World War III

William Arkin catches George W. Bush musing again about World War III: "This is a country that has defied the IAEA -- in other words, didn't disclose all their program -- have said they want to destroy Israel. If you want to see World War III, you know, a way to do that is to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon. And so I said, now is the time to move."

Obviously, as we've had several occasions to note, Bush's efforts to portray his Iran stance as in line with the IAEA are wrong and dishonest. What's more, while it would obviously be a horrible turn of events for Israel to be subject to an Iranian nuclear attack, the response would be an Israeli counterattack and the destruction of Iran -- no World War III. And, more to the point, since the response would be an Israeli counterattack and the destruction of Iran, there's not going to be an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. The whole thing is ludicrous. But the Bush administration, by repeatedly talking as if the US and its allies have no ability to deter rogue states, is possibly opening the door to some kind of dangerous misunderstandings.

As Condoleezza Rice wrote before going insane "These regimes are living on borrowed time, so there need be no sense of panic about them. Rather, the first line of defense should be a clear and classical statement of deterrence -- if they do acquire WMD, their weapons will be unusable because any attempt to use them will bring national obliteration."

Comments

In other words.........Bush is an idiot.

Posted by steve duncan | November 8, 2007 3:20 PM

I'd suppose that Iran would first have to have a nuclear weapon before it could even begin contemplating a nuclear attack on Israel. Why does everyone get so fussed up about Israel anyway? As if 'Iran' would be so stupid to do any such thing. Oh!, because Israel began the nuclear arms race in the Middle East about two or three decades ago. Then I can understand the commotion.

Posted by Quentin | November 8, 2007 3:32 PM

Bush's efforts to portray his Iran stance as in line with the IAEA are wrong and dishonest

Well, of course, Bush doesn't say anywhere in the quoted passage that Bush's own stance is "in line with the IAEA". He says that Iran is not complying with the IAEA. Which is completely correct. So Matthew is just dishing out a pile of straw.

What's more, while it would obviously be a horrible turn of events for Israel to be subject to an Iranian nuclear attack, the response would be an Israeli counterattack and the destruction of Iran -- no World War III.

The complete nuclear destruction of two countries, with associated fallout throughout the rest of the world, sounds like World War III to me. In how many countries does there have to be casualties for something to qualify as World War III to Matthew?

And, more to the point, since the response would be an Israeli counterattack and the destruction of Iran

And we know this, how? What if Iran thinks it can completely destroy Israel before Israel has the chance to counterattack?

Posted by Al | November 8, 2007 3:37 PM

I'm almost hoping Iran does get the weapons, just to be able to settle the argument as to whether or not they'd use them to attack anyone.

Posted by Jim W | November 8, 2007 3:38 PM

What if Iran thinks it can completely destroy Israel before Israel has the chance to counterattack?

As I understand it, Israel has assured second strike capability by virtue of its submarine launched nuclear missiles.

Posted by southpaw | November 8, 2007 3:49 PM

What if Iran thinks it can completely destroy Israel before Israel has the chance to counterattack?

Also: US counterattacks on behalf of Israel. Do you think Iran doubts the Great Satan's fealty to its Zionist crusading brethren?

Posted by Eric Martin | November 8, 2007 3:51 PM

Wow, Yglesias is cool, the way he tosses off a nuclear war between Israel and Iran with what, 10 million dead in a few days, and calls the Bush Administration to heel for making it seem like a big deal. Really, it's a nothing, as Yglesias makes clear.

Although, as Quentin and Eric Martin make clear, Iran and Israel will have allies outside the region. Luckily Yglesias knows the precise outcome so there's no fear of the conflict widening.

Posted by y81 | November 8, 2007 4:21 PM

10 million dead in a few days, and calls the Bush Administration to heel for making it seem like a big deal.

Um, no. Nice try. Matt clearly thinks that the very prospect of this means it WON'T happen - just as the prospect of Mutually Assured Destruction prevented nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union for decades.

Which is all kind of academic anyway, considering Iran doesn't even have a single nuclear weapon. They can't even take out an Israeli goat farm, let alone an entire nation.

Posted by Jay Andrew Allen | November 8, 2007 5:07 PM

If such a conflict were to arise, it would take the form of a nuke going off in Tel Aviv or some important Israeli city. No contrail leading from Iranian territory, no warning; just a mushroom cloud. Truck delivery, perhaps? Iran will express shock and dismay, and say it was Zionists who did the nuking to make Iran and its peaceful nuclear program look bad. The US will accuse Iran and be taken to task for increasing tensions; a few hundred thousand people will die, but they are, after all, only Jews. Israel will be crippled, and a desired power vacuum will be created in the Middle East. Some Palestinians will rejoice; others will cry in shame.

