Minimum deterrence

Constraints on American/Israeli nuclear weapons


Ritter & Hersh

Right now I'm watching a fascinating program on C-SPAN 2 featuring Scott Ritter (author of ``Target Iran: The Truth about the White House Plan for Regime Change'') and New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh. It was recorded two weeks ago at a meeting of the New York Society for Ethical Culture. I posted links to the full podcast here.

Perhaps appropriate for Halloween is the truly frightening discussion in this program is the prospect for nuclear war in the Middle East. Ritter goes so far as to say that if the US initiates a nuclear strike on Iran,

the genie ain’t going back into the bottle until at least one American city is taken out. So tell me—which one do you want gone? Seattle? Los Angeles? Boston? New York? Pick one, because at least one is going.

Let's back up on that. The way Ritter presents this case, he comes off as being a bit hyperbolic.

However, I believe the prospect of an Islamic country at some point in the future having the ability to deliver a retaliatory nuke to an American (or Israeli) city is the crux of current US policy toward Iran.

Hersh lays out during the discussion an absolutely crucial point about the balance of nuclear power in the Middle East--but a point that never is found in US reporting on attempts to punish Iran for its uranium enrichment program. That point is, as I have been writing since before the first Gulf War, the US and Israel are the ``advanced regional nuclear terrorists,'' while countries like Iran (and then Iraq) were and are ``nuclear infants.''

Hersh says,

Israel does have 600 or so nuclear weapons... It's all so, so overwhelming. You've got all these countries in the Middle East that have nada. And you have this one country that has 600. And we're not even beginning to talk about some rational disarmament program... [Even if regional problems including the Palestinian issue could be solved] you would still be confronted with an overwhelmingly difficult issue, which is one country in the Middle East is bristling with nuclear arms and the others don't have any, with the exception of Pakistan... We aren't even getting to the core issue with all this stuff we're doing now, and of course this administration has moved us even farther along off the path.... It's a really lousy world we're leaving for our children.

But, despite all that utterly dominating nuclear firepower the US and Israel wield, the nuclear infants still could constrain American/Israeli action if they managed to acquire even one nuke that could be detonated in just one of their enemy's (our) soft spots.

Ritter discussed a path to escalation in a conflict with Iran,

There will be war with Iran ... If we start bombing Iran, I’ll tell you right now, it’s not going to work ... What will happen is that the Iranians will respond and we will feel the pain instantaneously, which will cause the Bush administration to go to Phase 2, which will be boots on the ground.

And those troops could end up trapped in Iraq [Iran? sic?]. And there is no reserve to pull them out! And my concern at that point is that we might resort to the use of nuclear weapons to try to break the backbone of Iranian resistance.

Presumably what would follow, if Iran had the ability, is it would direct a retaliatory nuking of an American city, perhaps as Ritter was quoted above.

Let me summarize. The US wants to control Iran so that utilization of it's resources can be directed politically from Washington, as Iraq's now are. Regime change will be required. Conventional bombing can't accomplish it, so troops would be sent in, followed by nukes when the troops fail. The likelihood of failure of conventional force against Iran was amply illustrated when the Israeli attempt to crush Hezbollah in Lebanon did so last summer. The only thing that could stop Washington from carrying out such brazen aggression is the prospect of a nuke coming back at it.

As do Ritter and Hersh, I fear that the lame duck Bush administration will behave in its last two year like a dying monster with nothing to lose. It will accept the prospect of a temporary disruption of the oil economy in order to try to clean up Iran into a puppet more to its liking. No Democrat will stand in the way.

Like Hersh says, it's a really lousy world we're leaving for our children.