No, this war won’t drive further nuclearization
Why blaming Israel’s preemptive strike for nuclearization is nonsensical
(First published on the Times of Israel)
One of the more often repeated statements made by talking heads who happen to be critical about Israel is that the Iran-Israel war will motivate more countries to seek nuclear weapons. Some go on to cite Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament enabling a Russian invasion, and conclude that Iran’s lack of a nuclear weapon is what allowed Israel to attack.
Few commentators have noted that Israel’s nuclear umbrella hasn’t protected it from repeated attacks from neighboring forces financed and armed by Iran, or the largest missile attack in history by Iran against its civilians. Fewer still have noted that the EU has yet to put the nuclear option on the table to deter Russia from further aggression despite intelligence suggesting Russian threats on EU members.
One can conclude two things. First, nuclear weapons are only useful in the hands of ruthless tyrants who have no qualms about murdering innocent civilians. I believe this is not an assumption worth testing, which is why I believe Israel’s preemptive attack on Iran was just, wise, and unfortunately too late.
(Yes, too late. Just as the US has TACO to explain why Trump always chickens out, Israel has its own BAD problem: Bibi always delays. The international community has known for decades that Iran was working on a bomb, leading to the JCPOA. The failure of attempts to deter Iran after the US pulled out should have triggered an Israeli response much sooner. That’s why I wrote over a year ago that the Gaza war –– which should have ended months ago — was a distraction.)
One can thereby conclude that liberal democracies or semi-liberal autocracies will not use a nuclear weapon unless the state’s existence is on the line. For Ukraine, Taiwan, and Israel, nuclear weapons are at best a last resort and at worst a second strike capability. Given that contemporary liberal democracies are generally too busy living their lives without basing their existence on the destruction of a foreign enemy (unlike dictatorships who often justify their rule by claiming a foreign enemy), what one could conclude from these past few years is that investment in nuclear weapons is a distraction from the types of conventional and more readily available armaments proven to deter a foreign foe.
All of this is to say is that clear-eyed analysts should observe that Israel’s nuclear umbrella did not deter decades of Iranian promises to wipe it off the map by encircling it in a ring of fire. They should then observe that close-proximity zero-day attacks like the preemptive wave that took out Iran’s military leadership and strategic capabilities are the best way forward. Considering Ukraine’s perseverance against the Russian threat and recent success, this seems like the only logical conclusion.
(A similar conclusion can be drawn from the recent India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir, where the two nuclear powers fought conventionally for decades, despite Pakistan’s authoritarian status).
Take North Korea as another example. Even though it has passed the nuclear threshold, the Kim family ruled the brutal dictatorship for decades before acquiring nuclear weapons and its status hasn’t shifted since. All nuclear weapons did is harden the stance against them, and tighten sanctions further.
If the Islamic Republic rushes to the bomb after this engagement it will be an emotional and not logical decision. Israel’s success in this campaign revealed its ability to infiltrate the theocracy’s command and control systems and sabotage most of their military strike capabilities. This seems to be a common problem with corrupt, authoritarian regimes, even those with religious fanatics making up most of the ranks. They’d do better to invest whatever capital they have left after this campaign to patch their leaks and improve the livelihood of their citizens.
So no, I do not believe that the conclusion one should draw from this war is that nuclearization is the only path to regime survival. Anyone blaming Israel for adding that risk should be laughed off the stage. Instead, the more logical conclusion for countries fearing foreign aggression is to learn from Israel’s ability to act swiftly using conventional, cutting-edge weapons against military targets to defang a rival more than 10 times its size.
P.S: Please do not forget the hostages. Israel attacked Iran after months of preparation without agreeing to a compromise for their release, which will stain this government and its BAD prime minister. He knows the next elections are a year away, so he could have built a national unity government to protect his seat in return for the hostages, settling the Gaza dispute, and clearing the air with our Western allies before approving the attack. All without his government falling.
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Good piece! I was literally just planning on writing on this as well - my piece would cover slightly different ground to yours so I might still do it.