If I had to guess, it would be Tel Aviv; the notion of nuking Jerusalem is ghastly to Muslims. Although, with a convincing enough line that Zionists are behind it (just like we know they also did the WTC bombings) those who do the planning might dare to nuke Jerusalem, hoping it would inflame tensions more; but I would be surprised. But under no circumstances would Iran nuke Israel in an overt way.

Whether this qualifies as WWIII or not depends on what happens next. Will Pakistan join the fray? Will NATO mobilize? Will Iran settle scores with another mystery nuke going off somewhere else... the US, Europe, Iraq? WWI was ignited by an assasination, after all; Europe was a powderkeg, and the assasination was the match that set it off. A nuke is a pretty big match.

Posted by Alvaro Fernandez | November 8, 2007 5:07 PM

Actually, y81, the point is that the massive death toll should operate as a deterrent. When Bush makes it seem like there will be only one massive death toll - Israel's - he implies that Iran (should it really want to attack Israel) would benefit from an accelerated production of nuclear bombs, if they could, that is, make nuclear bombs.

Part of the asymmetry here resides in the fact that Israel built their own nuclear weapons under the shadow of a U.S. policy that was supposedly against the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and with materials that were apparently given secretly to Israel, with James Angleton acting as the coordinator. To point to how Iran is doing something illegal under a treaty they signed, but that it is just a okay if you didn't sign that treaty, isn't much of an argument - although for the percentile of Middle Easterners who are rabid members of the American republican party, who knows? It might be persuasive.

Of course, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, has said it doesn't plan to make nuclear weapons, and has, for thirty years, had the right to nuclear energy - encouraged, in the Shah's day, by the U.S. The policy we need has to look towards the day when they can make nuclear weapons and decide - is it worth it to keep Iran unsuccessfully compartmentalized, or would the American position be stronger if Iranian elites actually benefited from interaction with America. The bombing side has had a peculiarly free ride on the question of what the bombing is part of - and that can only be regime change. Myself, I would bet strongly against regime change in Iran as an American policy success.

Posted by roger | November 8, 2007 5:12 PM

I feel like a broken record, but:

If Israel is so scared, what is to prevent them from destroying the nation of Iran?

This is the thing I can never understand about crazies like NPod or idiots like our president. If things are as bad as they say, then the logical reaction is for Israel, which has the world's fourth largest deterrent, to destroy every population center in Iran. Today.

Posted by Greg | November 8, 2007 5:21 PM

I wonder if Matt reeads the posts he links to:

First he links to a post that says

"1. Iran is ripe for regime change.

Not true. Although the ruling clergy in Iran are very unpopular, they are not going anywhere anytime soon. "

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/11/iran_assumptions.php

Then he links to rice saying
""These regimes are living on borrowed time"

So which is it, Matt?

Posted by Dave | November 8, 2007 5:22 PM

Do you think Iran doubts the Great Satan's fealty to its Zionist crusading brethren?

Shouldn't that be "its Zionist masters"?

Posted by Herschel | November 8, 2007 5:26 PM

O, right, Jay Andrew Allen and roger, the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. How well I remember, during the 1980s, telling my Upper West Side neighbors that the risk of nuclear war was infinitesimal, and that the very horribleness of it was pretty much a guaranty that it wouldn't happen. How well I remember the Dalton faculty and students mocking and deriding the nuclear freezeniks, with their hysterical fear of nuclear war. Those tough-minded NYC liberals knew that there was no serious risk of any such thing.

Posted by y81 | November 8, 2007 5:29 PM

I can't imagine for the life of me what makes Matt so sure that "there's not going to be an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel." Muturally assured destruction has a (well-understood) logic to it, and the U.S. and Israel are much safer than we would be if it didn't exist. But it's a hell of a long way from there to Matt's breezy and entirely unjustified conclusion.

Posted by David J. Balan | November 8, 2007 5:54 PM

"I can't imagine for the life of me what makes Matt so sure "

If you read this blog fora while, you find that Matt is sure about everything. Then he cherry picks articles to prove he right. He posted an article few days ago from the Nation that said Iran would never attack Israel, so in his mind it's now proven.

