Israel, Iran, and Nuclear War: A History of the Future

For Israel’s military planners, issues of Iranian nuclearization are increasingly bewildering and many-sided. Even while Israel remains the only regional atomic power, a nuclear war is not out of the question. More precisely, even a still pre-nuclear Iran could bring Israel to the point where Jerusalem’s only strategic options would be intolerable capitulations or nuclear escalations. In effect, the second option would represent an “asymmetrical nuclear war.”

How could such a scenario emerge? In one compelling reply, 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 designated Iranian targets by Russian and/or North Korean nuclear threats. Prima facie, the worst-case scenario would be a “bolt-from-the-blue” nuclear attack launched by Russia or (more credibly) North Korea. Kim Jung Un’s troops are presently training for military action against Ukraine on behalf of Vladimir Putin. This training is already underway inside Russia.

Where does Jerusalem stand on such potentially existential challenges? Looking toward a steadily expanding conflict with Iran, any “one-off” preemption against certain enemy weapons and infrastructures (an act of “anticipatory self-defense” under international law) could be sorely problematic. At this late stage, any such defensive action would need to be undertaken in increments and during an ongoing war. In 2003, when this writer’s Project Daniel Group[1] presented its early report on Iranian nuclearization to then-Israeli PM Ariel Sharon, Iranian targets were already more daunting than Iraq’s Osiraq reactor had been on June 7, 1981. That was the date of Israel’s “Operation Opera.”

In all of these intersecting and sometimes synergistic interactions, an unprecedented strategic dialectic is revealed. During its escalating war against Iran, Israel could sometimes calculate that it has no choice but to launch multiple and mutually reinforcing preemptive strikes against specific nuclear-related targets. Simultaneously, 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 and/or China.

In Jerusalem, such a worrisome narrative ought never to be dismissed out of hand. Though it could be tempting to regard such jaw-dropping interventions as “speculative” or “unlikely,” there would be no science-based way to estimate the probabilities of a unique event.  Significantly, for Israel, true probabilities could never be determined ex nihilo, “out of nothing.”

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 can never be “guaranteed.” At some point, even a nuclear weapons state could be left with only militarily purposeless options for revenge.

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. This catastrophic result could be both irremediable and irreversible.

For Israel, history always matters. An authentic nuclear war has never been fought. There are no genuine experts on “conducting” or “winning” a nuclear war. Reciprocally, Jerusalem ought always to disavow strategic counsel drawn from “common sense.” Complicated strategic problems can never be solved by “seat-of-the-pants” judgments or glaringly empty witticisms.

In Jerusalem, nothing could prove more important than to understand this imperative and reserve complex nuclear calculations to small cadres of “high thinkers.” We are speaking here of the caliber of Szilard, Fermi, Oppenheimer, Einstein, Bohr and assorted Manhattan Project others, not to make an updated “gadget,” but to plan for nuclear deterrence success via calculated non-use. All such planning should be initiated on a theoretical level. It is hardly a task for conceptually unfortified operational designs.

There is more. 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 render itself unprepared for an 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 optimal prudential planning, Russian and/or North Korean threats to Israel could sometimes become overwhelming.  Ipso facto, Jerusalem will need to remain prepared for all plausibly related scenarios.

Reduced to its essentials, an authentically worst-case scenario for Israel would commence with progressively explicit threats from Moscow about Israeli preemption costs. Israel, aware that it could not reasonably expect to coexist indefinitely with a nuclear Iran, would proceed with its planned preemptions in spite of the dire Russian warnings. In subsequent response, Russian military forces would begin to act directly against Israel, thereby seeking to persuade Jerusalem that Moscow is in a patently superior position to dominate all conceivable escalations.

Alternatively, Putin could delegate such military responsibilities to North Korea, an Iranian ally that is presently preparing (within Russia) to augment Russian military forces against Ukraine.

For Vladimir Putin, such persuasive effort should not be a “hard sell.” Unless the United States were willing to enter the already-chaotic situation with unambiguous support for Israel, Moscow would have no foreseeable difficulties in establishing “escalation dominance.” In this connection, well-intentioned supporters of Israel could over-estimate the Jewish State’s relative nuclear capabilities and options.

There is no clear way in which the capabilities and options of a state smaller than America’s Lake Michigan could actually “win” at competitive risk-taking vis-à-vis Russia or North Korea.  For Israel, in such unprecedented matters, self-deflating candor would be much safer than self-deluding bravado. As a strategic objective, Israel’s avoidance of “bee sting” nuclear capacity would be indispensable. A honey bee dies once it has used its stinger.

What about the United States? Would an American president accept an alliance commitment to Israel 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 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, the American leader would take the openly-stated position of candidate Donald Trump concerning Russia’s aggression against Ukraine (“Let Putin do whatever the hell he wants”), Jerusalem could have no choice but to accept a nuclear Iran. After all, an escalating military confrontation with Russia would be one in which Israel could not reasonably expect to prevail.

There are additionally important issues 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 a first-use of high-yield, long-range strategic nuclear weapons, not a 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 prominent place in Israel’s threat assessments of Iranian nuclear progress.

For Israel, the bottom-line of such dialectical analysis is an invariant obligation to analyze strategic options as an intellectual task. Among other things, reaching rational judgments on defensive first strikes against a still pre-nuclear Iran will require informed anticipations of (1) Russian and/or North Korean intentions; and (2) United States willingness to stand by Israel in extremis. Israel’s growing nuclear war hazards include variously tangible scenarios of Russian or North Korean interventions on behalf of Iran. Immediately, in Jerusalem’s continuously nuanced calculations, these scenarios should assume a place of primary importance. From the standpoint of scientific prediction, there could be no basis for dismissing such extra-regional threats as “improbable.”