By Peter J Wallison | Commentary, peterjwallison.substack.com
Most of the discussion about how Israel should respond to the latest Iranian missile attack fails to consider that Iran is not an ordinary aggressor country, driven by a desire to dominate its neighbors or its region.
Instead, Iran is a “theocratic republic,” headed by a Shi’ite religious figure, appointed for life, who makes all important governmental decisions. As such, the country cannot be appeased by any Israeli effort to reach an accommodation; Iran’s hostility to the very existence of Israel is fundamental to its current system of government.
This is demonstrated by Iran’s continuing support of Hezbollah’s presence in Lebanon—a hostile army right on Israel’s border—with an estimated 100,000 missiles aimed at Israel, as well as Iran’s violation of most international human rights norms. Iran is a country that inflicts harsh penalties for “crimes” such as homosexuality, executes girls for failing to cover their hair in public, and deals with public opposition by shooting protestors or torturing them to death.
It is also a regime that has deprived its population of the full use their country’s resources so that it could build and support a military structure throughout the Middle East that threatens what it calls the “Zionist state.”
In other words, the very existence of this government is based on a desire to destroy Israel whenever this becomes feasible.
Thus, in considering how Israel should respond to the recent attack from Iran, Israel should not act as it would in dealing with a normal but hostile country. Iran is more than simply an aggressive dictatorship. In terms of its intentions with respect to Jews, the principal population of Israel, Iran is another Nazi Germany. It is willing, as Hitler’s Germany was willing, to pay any price to achieve the destruction of the Jewish people. This alone gives Israel a right—as well as a powerful incentive—to destroy any means with which Iran might achieve this horrific goal.
The most important fact about Iran today is that it has been working steadily and feverishly over many years to develop nuclear weapons. Israel is well aware of this danger and has attempted to stop or delay Iran’s progress toward this goal in many different ways—assassinating Iranian scientists, technically interfering with the operation of the centrifuges that enrich uranium, and other less-dramatic stratagems—but none of these efforts has stopped the continuous nuclear development work in Iran. Recently, there have been statements from US and Israeli experts that Iran is within a “few days or weeks” of having sufficient enriched uranium for three bombs.
Of course, that isn’t yet a nuclear device, but the question for Israel is whether it wants to exist in a world where its principal adversary will eventually have nuclear weapons—an adversary that is suffused with a hatred of what it calls the “Zionist state.”
Israel is now in a position where it must decide how it will retaliate for the most recent Iranian missile attack. Most outside observers—including the Biden Administration—have been counseling moderation: an attack on a few missile launching sites, a raid on Iran’s capital, or some other steps that demonstrate what conventional power Israel has at its disposal.
But as the Wall Street Journal has noted last week, President Biden has continued his streak of bad advice to Israel by urging the country not to attack Iran’s nuclear development activities.
If Israel complies, it would be wasting an opportunity that may never come again. Instead, the US should be giving Israel the bunker-busting bombs that will assure the destruction of the underground Fordow facility where Iran has been developing its nuclear potential.
The world now recognizes that Israel has a right to retaliate for the most recent Iranian attack, and expects that it will do so. There is every reason for Israel to rid itself—once and for all—of the threat of an Iranian nuclear attack by rendering Fordow forever unusable. In 2007, Israel acted quickly to destroy a nascent nuclear facility in Syria. At that time, the US approved of Israel’s action, and Iran is far more dangerous than Syria.
Anything less than the destruction of Iran’s nuclear potential will waste an opportunity to rid Israel and the world of one of its greatest dangers today—a nuclear weapon in the hands of world’s worst scourge since Nazi Germany.
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