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Dangerous Intersections: Palestinian Statehood and Regional Nuclear War

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meets with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iran, June 21, 2023. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA via Reuters

When Israel completes its obligatory counter-terrorism war in Gaza, the issue of Palestinian statehood will insistently be raised. This perilous resurrection is foreseeable even though any de facto reward for Hamas criminality would be unconscionable.

Still, if Israel could be convinced that an inherently flawed “two-state solution” would be preferable to a future of protracted warfare against terrorism, Jerusalem will have to take certain arguments for Palestinian statehood seriously.

The true intent of Palestinian statehood arguments could prove irrelevant to Israeli acceptance. Israeli reasoning would be strategy-driven whether the two-state argument were offered maliciously or in good faith. A prominent example of the well-intentioned alternative would be US President Joe Biden’s current calls for a two-state remedy.

For the long-beleaguered State of Israel, accepting or rejecting a state of Palestine would involve only injurious choices, but acceptance would be more injurious and more plainly an existential peril. At a minimum, any Palestinian state would be irredentist, seeking incremental control over Israel in its entirety. This signifies control over what Israel’s Islamic foes call “occupied Palestine.” In a worst-case scenario, Israel’s post-Gaza War efforts at self-defense would involve Iran as a direct enemy belligerent.  Conceivably, Turkey could join forces with Iran against Israel, though that scenario would likely be “overruled” by Turkey’s membership in NATO.

What would Iranian involvement mean for Israel’s security and regional stability? Ultimately, even if Iran were not yet nuclear, a widening conventional or unconventional war with Israel could still elicit Israeli escalations to low-yield nuclear weapons. Such escalations would become increasingly realistic if Iran were to use “only” radiation-dispersal weapons against Israel. If Iran were already a fully nuclear power, however (i.e., in possession of chain reaction-based nuclear explosives), the Middle East could become the world’s first (and possibly last) venue for a nuclear war.

There is one more important nuance to consider regarding escalation prospects between Israel and Iran. Because North Korea has ongoing weapons-related ties to both Iran and Syria, even a pre-nuclear Iran might be able to draw upon nuclear support from an already nuclear North Korea. Here a non-nuclear Iran could act against Israel as if it were already a nuclear power. In effect, though perhaps difficult to imagine, a more advanced North Korea would act as surrogate of a less advanced Iran. Apropos of this worrisome scenario for Israel, even a North Korea that shares “only” its advanced ballistic missile technologies with Iran (not its explosive nuclear warheads) could trigger an unpredictable nuclear war.

There is an overriding message here for Israel. Issues of Palestinian statehood and nuclear war with Iran ought never to be treated as separate. Rather, these matters of existential security are potentially intersecting and “force multiplying.” For Israel, either an already-nuclear or still-nuclearizing Iran could vastly enlarge the plausible threat posed by a Palestinian state. Reciprocally, Palestinian statehood could vastly expand the existential risks to Israel of a pre-nuclear or nuclear war with Iran.

The holistic relationship between Palestinian statehood and nuclear war is apt to be synergistic and not merely intersectional. It follows that the whole of this core relationship’s injurious effect upon Israel could eventually prove greater than the sum of its parts. But what could usefully represent measurable correlates of this foreseeably catastrophic “whole?”

From the standpoint of science-based prediction, nothing accurate can be said about the likelihood of a nuclear war between Israel and Iran. Israel would nevertheless have no reasonable alternative to offering best-possible estimations. The reason why it is not possible to offer reassuringly scientific assessments of probability is that any such assessments would need to be based on the determinable frequency of relevant past events. Because there has never been a nuclear war, there can be no meaningful estimations of nuclear war’s probability.

Since 2012, the Palestinian National Authority has been recognized by the UN as a “Nonmember Observer State.” Looking beyond the Gaza War, if the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas are ever able to restore a functional level of cooperation, a fully sovereign Palestine could emerge. In short order, this furiously adversarial Arab state would become a jihadist platform for continuous war and terror against Israel.

Israel should remain keenly attentive to force multipliers in its struggles against terror-state patron Iran. Virulent synergies between Iranian nuclearization and Palestinian statehood could spawn unique threats to the Jewish State. Though Iranian and Palestinian annihilationist threats are entirely out in the open, they remain largely unacknowledged. Most worrisome are the myriad ways in which a Palestinian state could change the correlation of military forces in the region and the circumstances whereby Iran would be drawn into direct hostilities with Israel.

