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Could a Nuclear War with Iran Really Happen?
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024. Photo: West Asia News Agency via REUTERS
For the moment, as Iran remains “pre-nuclear,” an Israel-Iran nuclear exchange is out of the question. Nonetheless, if Israel is able to maintain its asymmetrical nuclear advantage, a one-sided nuclear war would still be possible. Circumstances could sometime arise in which Israel felt compelled to launch parts of its “ambiguous” nuclear arsenal against Iran. The most plausible rationale of any such launch would be to (1) prevent Iranian “escalation dominance;” and (2) keep Iran from “becoming nuclear.”
In offering suitable explanations, recent history will show that during April 2024, Israel and Iran engaged in a brief but direct interstate conflict. Looking ahead, it would be reasonable to expect additional rounds of direct warfare between these two bitter adversaries. Conflict durations could be much longer and more protracted. It follows that Israel would be under expanding pressures to dominate escalation during periods of hyper-warfare with Iran and that such potentially existential pressures could precipitate an Israeli resort to nuclear weapons use.
Above all else, Israel’s strategic objective vis-à-vis Iran should be nuclear war avoidance. In a near worst-case scenario, Israel could calculate that nothing short of massive non-nuclear preemption would halt Tehran’s ongoing nuclearization.
An Israeli nuclear preemption is inconceivable. But even if Israel’s determination to launch a non-nuclear preemption were analytically correct and law-enforcing, its tangible results could still be catastrophic.
What should now be done by Jerusalem? How should principal Israeli decision-makers balance these dissuasive results against all calculable risks and benefits?
A best answer should be drawn from conceptual and theoretical fundamentals. Israeli strategists should always examine their country’s available security options as an intellectual rather than political task.
There will be pertinent details, both conspicuous and inconspicuous. Any tactically successful conventional preemption against Iranian weapons and infrastructures could come at more-or-less unacceptable costs. In 2003-2004, when this writer’s Project Daniel Group presented an early report on Iranian nuclearization to then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, prospective Iranian targets were already more directly threatening to Israel than Iraq’s nuclear Osirak reactor had been on June 7, 1981. That was the date of Israel’s law-based preemption, an operation code-named “Opera.”
To the extent that they could be estimated accurately, the risks of an Israel-Iran nuclear war would ultimately depend on whether the conflict was intentional, unintentional, or accidental. Apart from applying this critical three-part distinction, there would be no good reason to expect optimally useful strategic assessments from Tel Aviv (MOD/IDF).
Once applied, however, Israeli planners should fully understand that their complex subject is without any clarifying precedents, and that this absence would present an insurmountable prediction problem.
It will also be obligatory for Israeli strategists and war planners to bear in mind the timeless warnings of Prussian thinker Karl von Clausewitz on the role of “friction.” At its core, friction represents “the difference between war on paper and war as it actually is.”
Peremptory rules of logic and mathematics preclude any meaningful assignments of probability in matters that are unprecedented or sui generis. To come up with any logically-meaningful estimations of probability, these predictions would have to be based upon the determinable frequency of relevant past events. As there have been no occasions of an interstate nuclear exchange, there could be no relevant past events.
Competent Israeli strategic analysts must examine all current and future nuclear risks from Iran. Such a comprehensive examination should take special note of Iran’s radiation dispersal weapons and its potential capacity to attack Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor with non-nuclear missiles. Also worth emphasizing is that North Korea, bolstered by Russia and China, has been a clamorous ally of Iran, and could sometime allow its national nuclear forces to serve as Iranian proxies during a protracted war with Israel.
If any Israeli planners should assume that a “Trump II” presidency could help in such unpredictable scenarios, they ought first to recall Trump’s ambiguous summarizing message after the Singapore Summit: “We [Trump and Kim] fell in love.”
Following their Singapore meeting, Trump and Kim each seemed to assume the other’s decisional rationality and also the mutual primacy of decisional intent. If such an assumption had not existed, it would have made no logical sense for either president to strike existential retaliatory fear in the other. But what are the derivative lessons of “Singapore” for Israel vis-à-vis Iran? Should Israel also assume a fully rational adversary in Iran? Though any such assumption would be more or less reassuring in Jerusalem’s decision-making circles, it could also be incorrect.
