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause and opposition to Israel since the outbreak of the war in Gaza in October 2023.
High-profile politicians, including all five living US presidents, attended Carter’s funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC on Thursday. The former president died on Dec. 29, 2024 at 100 years old due to heart failure.
Over the past couple of decades, Carter’s public commentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has ruffled feathers among supporters of the Jewish state. In 2006, Carter raised eyebrows after publishing a book titled, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which condemned Israel for constructing settlements in the West Bank and accused the Jewish state of constructing a racially-discriminatory political regime.
In 2009, Carter traveled to the Middle East and held meetings with leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Critics noted that he did not criticize Hamas leadership during his meeting and praised the terrorists as being “frank and honest.”
In 2015, Carter further incensed proponents of the Jewish state when he seemingly defended senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and argued that the terrorist group was not an obstacle to peace in the region.
“I don’t believe that [Mashal’s] a terrorist. He’s strongly in favor of the peace process,” Carter said at the time.
“I don’t see that deep commitment on the part of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to make concessions which [former Prime Minister] Menachem Begin did to find peace with his potential enemies,” Carter continued.
Since entering Congress, Tlaib has positioned herself as one of the most vocal anti-Israel critics in US politics. Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in the House of Representatives, has repeatedly used her platform to lodge condemnations against Israel.
The congresswoman has accused Israel of committing “apartheid” against Palestinians. In the year following Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Tlaib has smeared the Jewish state’s defensive military operations as a “genocide,” calling on US President Joe Biden to force a “ceasefire” between Israel and the terrorist group and implement an “arms embargo” against the Jewish state.
On Thursday, Tlaib slammed the House for passing a bill which would sanction members of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its issuing of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant
“What’s their top priority the first week of the new Congress? Lowering costs? Addressing the housing crisis? No, it’s sanctioning the International Criminal Court to protect genocidal maniac Netanyahu so he can continue the genocide in Gaza,” Tlaib wrote on social media.
The post Tlaib Sports Palestinian Keffiyeh at Carter Funeral, Thanks Late President for ‘Speaking Out Against Apartheid’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sydney Synagogue Daubed in Antisemitic Graffiti in Latest Attack on Australian Jews
Southern Sydney Synagogue in the suburb of Allawah, Australia, was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti on Jan. 10, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
A synagogue in Sydney was daubed in antisemitic graffiti on Friday, police said, the latest in a spate of incidents targeting Jews in Australia.
Police will deploy a special task force to investigate the attack on the Southern Sydney Synagogue in the suburb of Allawah that happened in the early hours of Friday morning, New South Wales state Police Assistant Commissioner Peter McKenna told a news conference.
“The people who do the sort of thing should realize we will be out in force to look for them; we will catch them and prosecute them,” he said.
Television footage showed multiple swastikas painted on the building, along with a message reading “Hitler on top.”
“[There is] no place in Australia, our tolerant multicultural community, for this sort of criminal activity,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told a news conference.
The incident is the latest in a series of antisemitic incidents in Australia in the last year, including multiple incidents of graffiti on buildings and cars in Sydney, as well as arson attack on a synagogue in Melbourne that police have ruled as terrorism.
Australia has seen an increase in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents since Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023 and Israel launched its war against the Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza. Some Jewish organizations have said the government has not taken sufficient action in response.
The country launched a task force last month following the Melbourne synagogue blaze, focusing on threats, violence, and hatred towards the Australian Jewish community.
Australia’s ice hockey federation said on Tuesday it had cancelled a planned international qualifying tournament due to safety concerns, with local media reporting the decision was linked to the participation of the Israeli national team.
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