Western commentators have a seriously misleading description of Israel’s nuclear strategy. One could even say that Western commentators have been playing up the likely effectiveness of Israel’s use of nuclear weapons, i.e. acting as propagandists for Israel. Western commentators are behaving as cheerleaders for Israel’s use of nuclear weapons. Whenever mention is made of Israel’s use of nuclear weapons, it is said as if it were a final action. This is absurd. First of all, the use of nuclear weapons has a ‘tomorrow’. After the use of nuclear weapons by Israel, there would be a further stage. Iran would have an option to respond with further missile attacks. Other Mid-East states have other options. Pakistan has offered to provide nuclear weapons, and Russia has offered a nuclear umbrella.
On the other hand, in all war situations there are inevitable strategic surprises. Iran’s previous leader forbade the production of nuclear weapons. However, there are options for military leaders who might believe that secret precautionary production of nuclear weapons is essential. It then would be a technical discussion as to when something is a ‘nuclear weapon’? Iranian military leaders may secretly decide that 99% of a finished weapon remains an ‘unfinished’ weapon. Iran already has appropriate working delivery options.
Ted Postol has shown that the requirements to go from 60% to 90% or whatever is the required level is, are minimal and available and can be done on a small scale in a manner that could not be discovered externally. If deception is an essential part of war, then Iran would not hesitate to build nuclear weapons and not disclose them immediately.
Israel’s original strategy was to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent. In the past if Israel was about to be successfully invaded, it thought it could resort to using tactical nuclear weapons on its opponent. Here, the issue would be that the use of tactical nuclear weapons could decisively stop any invasion.
Domestically Israel has created a myth that its opponents were full of desire to wipe out every single Jew in Israel. However, the situation today is entirely different. The use of tactical or strategic nuclear weapons may have no effect on missile attacks. This is classic ‘projection’ as Gaza has clearly demonstrated- ‘Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another.’
This fomenting of hysteria would be done to obtain widespread support domestically for the use of nuclear weapons. From the outside such use would be perceived as the height of aggression while from the inside due to massive domestic Israeli propaganda it would be presented as a final defensive option, however absurd.
In todays environment the point of a deterrent is to prevent a situation requiring its use. Every day the Israeli’s talk about nuclear weapons, they destroy their deterrent effect. Iran’s missile attacks have shown that for Iran, nuclear weapons are not a deterrent. If we now accept that Israel’s nuclear weapons have lost any deterrent effect, we come close to seeing an irrational and irresponsible situation. If Israel were in the process of being destroyed by missiles, what would be the point of using nuclear weapons? If Israel’s population were 7 million and the state were under attack by missiles, what would be the effect of tactical nuclear weapons? It would not stop further missile attacks, but most credibly would increase them by a factor. This means that whatever the destruction to Iran, the physical destruction of Israel would increase and the number of killed and wounded would massively increase even without retaliatory nuclear attacks.
If retaliatory nuclear attacks took place, given the size of Israel and the concentration of population in small areas, these retaliatory nuclear attacks could significantly reduce the total population.
This means that to use nuclear weapons, Israeli generals must have lost their minds. They would have to consider a situation where Israel inflicts a loss of 20 million people on its opponents’ population but loses 5 million out of 7 million to be a welcome and successful outcome. In such a situation, Iran would survive, but Israel would cease to exist, and Israeli generals would have to consider this a success. I would not consider this a situation of madmen in charge of nuclear weapons, but of monkeys in charge of nuclear weapons.