On several occasions during his presidential tenure, Donald Trump praised pretended irrationality as a potentially promising US nuclear strategy. But such a strategic preference could never be purposeful for Israel. This is the case despite Moshe Dayan’s much earlier musing about Israel and its enemies: “Israel must be seen as a mad dog, too dangerous to bother.”
Though neither Israel nor Iran might prefer conditions of a steadily escalating war, either or both “players” could still commit catastrophic errors during their obligatory searches for “escalation dominance.” If Jerusalem and Tehran undertake competitive risk-taking in extremis, Israel’s only reliable “ace in the hole” will be its continuing nuclear monopoly.
An unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war between Israel and Iran could take place not only as the result of misunderstandings or miscalculations between rational leaders, but also as the unintended consequence of mechanical, electrical, or computer malfunction. This includes hacking interference and should bring to mind corollary distinctions between unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war and an accidental nuclear war.
Though all accidental nuclear war would be unintentional, not every unintentional nuclear war would be caused by accident. An unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war could sometime be the result of certain misjudgments about enemy intentions.
“In war,” says Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously in On War, “everything is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult.” Fashioning a successful “endgame” to any impending future nuclear confrontation with Iran, Israel’s leaders will need to understand that a crisis in extremis is inevitably about more than maximizing any “correlation of forces” or “missile-interception” capabilities. It will be about variously antecedent Israeli triumphs of “mind over mind.”
As a nuclear war has never been fought, what will be needed in Jerusalem is more broadly intellectual guidance than Israel could ever reasonably expect from even its most senior and capable military officers.
The reason is simple.
There are no plausible experts on fighting an unprecedented kind of war, not in Jerusalem, not in Tehran, not anywhere. It was not by happenstance that the first serious theoreticians of nuclear war and nuclear deterrence in the 1950s were academic mathematicians, physicists, and political scientists. Having to deal with matters that lacked usable historic or empirical data, these thinkers were forced to rely essentially on deductive logic, deriving their essential strategic theories from meticulously assembled abstractions.
There remains one final point about still-estimable risks of an Israel-Iran nuclear war. From the standpoint of Jerusalem, the only truly successful outcome would be a crisis or confrontation that ends with a reduction of Iranian nuclear war fighting intentions and capabilities. It would represent a serious mistake for Israel to settle for any bloated boasts of “victory” based upon a one-time avoidance of nuclear war. In this geo-strategic conflict with Iran, potentially existential dangers to Israel are foreseeably continuous.
The Israel-Iran strategic conflict is self-propelling. For Jerusalem, providing Israeli national security vis-à-vis a steadily-nuclearizing Iran ought never to become an ad hoc or “seat-of-the-pants” struggle. Without any suitably long-term plan in place for avoiding an atomic war, a nuclear conflict that is deliberate, unintentional or accidental could “sometimes happen.”
At every stage of its corrosive competition with Tehran, Israel should avoid losing sight of the only rational use for its presumptive nuclear weapons and doctrine. That limited use is to maintain Israeli “escalation dominance” during military crisis and to prevent an operationally usable Iranian nuclear force. More generally, nuclear weapons can succeed only as instruments of strategic deterrence and nuclear war avoidance. By reasonable definition, any actual use of a state’s nuclear weapons would “automatically” signify their failure. Israel ought to view ongoing “asymmetrical” conflict with Iran as the preferred context for preventing Iranian nuclear weapons.
There is something else. In the absence of such conflict, an already nuclear Israel could still exercise a preemption option against a pre-nuclear Iran, but only as a “bolt-from-the-blue” attack. Though this particular sort of action could fulfil all authoritative expectations of “anticipatory self-defense” under international law, it would be vastly more difficult to support in political and public relations terms.
What if Israel and Iran were both “already nuclear”? In such a next-to-worst case scenario, Israel, having failed to act in a timely fashion, could have to strike preemptively against a more menacing adversary. In a worst case scenario, Israel would fail to prevent a nuclear Iran, and Iran would become the first adversary to fire its nuclear weapons. Certain specific Arab states could rush to join the “nuclear club.” In all likelihood, these states — potentially joined by Turkey — would be Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Summarizing all these “strategy of conflict” issues in policy-relevant terms, Israel’s only cost-effective strategy would be to prevent Iranian nuclearization and correlative Arab state nuclearization by dominating escalations during a non-nuclear war or an asymmetrical nuclear war. Ideally, such a strategy would be exercised during the course of an already-ongoing armed conflict, though Israel could, as last resort, plan “bolt-from-the-blue” strikes against Iranian hard targets that are convincingly lawful expressions of national survival options. Under international law, these permissible strikes would be examples of “anticipatory self-defense.”
