Iran

Israel’s mortal enemy, Iran, is on the move. The Karine A weapons ship, and Iran’s assistance in transferring Al-Quaida personnel to Lebanon is only the beginning. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced yesterday that Iran has shipped 10,000 missiles capable of striking every city in Israel to Hizbullah in Lebanon. Meanwhile, King Abdullah of Jordan revealed that his army had thus far thwarted 17 attempts by Iran to covertly sneak forces over his territory to launch missile attacks on Israel, which was had a great effect in Bush’s decision to include Iran in the “Axis of Evil.” Two days ago, Yassir Arafat’s Fatah faction successfully launched a Kassam-2 rocket and broadcast a video of the test on Palestinian television. Yesterday, the Israeli Defense Forces captured a van with 8 Kassam-2 rockets at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

There seems to be an effort by Iran to coordinate attacks by all terrorist forces under a single Iranian umbrella. At first glance, this policy would appear to be both stupid and dangerous for the Iranian dictators. Already on the list of “Evil-supporting states,” one would think that the mullahs in Iran would lie low until America decides to declare victory. After all, what does all of this terror get for Iran, which has no territorial dispute with Israel, no particular love for the Palestinians or Arafat, and no interest in becoming a target of President Bush?

Clearly, this effort is intended as a distraction from Iran’s real threat: the Islamic Bomb. Iran has been working intensively for the last five years to create its own nuclear arsenal, and, according to the media reports, it’s only about two years away. Iran has officially declared that there will be no peace in the Middle East until Israel is annihilated. In order to forward this goal, Iran has begun construction of a nuclear plant at the Persian Gulf port of Bushehr which will be capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. Israel’s policy on the Islamic bomb is clear: under no condition will Israel permit any enemy country to obtain nuclear weapons, period. This is a fundamental pillar of Israeli defense strategy, and is considered grounds for going to war. An Islamic bomb means a second holocaust, as one nuclear weapon is capable of destroying half of the state of Israel in an instant. It is also expected that these weapons will be capable of hitting the United States by 2015. The cold-war strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD,) whereby it was assumed that the United States and Soviet Union would never launch nuclear weapons because they would guarantee destroying each other, does not apply here because the Iranian fundamentalists are already mad. This is a suicide culture, and Iran has already announced that it knows that Israel will respond with nuclear weapons to any nuclear attack on Israel, but the Islamic world can take the damage Israel would inflict, whereas Israel will be completely destroyed. In 1982, Iraq tried the same trick of getting a nuclear power plant to process weapons-grade plutonium and Israel, under then Defense Minister Sharon, promptly bombed it.

It is therefore only a matter of time before Israel or America destroys the Iranian nuclear facility at Bushehr, and Iran knows it. Yesterday, the Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani announced, “If Israel attacks Iran, we will respond in a way no Israeli politician has ever dreamed about." In an interview on Spanish television today, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced it was time to move against Iraq and Iran, “"I am totally confident that there is no way to bypass it [an attack on Iran or Iraq]." Iran will probably respond with missile attacks similar to what Israel experienced during the Gulf War, except quite possibly armed with chemical or biological weapons.

Israel is currently protected from this threat by the Arrow missile defense system. The Arrow is much more sophisticated than the Patriot system which was ineffectively deployed against Iraqi Scud missiles during the Gulf War a decade ago, and capable of shooting down just about anything in the air, except an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM.) Iran does not currently possess ICBMs, but is currently working on obtaining the technology from North Korea. In the last two days, most Israeli politicians have been coming out announcing the need to attack Iran soon. Very likely, the raid will be lead by the United States, in order to forward the war on terrorism and to deflect possible reprisal on Israel. Ariel Sharon is currently in Washington, where he is expected to bring up this issue. An attack on Iran is almost a certainty now, and each second brings it one second closer.