The Root of All Fears
Why Is Israel So Afraid of Iranian Nukes?
Article Summary and Author Biography
Contrary to popular belief, Israel is not afraid of a nuclear attack by Iran or Hezbollah; rather, it fears losing its nuclear monopoly in the region and the image of invincibility that comes with it.
ARIEL ILAN ROTH is the Associate Director of National Security Studies at the Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
Letter From
The Israeli public and the country's intelligence experts have two different views of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program. Which will win out, and what is Washington's influence?
Reading List
An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Israeli politics.
The special relationship between Israel and the United States is about to enter perhaps its rockiest patch ever. Israel is growing exasperated with the Obama administration’s effort to use diplomacy to roll back Iran’s growing uranium-enrichment program. Israelis know better than anyone else that the trick to developing a nuclear weapon as a small power is to drag out the process of diplomacy and inspections long enough to produce sufficient quantities of fissionable material. Israel should know: in the 1960s, it deliberately misled U.S. inspectors and repeatedly delayed site visits, providing the time to construct its Dimona reactor and reprocess enough plutonium to build a bomb. North Korea has followed a similar path, with similar results. And now, Israel suspects, Iran is doing the same, only with highly enriched uranium instead of plutonium.
Most observers believe that Israel’s preoccupation with Iran’s nuclear program stems from the fear that Iran would either use a nuclear weapon against Israel or give the bomb to one of its direct proxies, most likely Hezbollah. Given Tehran’s open hostility toward Jerusalem, such foreboding makes sense. But such a scenario is highly improbable.
Tehran’s profound dislike of the Jewish state notwithstanding, it is unlikely to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon because Israel’s atomic arsenal is orders of magnitude larger than whatever infant capability Iran could muster in the foreseeable future. Moreover, Israel is believed to possess a secure submarine-based second-strike capability that could devastate Iran.
Nor would Iran readily supply Hezbollah with atomic weapons. No nuclear state has ever turned over its most prized military asset to a subsidiary actor or surrendered its exclusive control over a weapon that it worked so hard to obtain. More important, if Hezbollah were to acquire and use a nuclear weapon against Israel, there would be no doubt about the weapon’s provenance and Iran would immediately face devastating retaliation. An attack on Israel, in other words, would mean the end of Iran...
