The Most Dangerous Nuclear Facility in the Middle East
There is no good evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. It has offered to allow regular International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the newly announced facility near Qom, which would effectively prevent it from being used for weapons production.
There is a secret nuclear facility in the Middle East, however, producing plutonium and not just enriched uranium, which has the capacity to make 10 nuclear warheads a year.
Here is a 3-D reconstruction of the most dangerous weapons plant in the Middle East, at Dimona in Israel.
It is Israel's ongoing nuclear weapon production that drives the nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Saddam wanted a bomb because Israel had one. The Iranians were then worried both about an Iraqi and an Israeli bomb. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others are annoyed at their geostrategic helplessness in the face of Israeli nukes.
Israel's nuclear arsenal is the region's Original Sin.
End/ (Not Continued)
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/28/2009 02:42:00 PM
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14 Comments:
Thanks for being one voice of reason in this world.
Thank you so very much for your courage in pointing out whatever a great many thoughtful folk knew was true, but didn't have folks like you giving factual evidence. It escapes me how Israel can say, "We have a right to defend ourselves," and deny a neighbor saying the same thing. The neighbor (Iran) has as much legitimate right to fear Israel as Israel has to fear Iran. Why doesn't Israel permit inspections of its nuclear facilities if it insists on the United Nations inspecting Iran's facilities. I don't get it. Israel having the bomb and none of its near neighbors having one is the single most destabilizing element in the Middle East today. Wouldn't a mutual assured destruction of all parties be safer than Israel alone having the bomb?
PS: Based on pictures that were smuggled out of Dimona many years ago, it's worth noting Israel has for decades had MULTI-stage nukes.
There's alot of hysteria about relatively simple tactical nukes which is irrelevant when discussing things from the perspective of realpolitik. Even if 15-20 (what we should expect) small tactical weapons are used on Iran, that WOULD be enough to cleanly do the job they otherwise simply CANNOT do conventionally (even with US complicity, which is what was left unsaid by Sec Gates during his interview on MTP Sunday). In this scenario there would be nominal civilian damage, even given the downwind radiation.
Sure, for reasons of PR Israel is doing everything they can to make the US do the job for them, even if the result is only a reprieve (per Gates statement). Iran, for its part, thinks this is all a simple chess game and they've got everybody else cornered. Like Nasser in the Spring of 67, they are substituting strictly objective analysis for a deeper understanding of the powers that have always run Israel (read: The Israeli Wingnut Right and the IDF).
Given all this,it is MULTI-stage weapons, of which the H-Bomb is the most basic incarnation, which have the potential to be true civilization-enders. They are absolutely unnecessary. Even if Israel wanted to annihilate all its Arab neighbors, it has 200+ warheads with which to do that particular job.
But don't worry too much; at least not until the traders start bidding-up the price of oil futures. They'll be the first to get word as things wind closer to a count-down.
Have a nice day.
I would put it this way:
The most belligerent nuclear reactor in the Middle East is the Israeli reactor at Dimona, which is used to produce plutonium for nuclear warheads aimed at non-nuclear Arab states.
The most dangerous nuclear program in the Middle East is the Iranian program, which is tasked with transforming Iran into an energy rich industrial nation that can preserve its abundant petroleum reserves even in the face of rising population. The program is dangerous because it would leave the resource poor Israelis counting their shekels while the Iranian nation embarks on a program of growth, education and peace.
Personally, I am afraid of Israel's aggression, NOT IRAN's. Israel has proven time and time again they use military might to control Arabs/Muslims. Israel threatens them nonstop and bombs them with no regret. I don't want to forget to mention that Israel also regularly steals their land.
Thank you, as others have pointed out, for bravely pointing this out.
Where on earth are the MSM on this issue? I could count the number of times Israeli nuclear weapons are mentioned in (e.g.) the NYT or CNN on one hand -- over the last 10 years.
Where are the calls for the nuclear inspections of the Israeli locations?
@James-Speaks,
So it's "dangerous" for the Iranians to make their economy more efficient and suitable to their needs? I find that to be ridiculous. Especially when you juxtapose Iranian economic progress with Israeli economic stagnation.
Iran has a growing population of 70million plus, why should the people of Iran have to be deprived of the benefits of economic development in the name of Israeli security. It's precisely these points of views that make Iran so bellicose toward western interests, especially Israel. No nation has (or even understands) Iran's domestic interests in mind and we are well aware of this.
We just endured a very rough gas-rationing program that made life very difficult for Iranians, but hey, don't reform your economy Iran because it makes it "dangerous" for the Israelis.
Do we grumble about American agricultural subsidies that undercut many other nations that depend on agricultural exports? Maybe, but we don't do anything about it.
Iranians have oil, and for the greater part of the 20th century that wealth was stolen from them by the Shah and his Western counterparts, so by God we will make money off of it and our people will prosper from it - under this government or the next.
Peace,
barmakid
Also missing from the MSM is the utterly obvious point that the United States is occupying the two countries on either side of Iran (Iraq & Afghanistan -- not to mention has a base to the north in Georgia). If the USSR had invaded Canada and Mexico during the Cold War, the US would not have only been building nuclear weapons, we would have used them as well.
Far from being crazy, Iran is about the only country on this issue acting rationally, i.e. self-preservation.
It is also worth mentioning that the Green movement of Iran has clearly condemned Ahamadinejad's government for lack of effort to establish international trust in Iranian nuclear program.
Has there been any unequivocally condemnation of the Israeli nuclear program by the Israeli left?
The issue in the middle east is that Israeli citizen haven't condemn their governments pursuit of nuclear weapons. You can fix corrupt governments, but if the corruption makes its way to the citizens, then you got a real problem in your hand.
@Barmakid,
I think you are missing the point here, or rather the irony. James-Speaks was only driving home the fact that a ''dangerous'' Iran, to Israelis, is indeed a stable and rich Iran. Dangerous because independant, not because it can fire nukes at will.
Thanks Professor Cole for bring this up.
In 2005 Egypt put forward a motion for a Nuclear Weapons Free zone in the Middle East. Iran supported this motion. All Middle East governments present (yes, as anonymous so uncreatively refers to as those crazy Arabs, who also appears to not understand that Iranians are not Arabs) voted in favour. All governments except Israel.
Iran has also signed and ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty AND the Additional Protocol. Which is more that the what some Nuclear Weapons States are subject to!
I'm so sick and tired of this misplaced hysteria and welcomed your colum even more than usual today.
"Israel will never be the one to introduce nuclear weapons into the middle east"
Amazing as it may seem to one so blind, Israel IS the one which introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East, and unlike Iran, refuses to allow inspections or sign the NPT. Hypocrisy infinite.
When reporter Helen Thomas asked President Obama in his first big press conference to identify which countries had nuclear weapons in the Middle East, not only did he evade answering the question, but also the NY Times, NPR and other "news" organs did not even report that she had asked the question in their coverage of the press conference. How and why does such evasion occur? What kind of American citizen or official cares whether or not Israel admits having such weapons? Such cowardly practices are shameful, cowardly and craven.
I realise that the zionist viewpoint is so absurd and ridiculous that it is hard to distinguish an actual zionist essay from a purely satirical one. However i really believe that first comment was meant to be a sarcastic backswipe at israel. "That's all you need to know and think" sounds like someone making fun of Big Brother. Either way, i thank the poster for his comments. Regardless of his intentions, his post was an excellent comment on the shameless falsehoods, horrible racism and moral vacuum that form the foundation of zionism.
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