Israel’s nuclear hazards are neither singular nor isolable. Always, they are several and intersecting. Moreover, especially if Jerusalem looks closely at potential crisis interventions from Moscow or Pyongyang, these hazards could be force-multiplying or synergistic. In the case of synergies, by definition, overall harms to the Jewish State would be greater than the sum of their parts.
On Iran, there are some easily overlooked scenarios. Even while Israel remains the only regional nuclear power, a nuclear war with the Islamic Republic remains possible. More precisely, a pre-nuclear Iran could still bring Israel to the point where Jerusalem’s only strategic options would be intolerable capitulations or nuclear escalations. In essence, the second option would represent an “asymmetrical nuclear war.”
How could Israel allow itself to reach such an “all-or-nothing” decisional precipice? Though there are several persuasive answers, all that really matters is that Jerusalem would consider this fearful prospect with undiluted seriousness. Any such war scenario (unprecedented on its face) is most worrisome in circumstances where Iran would target Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor and/or employ radiation dispersal weapons against the Jewish State. Unique escalations could also follow in the wake of an Iranian resort to biological or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) ordnance. In a next-to-worst-case scenario, Israel would be prevented from striking preemptively against pertinent Iranian targets by Russian and/or North Korean nuclear threats. The conspicuously worst-case scenario would be a “bolt-from-the-blue nuclear attack launched by either Iranian state ally.
Where does Jerusalem seemingly stand on such bewildering challenges? Looking toward its steadily-expanding conflict with Iran, any “one-off” preemption against Iranian weapons and infrastructures (an act of “anticipatory self-defense” under international law) would be sorely problematic. At this stage, any such defensive action would need to be undertaken in stages and during an ongoing war. In 2003, when my Project Daniel Group[1] presented its early report on Iranian nuclearization to then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, Iranian targets had already become more daunting than had been Iraq’s Osiraq reactor back on June 7, 1981.
That was the date of Israel’s still-extraordinary “Operation Opera.”
There is more. During any expanding war against Iran, Israel could calculate that it has no choice but to launch multiple and mutually-reinforcing preemptive strikes against specific enemy targets. At the same time, Russian and/or North Korean threats of support for Iran could lay the groundwork for a multi-state nuclear war, one that could come to involve the United States or China. While it might be tempting to claim such jaw-dropping interventions as “speculative” or “unlikely,” there is no science-based way to estimate the probabilities of any unique event. In science, true probabilities can never be determined ex nihilo, “out of nothing.”
There would be variously important qualifications and nuances. To the extent that they might still be usefully estimated, the risks of an Israel-Iran nuclear war will depend on whether such a conflict would be intentional, unintentional, or accidental. Apart from applying this critical three-part distinction, there could be no adequate reason to expect operationally-gainful strategic assessments of any such war. Ensuring existential protections from openly declared Iranian aggressions, Jerusalem should always bear in mind that even the Jewish State’s physical survival is never “guaranteed.”
An unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war between Jerusalem and Teheran could take place not only as the result of misunderstandings or miscalculations between rational leaders, but also as the unintended consequence of mechanical, electrical, or computer malfunction. This should bring to analyzing Israeli minds a further distinction between an unintentional/inadvertent nuclear war and an accidental nuclear war. Though all accidental nuclear wars must be unintentional, not every unintentional nuclear war would need to occur by accident. On one occasion or another, an unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war could be the result of fundamental human misjudgments about enemy intentions. Ominously, this result could be irremediable and irreversible.
History matters. An authentic nuclear war has never been fought. Accordingly, there are no recognizable experts on “conducting” or “winning” a nuclear war. Reciprocally, Jerusalem ought always to disavow strategic counsel drawn from “common sense.” These are not problems to be solved by “seat-of-the-pants” judgments or by empty witticisms, For Israel, nothing could prove more important than to understand this imperative and to reserve complex nuclear calculations to small cadres of exceptionally “high thinkers.” However counter-intuitive, these cadres could include gifted writers, mathematicians, climate scientists and chess players.
Providing for Israeli national security amid a still-nuclearizing Iran ought never to become an ad-hoc “game” of chance. Without a suitably long-term, systematic and theory-based plan in place, Israel would be unprepared for any Iranian nuclear conflict that is deliberate, unintentional or accidental. At every stage of its lethal competition with Tehran, Jerusalem should never lose sight of the only sensible rationale for maintaining its national nuclear weapons and doctrine. That justification is (1) stable war management at all identifiable levels; and (2) reliable nuclear deterrence.
