Jccarlton wrote:I think that both Russia and China have too much to lose if Iran goes nutjob. Achmadinijad is a very loose cannon and if Iran should actually test a nuclear device then the stakes go way up. An Iranian nuclear device means that Israel will have to be prepared to burn Iran to the ground on a moment's notice.
I wonder if Iran already has one or two untested in the stockpile already. It would explain Ahmadinejad's swagger for the last few years, and U235 gun bombs are brain dead simple, requiring no testing unlike a Pu239 implosion bomb. Gun bombs can even be boosted in theory. The South Africans worked out how but never built one.
Jccarlton wrote:Iran will be in a position where even to test a long range missile will likely initiate a nuclear exchange with a country with over 250 warheads.
Iran doesn't need to test. That's the malignant beauty of the Iranian-Pakistani-Nork WMD axis. The Norks are doing the testing for the IRBMs.
I loved those when a friend brought them to my attention 2 years ago.
Jccarlton wrote:Now Israel has both nuclear warheads and antimissile defenses. But Israel has no "B" country. A hit by even a small nuclear device will probably do enough damage
I call Israel a three nuke country. Hit it with three strategic nuclear weapons and it essentially ceases to exist.
Nukes + demographics, the long term, h*ll, medium term prospects for the survival of the Israeli state do not look good. I doubt it endures as long as the Crusader States did.
Jccarlton wrote:that Israel will not be able to restrain Hezbollah or Hamas without essentially wiping Gaza and Southern Lebanon of the map and converting them to wastelands. I think its safe to say that Damascus and the Syrian ports will go too as well as possibly Cairo and the Egyptian, Syrian and Lebanonese armies as well as who knows how many civilians. It's also likely that one side or the other will put warheads over most of the oil terminals in the Gulf or the terminals will be torched by collateral damage fires. To say nothing of the tanker wrecks clogging the gulf. I think that faced with this kind of scenario neutralizing Achmadinijad starts to look really cheap.
Its called the Samson Option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samson_Option
Israel has made it quietly known in the region and world since the '70s. If Israel is going down it will drag the entire region with it. Samson bringing down the temple on top of himself.
Damascus. Lebanon. Gaza. The West Bank. Jordan. Riyadh. Mecca. Medina. Tehran. Baghdad. Qum. Possibly the Temple Mount itself (Dome of the Rock). The Aswan High Dam (90% of Egypt in the flood of Lake Nasser down river). Etcetera.
The political leadership may punk at the end, but if the military leadership know that they and their families are not getting out, bye bye Middle East. The only way to dodge it would be for Israel to go out with a whimper, Soviet style.