Posted by Dave | November 8, 2007 6:16 PM

y81, you are saying, then, that you were wrong in the eighties? Boy, that nuclear exchange that we had with the Soviet Union in 1995 sure changed a lot of minds!

Or perhaps you were wrong - twice! Once to not understand the argument in the eighties, which was that a deterrent is a diminishing return, and that there was no reason to think building more missiles would give us more deterrence, and there was reason to think building a anti-nuclear shield would do anything but upset that deterrence. Arguments that obviously went way over your head.

And you are wrong now, since Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't, which means that bombing Iran isn't an act that derives from the breakdown of deterrence, but an act of pure aggression on the part of a brainless superpower. In the future, if Iran does get nuclear weapons, it will be in the situation China was in with the Soviets - its capacity will shield it to some extent from attack.

And you had upper West side neighbors? You must have inherited the money. The inability to apply elementary logic is definitely a roadblock to actually earning wealth.

Posted by roger | November 8, 2007 6:31 PM

In other words.........Bush is an idiot.

No. In other words, Bush as a domestic political agenda. Taking him for ingenuous makes you the idiot.

Posted by Bill | November 8, 2007 6:36 PM

Bush *has*, that is..

Posted by Bill | November 8, 2007 6:37 PM

O, right, Jay Andrew Allen and roger, the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. How well I remember, during the 1980s, telling my Upper West Side neighbors that the risk of nuclear war was infinitesimal, and that the very horribleness of it was pretty much a guaranty that it wouldn't happen. How well I remember the Dalton faculty and students mocking and deriding the nuclear freezeniks, with their hysterical fear of nuclear war. Those tough-minded NYC liberals knew that there was no serious risk of any such thing.

What a brainless post. The sad thing is you clearly imagine you're scoring some kind of point against "New York liberals." freezeniks?

y81...people around here don't think of Rush Limbaugh, whom you appear to want to emulate, as the paragon of rhetorical skill. But anyways, what roger said.

Posted by Bill | November 8, 2007 6:47 PM

Re: Alvaro Fernandez

It is nice that you are able to see so clearly into the future and predict events that could never conceivably happen.

There is not really any chance for Iran to nuke Tel Aviv, or anywhere else in Israel for that matter, in anything other than an overt way. There will be some sort of 'contrail' leading to Tehran even if it is not in the sky.

And who exactly would be the group that carries out this clandestine attack? Hizbollah? Hamas? The world already sees these groups as little more than Iranian puppets, so why would Israel not retaliate directly against Iran with its own sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons if such an attack took place?

Whether to push the button themselves or not, Iran would cease to exist.

Posted by Tomas | November 8, 2007 6:50 PM

How, uh, easy would it be to drive a nuke into Tel Aviv? Kind of a big package no? Just, you know, drive the massive truck right across the border from Jordan via Iraq without the Israeli's taking a peak at the crossing, or anyone picking up a hint along the way.

Yeah. Sure.

Also: y81, I have rarely seen such a self-refuting argument portrayed with such gusto. Bravo!

Posted by Eric Martin | November 8, 2007 7:06 PM

You know, it's not even MAD, because the destruction wouldn't be "mutual."

Iran would be destroyed but Israel would still exist even if Tel Aviv were destroyed. Iran knows this.

Posted by Eric Martin | November 8, 2007 7:12 PM

Here's the giant, glaring problem with this kind of discussion.

Iran, as the nonpareil terror-sponsor of the world, is supposed to be feared foremost because it may allow a nuclear weapon to "fall into the hands of" terrorists. Remember? Not because it would nuke Israel. No sane person thinks it would do that.

But Iran giving a nuke to some terrorists would, OF COURSE, directly implicate the Iranian state, and a nuclear response, or at least an all-out conventional response, would be assured.

So does anyone see the flaw in the Very Serious Argument yet? Iran would never, as a state actor, engage in open nuclear warfare with another state, if it wanted to preserve its very existence. But no terrorist could hope to get his own nuke without a state sponsor like Iran. So what state in its right mind would risk being implicated in, yes, open nuclear warfare with another state? And yet her ewe have people going on and on about war games between Israel and Iran. As if!

If terrorists getting nukes is such the big, new threat...I guess I'm left wondering why people weren't driven to distraction by this back in the Cold War, or especially after the USSR broke up. There weren't terrorists who hated America then? No one wanted us dead? But the 9/11 brigade reminds us all the time that they hated us before 9/11.

