Iranian Plans Going Up In Smoke
Those who have been expecting a big, splashy, dangerous Israeli airstrike on Iranian nuclear facilities…may never see it.
This past week’s killing of key Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, is one of a quiet number of such assassinations. Ahmadi-Roshan was killed when a pair of motorcyclists attached a magnetic car bomb on the underside of his car, then sped away.
The Iranians have accused both the U.S. and Israel of being involved, and there was a telling bit in the Jerusalem Post on Thursday:
“Iranian officials implicated Israel and the US in the attack, but the US denied the charges.”
Notice the sentence didn’t end with: “…but the US and Israel denied the charges.”
Most thinking people realize the Israelis might be involved. Their feared Mossad boasts an elite team of assassins who strike without warning, then seemingly vaporize.
The sudden death of a major figure in Iran’s race for nuclear weapons comes in the middle of negotiations in Jordan between Israelis and Palestinians, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama also discussed the situation by phone.
Everyone understands the tremendous danger that Iran poses not only to the region, but globally, since they are the world’s biggest sponsor of state terrorism. Further in the JPost report, we read:
“An senior Iranian security official warned that Iran had a cross-border, cross-regional strategy for responding to the attack.”
Normally, when an Islamic state or terror group threatens to “burn the sand under the feet of the invaders,” they are merely playing up the stereotype of the emotional dictator who is more paper tiger than angel of death.
Yet, the Iranians do have the capacity to wage war in the form of these “cross regional” strategies. And were they able to succeed in striking Israel, the latter is too small to absorb such a lethal blow.
In 1950, the United States had 299 warheads. By 1987, we had accumulated a peak of 13,173 (the Soviets had 10,442)! What became known as M.A.D.—Mutual Assured Destruction—was the key in neither country striking. They were rational. And, if various accounts can be believed, Bobby Kennedy’s whisper into the ear of his Soviet counterpart—an appeal to reason—worked.
This scenario doesn’t exist with the Iranians. In a German report that appeared several years ago, the situation was described perfectly:
“The Arab/Iranian totalitarian leaderships’ attitudes, difficult for the West to fathom, are aggressive, egomaniacal, suspicious and reckless no less than intelligent.”
In other words, the Iranians are truly trigger-happy.
In the ‘60s, the Egyptian air force murdered scores of people in Yemen, using mustard gas. In 1982, Syria’s dictator, Hafez Assad, ordered his troops to obliterate the city of Homs, using cyanide.
Middle East dictators have never had the opportunity to murder on a really large scale; can you imagine what would happen if they get their hands on a lethal weapon?
In 1984, Iran began development of its chemical weapons program and two years later, in the middle of a bitter war with Iraq, used cyanide, phosgene, mustard gas, and tabun on the Iraqis. The delivery systems were artillery shells, air-dropped bombs, and rockets.
The biological weapons program began also in 1986—botulinum, ricin, anthrax.
Most would be stunned to know that Iran’s nuclear program, modest though it was, began in the 1950’s, under the leadership of…the United States! This program continued with U.S. assistance until the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The first Iranian nuclear power plant—Bushehr I— opened on September 12, 2011. This time the Russians helped.
In the book, Ballistic Missiles (edited by Arieh Stav), contributing writer Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto wrote:
“Whether peace or other treaties are signed or not, war will erupt and missiles will be launched at the first sign of Israeli weakness, whenever the huge price to be paid is considered acceptable by the Arab leadership.”
This is a key sentence. Whenever…considered acceptable. The dictators of the Middle East will launch an attack on Israel (or, perhaps more likely, each other) at the moment they feel they will not pay too high a price within the international community.
They are getting closer, and every week that brings more weak messages from Washington makes all of us more vulnerable. The Iranians are not only working on missiles to obliterate Israel; they are developing plans to strike the U.S.
Let us hope the motorcycles keep running.