More than anything else, Israel’s strategic plans should include a prompt policy shift from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” The core logic of this shift would not be to simply reframe the obvious (i.e., that Israel is already a nuclear power), but to remind would-be aggressors that Jerusalem’s nuclear weapons are operationally usable at all imaginable levels of warfare. Nonetheless, even with prudential planning, Russian and/or North Korean threats to Israel could sometime become overwhelming. Ipso facto, Jerusalem will need to remain ready for all plausibly related scenarios.
Reduced to its essentials, an authentically worst case scenario for Israel would commence with progressively explicit threats from Moscow concerning Israeli preemption outcomes. Israel, aware that it could not reasonably expect to coexist indefinitely with a nuclear Iran, would then proceed with planned preemptions in spite of Russian warnings. In a subsequent response, Russian military forces would begin to act directly against Israel, seeking to persuade Jerusalem that Moscow is in a superior position to dominate absolutely all conceivable escalations. Alternatively, Putin could delegate such military operations to North Korea, an Iranian ally that is presently preparing to augment Russian armed forces against Ukraine.
For Vladimir Putin, such persuasive effort would not be a “hard sell.” Unless the United States were willing to enter the chaotic situation with unambiguously credible support of Israel, Moscow would have no foreseeable difficulties in establishing “escalation dominance.” Further, in this connection, well-intentioned supporters of Israel could tragically over-estimate the Jewish State’s relative nuclear capabilities and options. To this point, there is no clear way in which the capabilities and options of a state smaller than America’s Lake Michigan could “win” at competitive risk-taking vis-à-vis Russia or North Korea.[2] For Israel, in such bewildering existential matters, even self-deflating candor would be better than self-deluding bravado.
What about the United States? Would an American president accept an alliance commitment that could place millions of Americans in positons of grievous vulnerability? For those most part, the answer would lie with the character and inclinations of the American leader. It this new president would visibly assume the long-term benefits of honoring US security guarantees, the world could be looking at another Cuban Missile Crisis or some similar confrontation. If, however, this president would take the openly-stated position of candidate Donald Trump concerning Russian aggression against Ukraine (“Let Putin do whatever the hell he wants”),[3] Jerusalem could have no choice but to face-off against a nuclear Iran. This would be a confrontation in which Israel could not reasonably expect to prevail.
There are additionally important issuers of nuclear doctrine. In his continuing war of aggression and genocide against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has been recycling provocative elements of Soviet-era strategic thinking. One critical element concerns the absence of any apparent “firebreak” between conventional and tactical nuclear force engagements. Now, much as it was during the “classical” era of US-Soviet nuclear deterrence, Moscow identifies the determinative escalatory threshold with first-use of high-yield, long-range strategic nuclear weapons, not with first use of tactical (theater) nuclear weapons.
But this perilous nuclear escalation doctrine is not shared by Israel’s United States ally, and could erode any once-stabilizing barriers of intra-war deterrence between the original superpowers. Whether sudden or incremental, any such erosion could impact the plausibility of both a deliberate and inadvertent nuclear war. As Israel could need to depend on firm US support in countering Russian nuclear threats, Vladimir Putin should be granted a preeminent place in Israel’s threat assessment of Iranian nuclear progress.
For Israel, the bottom-line of such dialectical analysis is an invariant obligation to work-through preemption–option complexities as an intellectual task. Among other things, reaching rational judgments on defensive first strikes against a still pre-nuclear Iran will require fact-based anticipations of (1) Russian and/or North Korean intentions; and (2) United States willingness to stand by Israel in extremis. In succinct summarization, Israel’s growing nuclear war hazards are potentially force-multiplying and include worrisome scenarios of Russian or North Korean interventions on behalf of Iran. At present, in late October 2024, North Korean forces are training in Russia for active military support of Putin against Ukraine.
All this has grave implications for Israeli assessments of the cumulative Iranian threat. Though Jerusalem should always seek intra-war “escalation dominance” contra Iran, it ought never to pursue such advantage at the plausible risk of becoming a “bee sting” nuclear power. For the Jewish State, it will be a delicate balance.