In the end, we are all creatures of biology. For Israel and Iran, a nuclear war would resemble any other incurable disease. For both, therefore, the only reasonable survival strategies must lie in prevention.
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; The Atlantic; Israel Defense; Jewish Website; The New York Times; Israel National News; The Jerusalem Post; The Hill and other sites. A different version of this article was originally published by Israel National News.
The post Could a Nuclear War with Iran Really Happen? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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AOC Compares Israel-Hamas War to Vietnam, Says Conflict Has Been ‘Generationally Radicalizing’
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Photo: Mike Jourdan/Flickr.
During an interview on left-wing internet talk show The Majority Report, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) agreed that the ongoing conflict in Gaza is comparable to the Vietnam War, arguing that America’s strident support of Israel has radicalized younger Americans.
While interviewing AOC, The Majority Report host Sam Seder argued that the Israel-Hamas war is “akin” to the Vietnam War. Seder suggested that “alternative media” such as TikTok, Youtube, or podcasts, have presented a harshly critical view of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, resulting in a wide-scale radicalization of young people against the Jewish state.
“If you’re under the age of 40 what’s gone on in Israel is in Palestine and Gaza in particular obviously and the West Bank for that matter is very different from your perception if you’re over the age of 40 because of where you get your media,” Seder said.
AOC agreed, saying that she has “said this directly to Democratic leadership” and “ communicated this to the White House.”
“This is our Vietnam. This is our, not just like in terms of the party, but this is just our country’s Vietnam. And what I think a lot of people do not yet understand, is they think that some of these hemorrhages are maybe ideological. They think maybe it is like an ethnic thing. I don’t think there is appreciation yet about how generationally radicalizing yeah this moment is, and how shocked people are at how far just like the general inertia is willing to go, as if we’re not seeing what’s happening right before our very eyes.”
AOC continued, labelling the Israel-Hamas war a “genocide” and arguing that the Democratic party needs to undermine Israel’s defense efforts if it aims to energize young voters and “reinstate an order around human rights.”
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties in Gaza, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.
Another challenge for Israel has been Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
Over the past year, AOC has repeatedly condemned the Jewish state’s response to the Hamas terrorist group’s brutal Oct. 7 slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel. AOC, a strident critic of Israel, has accused the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. She has spearheaded calls for a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. The progressive firebrand has also urged the Biden administration to implement an “arms embargo” against Israel.
The post AOC Compares Israel-Hamas War to Vietnam, Says Conflict Has Been ‘Generationally Radicalizing’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Obituary: Stanley Diamond, 91, was a Montreal businessman-turned-genealogist whose research changed lives
Stanley Mark Diamond founded Jewish Records Indexing – Poland, the world’s largest special interest genealogy group. JRI – Poland was a “second act” in his life, combining his passion for Jewish continuity with his expertise as a Montreal business leader with a Harvard MBA.
Diamond died in Montreal on Dec.18. He was 91.
JRI – Poland grew over 30 years to approximately 170 volunteers on six continents around the world and amassed a database that now has 6.4 million records reflecting the lives of Polish Jews since the 1500s.
“Stanley had a two-fold superpower,” acting JRI – Poland executive director Robinn Magid says. “He was able to care about people and draw things out of them, but also to contribute and help. They go hand in handz but are not often found in the same person.”
In 1991, Diamond’s nephew was diagnosed as a carrier of beta thalassemia, and he created a family tree to alert relatives about their probability of having the gene. At the time, he was doing consulting work after selling his decorative ceiling business, Intalite, in 1986.
He began attending genealogy conferences and realized that the largest group of Jewish genealogists were Jews who traced their roots to the current or former country of Poland. In 1995, he partnered with two technology experts who had the skills to develop a website that could also incorporate archival information. Several months later, Diamond travelled to Poland with a colleague and persuaded the Polish State Archives to allow JRI – Poland to index his family’s ancestral town’s records. Just four months later, he returned to Poland with a printout of 40,000 entries, to the astonishment of the archives’ director, who then understood the value of the project.