Understandably, nuclear weapons are generally regarded as destabilizing. In the special case of Israel, however, possession of such weapons could become all that protects the state’s civilian population from catastrophic international aggression. Maintaining stable nuclear deterrence, whether deliberately ambiguous or disclosed, could ultimately prove indispensable to Israel’s survival. But this conclusion makes sense only if those nuclear weapons are used for war avoidance or war mitigation, not for the fighting of nuclear war.

Iran is adding to its arsenal of cruise missiles. Even without nuclear warheads, such “fully smart” weapons could lead to accelerated Israel-Iran competition in risk-taking and a corresponding search for escalation dominance. To succeed in this competition, Israel should prepare to move beyond a policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity to one of selective nuclear disclosure. The reason would not be to validate Israel’s military nuclear capacity (that capacity is already well recognized in Tehran), but to convince Iranian leaders that an Israeli resort to the use of nuclear weapons could be rational.

Ironically, the credibility of Israel’s nuclear deterrent could vary inversely with that deterrent’s perceived destructiveness. Though counterintuitive, a seemingly too destructive Israeli nuclear force could undermine Israel’s deterrent effectiveness.

There are associated matters of law. In its landmark Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled: “The Court cannot conclude definitively whether the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be lawful or unlawful in an extreme circumstance of self-defense…” Where the very survival of a state would be at stake, concluded the ICJ ruling, even a tangible use of nuclear weapons could be permissible.

Israel’s existential vulnerability to a fully nuclear Iran is manifest. On its face, Israel’s small size precludes tolerance of any Iranian nuclear attack. In 2015, this point was made openly by a senior Iranian official: “Israel is a one-bomb state.” This means that Israel’s annihilation would require only a single Iranian nuclear bomb.

For Israel, it is time for analytic clarity and absolute candor. From a regional or world security standpoint, Israel’s nuclear weapons are not the problem. In the Middle East, the most persistent source of war and terror remains a genocidal Arab/Islamist commitment to “excise the Jewish cancer.” Faced with the threat of a Palestine that is “free from the River to the Sea” – that is, a Palestine that has completely destroyed and replaced Israel – the Jewish State will need to acknowledge that Palestinian statehood is not just another tactical enemy expedient. Indeed, a cartographic genocide has already been inflicted upon Israel. All official Palestinian maps describe Israel as “Occupied Palestine”. The Jewish State has already been eliminated.

With a selectively revealed nuclear weapons posture, Israel could more reliably deter a rational Iranian enemy’s unconventional attacks and perhaps most of its large conventional aggressions. Additionally, with such an updated deterrence posture, Israel could, if necessary, launch non-nuclear preemptive strikes against Iranian hard targets and against associated counterforce capabilities.

Left in place, these assets could threaten Israel’s physical survival with impunity. In the absence of acknowledging possession of certain survivable and penetration-capable nuclear weapons, therefore, Israel’s lawful acts of preemption (“anticipatory self-defense”) could trigger the onset of a much wider war. The reason is straightforward: There would then remain no convincing threat of an unacceptable Israeli counter-retaliation.

The decision to bring Israel’s “bomb” out of the “basement” (that is, Israel’s calculated end to “deliberate nuclear ambiguity”) would not be easy. But the stark realities of facing not only a nuclear-capable Iran but also assorted other nuclear aspirants – sometimes in synergy with anti-Israel terrorists – obligate immediate reconsideration of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” As a corollary, Jerusalem will need to clarify that its multi-level active defenses would operate in tandem with Israel’s counterforce nuclear retaliations, not in their stead.

All of this suggests that Israeli security assessments of Palestinian statehood and Iranian nuclearization should be undertaken together, and with due regard for complex synergistic intersections. For Israel, the cumulative impact of Palestinian statehood and Iranian nuclearization would be substantially greater than the sum of their parts. The poet Auden’s words should ring as a galvanizing prophecy: “Defenseless under the night; our world in stupor lies.”

Louis René Beres, Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, is the author of many books and articles dealing with nuclear strategy and nuclear war, including Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (University of Chicago Press, 1980) and Security or Armageddon: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (D.C. Heath/Lexington, 1986). His twelfth book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published by Rowman and Littlefield in 2016. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.

The post Dangerous Intersections: Palestinian Statehood and Regional Nuclear War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Trump’s Travel Ban on 12 Countries Goes Into Effect Early Monday

US President Donald Trump attends the Saudi-US Investment Forum, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

US President Donald Trump’s order banning citizens of 12 countries from entering the United States goes into effect at 12:01 am ET (0401 GMT) on Monday, a move the president promulgated to protect the country from “foreign terrorists.”

The countries affected by the latest travel ban are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

The entry of people from seven other countries – Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela – will be partially restricted.

