Louis René Beres is the author of many books and articles dealing with international relations and international law and is a professor at Purdue University.
"The comedy is finished." Now, after so many unpardonable years of deception and self-delusion concerning Iranian nuclear intentions, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has finally confirmed the worst. Its most recent report, urgent in tone, provides meaningful details on secret Iranian nuclear programs.
These efforts were vastly more ambitious than was previously believed. According to David Albright, a former IAEA official who reviewed the agency's findings, underlying IAEA intelligence also concludes that Iran can now "design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device." This device would use highly enriched uranium as its fissile core.
When selective preemptions against certain Iranian nuclear assets and infrastructures might still have been practicable, neither Israel nor the United States chose to exercise its lawful right of anticipatory self-defense. Now, barring an unlikely eleventh-hour defensive first-strike by Israel, Iran's entry into the Nuclear Club is a fait accompli. For Israel, the state most obviously threatened by these developments, all remaining self-defense options will necessarily be limited to interpenetrating plans for improved nuclear deterrence, and expanded active defense.
Almost certainly, these inherently fallible programs will include an end to the country's longstanding policy of "deliberate nuclear ambiguity," and substantial additional deployments of both Arrow and Iron Dome missile interceptors.
Significantly, unlike the no-longer-viable preemption option, these defensive programs could come into play only after an Iranian nuclear force had already been deployed, or after an Iranian nuclear attack had already been launched.
Can anyone reasonably expect a newly-nuclear leadership in Tehran to be reliably rational? Exactly what could happen to Israel if pertinent Iranian leaders, endowed with offensive nuclear weapons, should, even on a single occasion, proceed to value certain presumed religious obligations more highly than their state's physical survival?
This core question must be raised in reference to all possible Iranian regimes, not only to the present Ahmadinejad government. Although counter-intuitive, regime change in Tehran could conceivably yield an increased likelihood of irrational decision-making.
Irrationality is not the same as madness. Even an irrational Iranian leadership could maintain a consistent and "transitive" hierarchy of preferences.
Enemy irrationality would likely be less dangerous for Israel than having to face a genuinely mad adversary. Still, it will not be Israel's option to decide which type of adversary it would prefer to face in Tehran,
[See a collection of political cartoons on Iran.]
Any Iranian leadership that slouches toward military conflict with the "Zionist Entity" could, sooner than had long been expected, initiate regional nuclear war. Deliberately or inadvertently, as a "bolt from the blue," or as a fully unintended result of escalation, whether out of an inexorable religious commitment to jihad against "unbelievers," or, for much more mundane reasons of miscalculation, accident, coup d'état, or command-control failure, a nuclear Tehran could ignite a real-world "Armageddon."
Thirty-two years ago, I published the first of 10 books that contained authoritative descriptions of the physical and medical consequences of nuclear war, any nuclear war. These descriptions were drawn largely from a still-valid 1975 report by the National Academy of Sciences, and included the following very tangible outcomes: large temperature changes; contamination of food and water; 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 abnormalities in persons in utero at the time of detonations; a vast growth in the number of skin cancers, and increasing genetic disease.
Overwhelming health problems would afflict the survivors of any Iranian nuclear attack upon Israel. These difficulties would extend beyond prompt burn injuries. Retinal burns could even occur in the eyes of persons very far from the actual explosions.
[Read: Arab public ranks China, Turkey, Iran's Ahmadinejad ahead of U.S., Obama]
Tens of thousands of Israelis could be crushed by collapsing buildings, and torn to shreds by flying glass. Others could 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 could be taxed beyond capacity. Water supplies could quickly become unusable. Housing and shelter could be unavailable for hundreds of thousands of survivors. Transportation would break down to rudimentary levels. Food shortages could be critical and long-term.
[Read: Iran Oil Embargo Could Hurt Europe and Help China, Russia.]
Israel's normally 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 could stop functioning. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychiatric disorders for which there would likely be no therapeutic services.
Normal human society would cease. The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry could soon augment plague and epidemics. Many of the survivors would expect an increase in serious degenerative diseases. They could also expect premature death; impaired vision, and sterility. An increased incidence of leukemia and cancers of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary and uterine cervix would be unavoidable.
[Read how the GOP's support of the Iranian opposition could be harmful.]
Extensive fallout would upset many delicately balanced relationships in nature. Israelis who survive the nuclear attack would still have to deal with enlarged insect populations. Like the locusts of biblical times, mushrooming insect hordes could spread en masse 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, tens or even hundreds of thousands of rotting human corpses would pose the largest health threat.
All of these same effects, possibly even more expansive and destructive, would be unleashed upon Iran, by Israel. This is because an immediate and massive Israeli retaliation for any Iranian nuclear aggression would be a certainty. Nonetheless, Iran's comparatively greater suffering could offer little meaningful solace for Israel.
"The comedy is finished."
- See a slide show of 6 vulnerable potential terrorist targets.
- See a slide show of 15 post-Cold War uprisings.
- See an opinion slide show of 5 ways Arab governments resist democracy.
Reader Comments Read all comments (9)
The Revenge of IL 1:14PM March 08, 2012
Typical war monger drivel. of IL 1:00PM March 08, 2012
k.voyles of IL 10:40AM January 21, 2012