I think this whole terrorists with nukes scare needs to be seriously reexamined. Until Al-Qaeda can build its own centrifuges etc., the risks seem vanishingly small to me. No state would want to deal with the consequences of fobbing off a nuke, so the entire question becomes, how much control of its nuclear weapons does each state retain? Seems like Russia is the biggest worry on that front - but no one's even talking about them! It's all Iran Iran Iran, and they don't even have one fucking bomb. Once again, the justifications for war have nothing to do with the reality. It used to be about terrorists with nukes. Now it's about Iran openly bombing Israel, and practically no one appears to notice. Insane...

Posted by Bill | November 8, 2007 7:51 PM

Not to mention how hilariously inept a strategy it would be, for a state who wanted to Wipe Israel Off The Face Of The Earth, to openly proclaim such, be taken literally by a bunch of credulous chickenhawk dopes with itchy trigger fingers, and then SPEND THE NEXT SEVERAL YEARS SLOWLY PIECING TOGETHER ONE MEASLY FUCKING BOMB IN OPEN DEFIANCE OF THE IAEA, UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYES OF ISRAEL AND EVERYONE ELSE, before brilliantly deploying that Grand Strategy of destroying Israel. It'd be like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where the castle guards watch complacently while Sir Whoever races towards them from hundreds of yards away. Except that once he'd slain the guards he'd spontaneously combust or something.

And yet the propaganda goes, "Iran's a bunch of religious crazies! We can't sit by while they get all crazy and take over the Middle East and destroy the West!" How fucking sad are we?

Posted by Bill | November 8, 2007 8:32 PM

Roger - And you are wrong now, since Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't, which means that bombing Iran isn't an act that derives from the breakdown of deterrence, but an act of pure aggression on the part of a brainless superpower. In the future, if Iran does get nuclear weapons, it will be in the situation China was in with the Soviets - its capacity will shield it to some extent from attack.

No, it is in deterrence to mention to a neighbor that says they will kill you with the shotgun they are carrying once they load it - that you will shoot them at the point when they try putting the first shell in the chamber. Not after you wait for it to be loaded, aimed, and fired at you before you fire. That would be stupid.

Roger - And you had upper West side neighbors? You must have inherited the money. The inability to apply elementary logic is definitely a roadblock to actually earning wealth.

See above about the concept of stupidity as it applies to you, Roger.
(And it was France that gave Israel fuel, Dimona, and a complete reprocessing plant - not any "cabal" in the USA.)

Posted by Chris Ford | November 8, 2007 8:48 PM

Ah, Ford, back from the neo-Nazi meeting. The diversion of U.S. nuclear materials to Israel is well known. It has been disputed by Seymour Hersch. and in fact James Angleton has a statue there. Warren T. Farr's paper on Israel's acquisition of nuclear materials, including yellowcake, is pretty good on the fas site. He writes:

"The Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, or NUMEC, in Apollo, Pennsylvania was a small fuel rod fabrication plant. In 1965, the U.S. government accused Dr. Zalman Shapiro, the corporation president, of “losing” 200 pounds of highly enriched uranium. Although investigated by the Atomic Energy Commission, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other government agencies and inquiring reporters, no answers were available in what was termed the Apollo Affair.[29] Many remain convinced that the Israelis received 200 pounds of enriched uranium sometime before 1965.[30] One source links Rafi Eitan, an Israeli Mossad agent and later the handler of spy Jonathan Pollard, with NUMEC.[31] In the 1990s when the NUMEC plant was disassembled, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission found over 100 kilograms of plutonium in the structural components of the contaminated plant, casting doubt on 200 pounds going to Israel.[32]" http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/
israel/nuke/farr.htm

France, of course, stopped supplying Israel with nuclear materials after 1963.

As for your bizarre defense of bombing Iran re an analogy with a guy with a shotgun - which has that authentic, Fordian flavor of a fifth grader's fever dream - I don't encourage you to use it as a defense in court, if you do kill your neighbor. Because any U.S. jury would hang you. It isn't self defense in this country to go barging into a guy's house and shooting him because, years ago, he said he wanted to wipe you off the map.

But keep working on those tinker toy analogies.

Posted by roger | November 8, 2007 9:25 PM

No, it is in deterrence to mention to a neighbor that says they will kill you with the shotgun they are carrying once they load it

Yes, Chris Ford, a nuclear bomb is exactly the same as a shotgun, and Iran and Israel are exactly the same as two suburban neighbors, one of whom has said they will "kill (the other one) with the shotgun...once they load it." What a relevant and useful analogy!

Posted by James Gary | November 8, 2007 9:32 PM