Throwing Israel Under the Bus To Get Iranian Nuclear Disarmament?

This is about as asinine a step that the Obama Administration could take in dealing with the mess that is known as the Middle East and the Iranian situation in particular. Iran has repeatedly made it known that they seek nothing less than Israel's annihilation, and is working to that goal with a combination of missile technologies and nuclear enrichment programs that are designed to give Iran nuclear weapons capabilities.

The time frame for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons is unknown, but it is a simply a function of time, given that Iran has thousands of centrifuges spinning furiously to separate uranium into its constituent parts - including weapons grade uranium. It is only a matter of time before those centrifuge cascades have run long enough to provide enough materials for nuclear weapons.

It is not a question of if, but when.

Iran's mad mullahs and genocidal thug Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have repeatedly called for Israel's destruction, engaged in rhetoric calling for the United States to fall, and basically fund international terrorists to further those goals - including Hamas and Hizbullah, who both actively engage in terror operations against Israel on a regular basis.

It is with that backdrop that the US now wants to force Israel to disarm its own nuclear program (which itself has never been declared and is not subject to the NPT). Israel has maintained an ambigious stance on its nuclear arsenal, and counterstrike capabilities are the one thing that keeps most of the other countries in the region that are still at a state of war with Israel from engaging in the kind of overwhelming attack against Israel that would decimate Israel. The proxy wars by Hamas and Hizbullah are stand-ins for the nation-states that fund those groups.

Direct conflict is minimized, but the conflict remains. Syria and Iran continue to seek Israel's destruction, and their funding and assistance of those groups remains a key stumbling block. They simply do not recognize Israel's existence.

Forcing Israel to give up a strategic pillar of its national security is not going to improve Israel's security situation, nor will it improve US national security since the Iranians would simply use the opportunity to speed up their programs, and to hasten further attacks on Israel since the US is throwing Israel to the wolves.

Further, it shows that the US is willing to throw all of its allies under the bus in the hope of placating rogue nations. Why would any nation seek to ally itself with the US under any circumstances given that the US would just as soon as turn against that nation the moment the Administration thinks that peace overtures should be obtained from rogue nations.

Consider that this move is akin to the US forcing the South Koreans to give up a substantial part of its military in order to make a deal with North Korea to give up its nuclear program. South Korea would be nuts to put its national security in the hands of the least stable regime and the one most antithetical to its existence.

It would be putting Israel's security in the hands of the very enemies most antithetical to Israel's existence. How does that improve American national security when Iran seeks America's demise just as surely as it does Israel's?

Then, there's the issue of nuclear proliferation in the region:

"We did not want to accept any operational language that would put Israel at a disadvantage and raise the question of whether Israel was a nuclear power," he said. "That was not a discussion that we thought was helpful. We allowed very general statements about the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East as long that language was hortatory."

Israel began its nuclear program shortly after the state was founded in 1948 and produced its first weapons, according to Mr. Cohen's book, on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli defense doctrine considers the nuclear arsenal to be a strategic deterrent against extinction. But its nuclear monopoly is increasingly jeopardized by Iranian advances and the possibility that Iran's program could trigger a nuclear arms race in the region.

Israel's arsenal has also been an open secret for decades, despite the fact that Israeli law forbids Israeli journalists from referring to the state's nuclear weapons unless they quote non-Israeli sources.

A nuclear arms race in the region wouldn't be Israel versus Iran. It would be Iran against all the other Sunni-majority countries in the region since Iran is majority Shi'ite, and the longstanding hatred and conflict between the two strains of Islam would stand on the precipice of Iranian intentions to dominate the Middle East and beyond to show the supremacy of Shi'ism. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and other nations in the region would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear program any more than Israel would, and are just as threatened by such a program. The nuclearization of the region isn't due to Israel's possession of nuclear weapons, but rather the theocratic opposition by Sunni Muslims to Shi'ite Muslims possessing weapons that could threaten their standing theocratically speaking.