Why Iran must not be allowed nuclear weapons

Louis Rene Beres, WorldNetDaily.com:

The world's daily newspapers are now filled with speculations about an alleged Israeli plan to destroy Iran's developing nuclear weapons. For Israel, of course, there is genuinely much to fear. Less than half the size of Lake Michigan, the Jewish state faces an Iranian enemy that displays unrepentant disregard for binding Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations and reveals undisguised aggressive intent. ...

Unless Israel and the United States act preemptively in the next six to 12 months – act to express what is known correctly under international law as "anticipatory self-defense" – both countries could soon be held hostage to extraordinary and intolerable forms of Iranian nuclear blackmail.

Let's be frank. The United States won't do it. As for Jerusalem, it would surely incur overwhelming political and strategic risks to protect itself from declared existential harms, but the prospective costs of not preempting in this case are apt to be far greater. In short, no country can ever be required to accept complicity in its own annihilation, and leaving Iran to the "tough sanctions" of the United Nations or the so-called international community would bring Israel to the very margins of survival.

Israel is not Iran. Israel does not declare itself at war with Iran or any other Arab state. Israel holds nuclear weapons quietly, unthreateningly, without bravado – and only to prevent its catastrophic destruction by enemy state aggression. It is altogether inconceivable that Israel would ever resort to such weapons as an initial move of war. A nuclear Iran, however, could at some point consider atomic first-strike attacks upon Israel with plainly genocidal intent.

What does Israel have to fear? Twenty-five years ago this month, I published the first of seven books that described (among other things) the expected consequences of a nuclear war. These palpably nightmarish effects were drawn largely from an authoritative report issued by the National Academy of Sciences in 1975, and included substantial temperature changes; contamination of food and water by radionuclides; disease epidemics in crops, domesticated animals, and humans due to ionizing radiation; shortening of growing seasons; irreversible injuries to aquatic species; widespread and long-term cancers due to inhalation of plutonium particles; radiation-induced developmental anomalies in persons in utero at the time of detonations; a vast growth in incidence of skin cancers and an increasing incidence of genetic disease. READ MORE

Overwhelming health problems would afflict the survivors of a nuclear attack upon Israel. These problems would extend beyond the consequences of prompt burn injuries. Retinal burns would occur in the eyes of persons far from the explosions. Israelis would be crushed by collapsing buildings and torn to shreds by flying glass. Others would fall victim to raging firestorms. Fallout injuries would include whole-body radiation injury, produced by penetrating, hard gamma radiations; superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations; and injuries produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body.

After an Iranian nuclear attack – even a "small" one – those few medical facilities that might still exist in Israel would be taxed well beyond capacity. Water supplies would become altogether unusable. Housing and shelter could be unavailable for hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of survivors. Transportation would break down to rudimentary levels. Food shortages would be critical and long-term.

Israel's complex network of exchange systems would be shattered. Virtually everyone would be deprived of the most basic means of livelihood. Emergency police and fire services would be decimated. All systems dependent upon electrical power would stop functioning. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychiatric disorders for which there would be absolutely no therapeutic services.

Normal human society would cease. The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry would augment plague and epidemics. Many of the survivors would expect an increase in serious degenerative diseases. They would also expect premature death; impairment of vision; and sterility. An increased incidence of leukemia and cancers of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary and uterine cervix would be unavoidable.

Many balanced relationships in nature would be upset by the extensive fallout. Israelis who survived such a nuclear attack would have to deal with enlarged insect populations. Like the locusts of biblical times, mushrooming insect hordes would spread from the radiation-damaged areas in which they arose.

Insects are generally more resistant to radiation than humans. This fact, coupled with the prevalence of unburied corpses, uncontrolled waste and untreated sewage, would generate tens of trillions of flies and mosquitoes. Breeding in the dead bodies, these insects would make it impossible to control typhus, malaria, dengue fever and encephalitis. Throughout Israel, the largest health threat would be posed by tens or even hundreds of thousands of rotting human corpses. Nonetheless, the survivors might envy the dead.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, it is a vast understatement of what could be expected. Interactions between individual effects of nuclear weapons would make matters far worse. It follows that Israel must never allow a still openly aggressive Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Although any Israeli preemption effort will encounter staggering operational difficulties – and will certainly fall short of complete success – this is one of those times in which the expected costs of doing nothing would be incalculably greater.

Louis Rene Beres, Ph.D. (Princeton) is professor of political science and international law at Purdue University, the author of several major books on nuclear strategy and war, and is chair of "Project Daniel."