Diamond hoped JRI – Poland would help people capture the essence of their ancestors. In addition to preserving their names, he wanted families to learn about their lives and about their values.
“JRI – Poland specializes in solving puzzles,” says Magid.
While some of these puzzles solve simple questions about basic family history, others are much more complex. The group has helped save lives by sharing information on hereditary health conditions. They have been able to repair damage caused by the Holocaust, connecting and reconnecting fragmented families who lost each other or did not know they even existed. They have assisted people who wanted to prove that they were Jewish and were entitled to an Orthodox Jewish wedding.
The group also assists Jews at risk. “Three years ago, when Putin invaded Ukraine, we saw an upswing in people writing us from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Poland and other places saying they needed to prove their Polish-Jewish heritage,” says Magid. “In the past we’ve had people from Venezuela and from various South American countries like Argentina. They are in countries that have gone through turmoil and feel at risk. They are either trying to prove their halachic Jewish heritage and move to Israel, or they are trying to prove their Polish-Jewish heritage to get a Polish passport and move to the European Union. These are the people who Stanley personally helped.”
Diamond also provided his research expertise for the television series Finding your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are?, and in 2016 located documentation for the Guinness organization that verified that Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal was the world’s oldest living man at age 112.
Diamond was born in Montreal to Harry and Annie Diamond. He attended West Hill High School and McGill, and graduated from Harvard Business School in 1958. He was an exceptional baseball player, playing in a semi-pro league. He met his wife, Ruth Peerlkamp, at a party, and they were married for 59 years.
“Stanley Diamond’s first passion was for his family, but that soon spread to your families,” daughter Jessika said in her eulogy. “He loved doing for others, advising other genealogists, teaching, speaking out on the importance of genetic testing, reuniting families separated in the Holocaust, finding lost heirs and potential bone marrow matches.”
In 2021, Yad Vashem granted JRI – Poland third-party access to their Pages of Testimony. Diamond advocated for the organization to support amateur genealogists who could provide hard data, and they agreed for the first time.
“He was passionate about his work and personally devoted to helping anyone who asked for assistance,” his daughter Rachel said. “He was president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal, and he was honored by the governor general of Canada with the Meritorious Service Medal. He considered it to be the crowning achievement of his second career. He had a huge footprint that will be felt for a very long time.”
“It’s hard to imagine doing our jobs without Stanley Diamond advocating and referring and providing knowledge in the background of what we do for people,” said Janice Rosen, director of the Alex Dworkin Canadian Jewish Archives. “He was the go-to person in so many ways. The European side, the Canadian side. He was so determined to ferret out information to help people. He was involved in so many aspects of genealogy which grew out of his need to know about his own genetic background, and he made the whole world benefit from it.”
“We say people were lifetime learners. But more importantly, he was a lifetime contributor. And I don’t think we say that about many people,” said Magid. “He wanted to make a difference because he could envision something and get the right people to do it. And that is unique. He understood that we are part of a chain of continuity of the Jewish people.”
Diamond is survived by his wife, Ruth, daughters Paula, Rachel and Jessika, and his grandchildren.
The post Obituary: Stanley Diamond, 91, was a Montreal businessman-turned-genealogist whose research changed lives appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Dutch Court Blasted for ‘Woefully Insufficient’ Sentencing of Men Who Attacked Israeli Soccer Fans in Amsterdam
Israeli soccer fans under assault, near Amsterdam Central station, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Nov. 8, 2024, in this still image obtained from a social media video. X/iAnnet/via REUTERS
A district court in Amsterdam sentenced five men on Tuesday for participating in violent attacks against Israeli soccer fans in the Dutch city last month, imposing punishments that were roundly criticized as inadequate by many pro-Israel supporters.
The five suspects were sentenced to community service and up to six months in jail for violent public assault, which included kicking fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv before and after the team’s match against their Dutch rivals Ajax and inciting the premeditated and coordinated violence that took place on Nov. 7.
