The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) now warns that Iran has enough nuclear material to make several atomic bombs. Iran is the only non-nuclear weapon state to enrich uranium to near full weapons-grade levels. Iran continues to deny inspectors access to its facilities to verify that Iran is, as it claims, complying with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)—to which it acceded under Iran’s last Shah, Reza Pahlavi.
In 2012 I published a scenario titled The Day America Died. Set in April 2013, it had Iran destroy Tel Aviv and Haifa (intentionally), and render all Jerusalem uninhabitable (unintentionally; it only wanted to destroy West Jerusalem). Israel launches a retaliatory nuclear strike. The first-ever nuclear war sets off mass panic in Western capitals, causing a global economic crash, disintegration of our alliances, and spurring rapid nuclear proliferation. The likely effects of such an attack are supported by this summary of the radii of various kinds of destruction generated by detonations of atomic (A-bomb) and thermonuclear (H-bomb) weapons.
I intended my scenario as a warning to anyone who might think that the U.S. would survive the destruction of Israel largely intact, showing in graphic detail how America would be irremediably devastated. Recent events show that the risk of an Iran nuclear strike against Israel are growing, with no effective action being taken by the Biden administration.
Consider:
(1) Team Biden undermines an Israeli prime minister it detests, whilst making no effort to bring down the Iranian clerical fascist regime;
(2) Team Obama hailed the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as blocking all of Iran’s four paths to a nuclear weapon;
(3) After U.S intelligence discovered Iran’s violations of the JCPOA, President Trump withdrew from the deal;
(4) The belief that a nuclear-armed Iran can be deterred is highly dubious;
(5) Israel’s small size and population—its consequent lack of geostrategic depth—means it cannot survive as a functioning country after even a small number of nuclear detonations on or over its major cities;
(6) Iran’s threat to Israel is real and growing (see my recent TAS article), and thus Iranian leaders may vastly underestimate the devastation they would face after a nuclear attack on Israel, tempting them to strike;
(7) It is hardly coincidental that Iran accelerated its uranium enrichment in November 2020, after Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
No American leader will say, openly, that America would survive the destruction of Israel. But allowing Iran to arrive at the cusp of nuclear weapons status, given the fallibility of assessments as to clandestine advances in nuclear weapons development, recklessly risks America’s future as a free, prosperous, society. If our country seems divided now, after a nuclear Holocaust in Israel our country will be torn asunder.
Let Israeli prime minister Netanyahu have the last word—which should be taken as a final warning:
Our fight is your fight.. . . part of the larger struggle between the pro-American forces in the Middle East and the anti-American terror axis led by Iran. [If Iran gets nuclear weapons], every American will be held hostage to an ideological enemy with an implacable hatred for America. If we lose, you lose. If we win, you win.
Bottom Line. It increasingly appears that the administration intends to pursue its twin Mideast obsessions: making a deal with Iran, and forcing Israel to accept a West Bank + Gaza Palestinian state, run by the Palestine Authority or its successors. Two terrorist statelets and Iran’s longtime proxy, Hezbollah, effectively controlling Lebanon will collectively surround Israel. It will fatally undermine America’s security position in the Mideast, and hand Iran an unearned spectacular triumph. This will end any serious efforts to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold, and possibly lead to the full horror detailed in my 2012 scenario. If such comes to pass, America will never recover its position as leader of the free world. Hell will break loose globally, with sauve qui peut the emergent disorder of the day.
John Wohlstetter is author of Sleepwalking With the Bomb (Discovery Institute Press, 2d. ed. 2014)