Trump, a Republican, said the countries subject to the most severe restrictions were determined to harbor a “large-scale presence of terrorists,” fail to cooperate on visa security, have an inability to verify travelers’ identities, as well as inadequate record-keeping of criminal histories and high rates of visa overstays in the United States.

He cited last Sunday’s incident in Boulder, Colorado, in which an Egyptian national tossed a gasoline bomb into a crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators as an example of why the new curbs are needed. But Egypt is not part of the travel ban.

The travel ban forms part of Trump’s policy to restrict immigration into the United States and is reminiscent of a similar move in his first term when he barred travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Officials and residents in countries whose citizens will soon be banned expressed dismay and disbelief.

Chad President Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno said he had instructed his government to stop granting visas to US citizens in response to Trump’s action.

“Chad has neither planes to offer nor billions of dollars to give, but Chad has its dignity and its pride,” he said in a Facebook post, referring to countries such as Qatar, which gifted the U.S. a luxury airplane for Trump’s use and promised to invest billions of dollars in the U.S.

Afghans who worked for the US or US-funded projects and were hoping to resettle in the US expressed fear that the travel ban would force them to return to their country, where they could face reprisal from the Taliban.

Democratic US lawmakers also voiced concern about the policies.

“Trump’s travel ban on citizens from over 12 countries is draconian and unconstitutional,” said US Representative Ro Khanna on social media late on Thursday. “People have a right to seek asylum.”

The post Trump’s Travel Ban on 12 Countries Goes Into Effect Early Monday first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli Military Says It Struck Hamas Member in Southern Syria

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron after a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, May 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq/Pool

The Israeli military said on Sunday that it struck a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in southern Syria’s Mazraat Beit Jin, days after Israel carried out its first airstrikes in the country in nearly a month.

Hamas did not immediately comment on the strike.

Israel said on Tuesday it hit weapons belonging to the government in retaliation for the firing of two projectiles towards Israel for the first time under the country’s new leadership. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz held Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa accountable.

Damascus in response said reports of the shelling were unverified, reiterating that Syria does not pose a threat to any regional party.

A little known group named “Martyr Muhammad Deif Brigades,” an apparent reference to Hamas’ military leader who was killed in an Israeli strike in 2024, reportedly claimed responsibility for the shelling. Reuters, however, could not independently verify the claim.

The post Israeli Military Says It Struck Hamas Member in Southern Syria first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israel Orders Military to Stop Gaza-Bound Yacht Carrying Greta Thunberg

FILE PHOTO: Activist Greta Thunberg sits aboard the aid ship Madleen, which left the Italian port of Catania on June 1 to travel to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid, in this picture released on June 2, 2025 on social media. Photo: Freedom Flotilla Coalition/via REUTERS/File Photo

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz told the military on Sunday to stop a charity boat carrying activists including Sweden’s Greta Thunberg who are planning to defy an Israeli blockade and reach Gaza.

Operated by the pro-Palestinian Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC), the British-flagged Madleen yacht set sail from Sicily on June 6 and is currently off the Egyptian coast, heading slowly towards the Gaza Strip, which is besieged by Israel.

“I instructed the IDF to act so that the Madleen .. does not reach Gaza,” Katz said in a statement.

“To the antisemitic Greta and her Hamas-propaganda-spouting friends, I say clearly: You’d better turn back, because you will not reach Gaza.”

Climate activist Thunberg said she joined the Madleen crew to “challenge Israel’s illegal siege and escalating war crimes” in Gaza and highlight the urgent need for humanitarian aid. She has rejected previous Israeli accusations of antisemitism.

Israel went to war with Hamas in October 2023 after the Islamist terrorists launched a surprise attack on southern Israel, killing more 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to the enclave.

Katz said the blockade was essential to Israel’s national security as it seeks to eliminate Hamas.

“The State of Israel will not allow anyone to break the naval blockade on Gaza, whose primary purpose is to prevent the transfer of weapons to Hamas,” he said.

The Madleen is carrying a symbolic quantity of aid, including rice and baby formula, the FFC has said.

FFC press officer Hay Sha Wiya said on Sunday the boat was currently some 160 nautical miles (296 km) from Gaza. “We are preparing for the possibility of interception,” she said.

Besides Thunberg, there are 11 other crew members aboard, including Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament.

Israeli media have reported that the military plans to intercept the yacht before it reaches Gaza and escort it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The crew would then be deported.

In 2010, Israeli commandos killed 10 people when they boarded a Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, that was leading a small flotilla towards Gaza.

The post Israel Orders Military to Stop Gaza-Bound Yacht Carrying Greta Thunberg first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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