The best case scenario for the October 7th Hamas murder, rape, slaughter, and kidnapping invasion is that Hamas simply loves to kill Jews.
The major effect of Hamas’ attack on Israel is that it makes an Israeli pre-emptive nuclear attack on Iran inevitable, at least against Iran’s nuclear weapons program and probably also its oil export facilities. This will happen when Iran gets close to developing nuclear weapons carried by ballistic missiles. Given that Gaza’s Iranian proxy nutball Hamas regime just made a suicidal attack on Israel with Iran’s help, Israel simply cannot chance Iran’s equally nutball mullah regime making its own suicidal nuclear attack on Israel as soon as it has the means to do so. ...
Israel lacks the non-nuclear means to prevent Iran from developing such weapons. Iran’s nuclear program is now too widespread and dug in.
The nuclear angle is scary. But I wonder if that is true except in the case of a visibly imminent nuclear attack. Still, it is absolutely true that it would have been safer to attack Iran's nuclear infrastructure early rather than when the nuclear weapon threat is imminent:
Striking Iran is now more difficult because Iran's knowledge base and institutional base is so much larger that Iran will have less trouble rebuilding what we wreck.
Add in the impossibility of knowing how much of Iran's nuclear program is actually in other countries (as it is with North Korea and was in Syria before Israel blew up a nuclear reactor being built by North Korea), and we have to admit that striking Iran to set back Iran's nuclear ambitions is more difficult now.
I didn't think Israel would take the chance absent obvious proof with conventional weapons even before the Hamas terror invasion. Indeed, I wonder if the purpose of the Hamas attack is to hide Iran's final dash to nuclear-armed missiles.
Israel would certainly strike if it could preempt obviously imminent Iranian nuclear capabilities. This kind of conventional assault will only buy time for the Iranian people to erase the nutball half of the mullahs-with-nukes threat. But sometimes all you can do is buy time and hope the horse sings.
Indeed, an Israeli strike might compel America to join in order to do a more thorough job on the nuclear facilities and to suppress Iran's ability to counterattack across the region.
What Israel would do if it is too late to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear weapons threshold is another question.
The bright side for Israel is that the Houthi ballistic missile attack on Israel proved that Israel's Arrow ABM works. I wonder if Iran was testing Israel's ability to stop an Iranian nuclear missile attack.
As long as Hamas and Hezbollah can't strike the Arrow systems, Israel has more options to deal with a small Iranian nuclear arsenal. Although American help for both offensive and additional defensive layers during the strike would probably be essential. Unless Saudi Arabia helps with the offensive and defensive layers and that looks sufficient.
And I've noted the Kharg Island angle addressed in the initial link.
Let's hope that the Iranian people can kill and overthrow the mullahs before really uncomfortable decisions have to be made. Rational leaders can be deterred. Those on a mission from God? Probably not.
Have a super sparkly day.
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
