^{Iran President Ahmadinejad (C) copyright 2010 Time}

Lately, there’s been another round of blather about how Israel will preemptively attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, as they did Iraq’s and Syria’s. Supposedly, this is because a combination of Iran’s verbal threats and terrorist support has created an existential threat to the Jewish state. (Never mind that the U.S.A. lived under a similar threat from the U.S.S.R. for decades.) According to the Israeli hardliners, everything except a nuclear Iran is acceptable, including a regional war, alienation from current allies, and potential attacks against Jews in other countries. So, the hawks’ logical conclusion is that Iran must be attacked before they achieve nuclear weapons capability.

The problem with this line of thinking is its dependence on the probability of a very, very unlikely event: an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel. Even the most limited and “sanitary” attack, say wiping out Tel Aviv with a neutron bomb, would kill tens of thousands of Muslims along with Jews. The fallout’s effects on one of Islam’s holiest cities, Jerusalem, would not be negligible, either. Hawks argue that the Mullahs and Imams would be willing to sacrifice some Muslims and property for a ‘good riddance’ to Israel and the Jews. However, the argument that the Iranian power structure is driven by a holy mission is belied by their willingness to engage with non-Muslims when it suits their political purposes. Iran is a theocracy with pragmatic and consumerist streaks. The Mullahs like their Bentleys.

That realpolitik aspect of Iranian thinking provides the fundamental reasons Iran or one of its proxies like Hezbollah will never nuke anything in Israel: the counterattack would mean the end of Iran and its Persian culture, probably forever, and even a comprehensive bombing of Israel wouldn’t kill all the world’s Jews since most are living elsewhere. The reviled Zionists would survive, whereas the Persians would not. They do not have a significant enough Diaspora to rebuild their culture somewhere else.

An Armageddon-like response is guaranteed by Israel’s friendly to hostile casualty ratio policy, presently set at about 100 to 1. Five hundred thousand dead in and around Tel Aviv would equate to 50 million dead in Iran. Problem is, to kill that many people in Iran, the Israelis would have to destroy every city, town, and village in the entire country.  It’s possible that Israel’s arsenal doesn’t have enough bombs to do the job, but it’s likely most of Iran would end up as a radioactive Martian landscape.

Looking behind the posturing, today’s situation is really all about the Israeli hardliners attempting to force the Obama administration into a tougher line against Iran.  Or failing that, the Israelis will probably settle for the extraction of a guarantee of a U.S. force umbrella over everybody else in the Mideast should Iran attain nuclear weapons capability despite sanctions.