Simple and powerful

POST: Israel's Nuclear Closet, By Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 06 May 2009

Portrayed as an out-of-the-mouth-of-children logic, it is nonetheless quite powerful for a multitude of strategic reasons, as approving readers of mine will readily recognize.

Fabulous post.

I covet authorship, especially when Israel goes out of its way to sell the world on Iran's irrationality in an obvious bid to win approval for preemptive war, PROVING the impending deterrent effect of Iran's nuclear capacity.

Comments

[joe Michels]

This post is is based on current leftist thinking that makes Israel out to be some lawless aggressor in the same class as Saddam's Iraq. It tries to make the case that Iran needs a nuclear deterrent from Israel. How silly.

Iran wants nukes so it can be a regional power. Tom has made this case many times and that assessment make senses. Tom has also stated that iran want nukes to protect itself from superpowers like the US. Now that even makes sense give our involvement in the Middle East. Some believe that Iran wants nukes to destroy Israel, not sure where anybody got that idea. But to say Iran want nukes to protect itself from Israel is disingenuous.

[Javaid Akhtar]

I think the new game is giving this 'jewish only/mostly ' state ball some traction.Might take awhile for the world to get used to it ...so lets keep the whole two -state thing off the books and allow Israel to use Iran as the figleaf.The Israelis are just too smart to bomb for no useful end.There is'nt an election to look tough for ( and no left-wingers ...who seemingly need to prove their manhood to the electorate all the time)

[Dave Goldberg]

I've read Mr. Sullivan's post several times now and still haven't found a reason why doing what he suggests helps U.S. interests.

His reasoning gets strained at the end. Somehow the policy of deliberate ambiguity on nukes leads to a double standard where Israel can "has the right to launch wars and threaten wars against its neighbors, but its neighbors have no right to do the same".

Does that mean that Israel's neighbors have the right to indiscriminately lob missiles into population centers and sneak across its borders and kidnap soldiers, but Israel has no right to protect its citizens?

[Javaid Akhtar]

Israeli Nukes have removed the larger security issues off of the table from the region ..i.e no large scale war initiated outside Jeruselem is regionally possible.That leaves the Israelis pre-occupied with lobbing missiles and kidnappings...non-nuclear soluble issues.Nuclear weapons are not fine grained instruments and the tying in the nukes with these is patently wrong.And whether the Isrealis say they have or not..is really just a kiddies game played for the benefit of Politicians in the West so that they don't come under any undue ( not inevitable ..but possible) public pressure to discuss/inspect/curtail it.