A man identified as Sefa O was given the longest sentence — six months in prison for public violence against several people, minus the time he has already been held in custody. Prosecutors argued that he had a “leading role” in the violence that ensued. In court earlier this month, images were shown of a man identified as Sefa O kicking a person on the ground, chasing fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv in the streets of Amsterdam, and punching people in the head and the body.
A man identified as Umutcan A was sentenced to one month in jail, and Rachid O, who shared messages in the Whatsapp group chat that incited the violence, was sentenced to 10 weeks in jail. Karavan S was given one month for the same offense. Nineteen-year-old Lucas D — the only one of the five men to appear in court for the sentencing on Tuesday — was tried under juvenile law and ordered to complete 100 hours of community service, minus his pre-trial detention. The young man helped incite violence by participating in chat conversations that called for people to gather and attack Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, according to the court, which added that he also sent discriminatory messages in the chat group.
The five men were given sentences that were much less than what prosecutors demanded. The court defended its ruling by saying that community service is typically ordered for such crimes and for first time criminal offenders, which some of the suspects are, but “given the seriousness of the facts and the context in which they took place, the court is of the opinion that a prison sentence is the only appropriate punishment.” However, many have argued that the sentencing is not severe enough.
“Seriously Amsterdam? 6 months maximum prison, while excusing their pogromist actions? Shame on you,” Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights attorney and CEO of The International Legal Forum, said in a post on X. “No wonder Jew-hatred and Islamic extremism is out of control in the Netherlands!”
Tal-Or Cohen, the founder and CEO of CyberWell, a technology company that monitors antisemitism and Holocaust denial on social media, called the sentencing on Tuesday “a shameful slap on the wrist and CYA [cover your ass] by Dutch authorities.”
“One of the leaders of the Amsterdam pogrom ‘possessed illegal fireworks with the power of a hand grenade,’ – But according to Dutch prosecutors no need to pursue charges for terrorism,” she noted, citing a Dutch report about the violence. “What if the leaders of the ‘Jew-Hunt’ brought their grenade to a Christmas market in Amsterdam?”
The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel (CIDI) described the severity of the sentencing as “disappointing” on its website. In a post on X, it further called the punishment “regrettable” since it was much less than what prosecutors had hoped for. “Nevertheless,” the group said, “it is good that prison sentences were imposed and that community service alone was not enough.”
“This shows that the legal order is also shocked. There was no justification for the actions of that night,” the CIDI added. “With this verdict, we as a society draw a clear line that this is not acceptable and that we do not accept this violence. We hope that other suspects will soon be arrested and that prosecutions can be initiated with the same speed.”
Others on X called the sentencing “woefully insufficient,” a “joke,” and a “disgrace.”
“This was an opportunity to show that antisemitism comes with a price. A 6 month jail sentence does not serve as a deterrent,” said one social media user.
After a soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax on the night of Nov. 7, Israeli soccer fans were attacked in the streets by assailants who physically assaulted them, ran them over by cars, chased them with knives and sticks, and forced them to say “Free Palestine” to avoid further harm. Chief prosecutor René de Beukelaer said “several dozen” people were attacked. The violence continued into the early hours of Nov. 8 and five Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were hospitalized for injuries sustained during the attack that has been described as a “pogrom.” Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” who went “Jew hunting.”
Seven people appeared in court earlier this month in connection to the violence, but two of the cases have been delayed. The defense in one case requested a later date, to have more time to prepare evidence, and the second case, involving a Palestinian refugee accused of “attempted manslaughter,” is pushed back as the court awaits the results of a psychiatric evaluation, according to AFP. A total of 62 people were arrested on the day of the soccer match in relation to the violence, but most were released shortly afterward, the news outlet noted. Dutch police have already identified at least 45 suspects and are trying to identify more.
The prosecutor previously said that the violence last month “had little to do” with soccer. “In this case, there was no evidence of … a terrorist intent and the violence was not motivated by antisemitic sentiment,” he claimed. “The violence was influenced by the situation in Gaza, not by antisemitism.”
More than 47 people who were attacked during the violence in Amsterdam have obtained legal counsel from The Lawfare Project, which is helping the victims review legal options after also assisting them in securing local counsel in Amsterdam.
The post Dutch Court Blasted for ‘Woefully Insufficient’ Sentencing of Men Who Attacked Israeli Soccer Fans in Amsterdam first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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