By Abraham Rabinovich

Source:

August 27, 2010

A CHILLING article on the opinion page of the prestigious daily Ha’aretz caught Israel’s attention this week.

“There is an 80 per cent probability that within nine months to two years from now the Israeli home front will absorb 1000 to 20,000 losses,” it began. The fatalities would be inflicted, according to the writer, by Iranian missile strikes in retaliation for an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Israeli attack itself was described as inevitable.

The author, Udi Pridan, is co-director of one of Israel’s leading advertising agencies. In a country where numerous executives are former high-ranking military officers, his background is unclear but the authoritative tone of his article and the prominence given it by Ha’aretz suggest someone with solid security credentials.

The article’s publication came less than a week after The New York Times revealed that the Obama administration had persuaded Israel that Iran was at least a year away from the point where it could make a “dash” to assemble a nuclear device before Israel or Washington could react. The object of the assurance was to keep an Israeli pre-emptive attack off the table for at least another year. The question of a pre-emptive attack against Iran is the most agonising security dilemma Israel has faced since its foundation. The arguments against a strike are formidable. Iran would clearly retaliate with missiles with large warheads against Israel’s cities and be joined by its Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon firing the tens of thousands of rockets in their possession. Although Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War, mostly against Tel Aviv, there was only one direct fatality. In the war against Hezbollah four years ago, Israel suffered about 40 fatalities from 4000 rockets. The Iranian missiles, with half-tonne warheads and accurate guidance systems, can be expected to reap a much more significant toll. “If there will be thousands of dead, we will lick our wounds,” writes Pridan. “Five-thousand would be a national trauma. At 20,000 we will use the doomsday weapon against Iran, and then there will really be a new Middle East.”

Pridan’s article, headlined “Wake Up”, was not an argument against an Israeli attack but a call for the government to swiftly beef up the emergency and rescue services needed to deal with massive casualties and damage inflicted by Iran’s response. “Israel will act against the Iranian nuclear program, with or without the Americans,” he wrote.

Even short of this worst-case scenario in the event of an Israeli attack, Jerusalem anticipates an ongoing campaign of terror attacks against Israeli legations and citizens around the world as Iran and its supporters lash back. In addition, the likely global economic crisis that would follow Iran’s closing of the Hormuz Straits to oil shipments would be laid by the international community at Israel’s door. An Israeli attack may well undermine the growing liberal movement in Iran, which is the best bet for eventually unseating Tehran’s radical regime. And, not least, Iran would probably be able to restore its facilities within a few years at most, given Israel’s inability to mount sustained conventional attacks at such a distance.

Against all this, advocates of an attack offer only one argument. Although it is illogical that Iran would actually use a nuclear weapon against Israel if it goes nuclear, if only for fear that Israel in its death throes would be able to launch a nuclear counter-strike, Tehran cannot be given the possibility of acting illogically.

Israel faced a somewhat similar existential situation once before. In the 1973 Yom Kippur war, it was caught by a surprise attack on two fronts, with the bulk of its army still unmobilised. The Egyptian army succeeded in driving Israeli forces back from the Suez Canal, while on the Golan Heights, Syrian armoured divisions broke through the Israeli defences and appeared on the verge of descending into Israel proper. So desperate was the situation that defence minister Moshe Dayan warned that Israel’s existence was in danger. At a grim meeting in the underground war room of the High Command in Tel Aviv with chief of staff David Elazar, two generals proposed using “special means” against Syria in order to end the threat on the northern front and enable the army to focus its attention on the main, Egyptian, front. The term “special means” has never been publicly spelled out but it is believed to include nuclear weapons. Two other generals, including the deputy chief of staff, argued forcefully against it and Elazar let the suggestion drop. One of the participants in the meeting reportedly appealed to the generals opposing the suggestion to “stop those madmen” who had suggested it.

The High Command decided instead to warn the Syrians against going too far by attacking Syrian military headquarters in Damascus. On the Golan itself, the Israeli army found its footing with the arrival of reserves and began driving the Syrians back.

That episode suggests that if Israel attacks Iran it would avoid using nuclear weapons against the nuclear sites, even though that would be the only way to ensure their complete destruction. As long as Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons, doomsday lies beyond the horizon.