nuclear-news

Israel, not Iran, greatest threat to world peace

“The greatest threat to the world is clearly nuclear-armed Israel with its almost daily threats to launch an attack on Iran, inevitably involving the U.S. in a potentially catastrophic Middle East war,” 

Hush  Now, Mitt: A Nuclear Iran Is Not the World’s Greatest Threat, The Atlantic,  AUG 7 2012,   Three-quarters of national security experts polled disagreed with the candidate. Three-quarters of National Journal’s National Security Insiders disagreed with a recent statement by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said a nuclear Iran represents the greatest threat to the world.

If Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Romney told Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, it would pose the most serious threat to the world, to the United States and to Israel’s existence.

Not so, said 73 percent of NJ’s pool of national-security experts, even as they acknowledged that a nuclear Iran could have a destabilizing effect on the Middle East and erode international nonproliferation efforts. “It would be an unmitigated negative for U.S. interests,” one Insider said. “But it is not the greatest security threat facing the U.S. or the world at large.”

If Iran — or any other country with money — truly wants to go
nuclear, another Insider said, there is not a whole lot the world can
do to stop it. “Making such comments reduces your maneuver room when
Iran actually gets close to going hot, makes you look impotent when
they do, and blinds us to other challenges (e.g., a rising or failing
China, Pakistan imploding, etc),” one Insider said.

Individual nukes rank behind several other threats, including
cyberthreats, another Insider said. “Coupled with its aggressive
ideology, Iran armed with nuclear weapons would pose a greatly
heightened danger to others. But so would other potential scenarios:
the collapse of authority in Pakistan that undermined the security of
its nuclear weapons, Pakistani aggression against India that risked
escalate to nuclear war (feared in their 2001-2002 crisis), or
unstable disintegration of authority in North Korea or spasmodic acts
by its leaders in a crisis,” another Insider said. Others said that
climate change, or the “invasive species known as Man,” rank as bigger
threats.
“The greatest threat to the world is clearly nuclear-armed Israel with its almost daily threats to launch an attack on Iran, inevitably involving the U.S. in a potentially catastrophic Middle East war,” the
Insider said. “Continually threatened by Israel, with its 200+ nuclear
weapons, and with nuclear-armed neighbors — American allies Pakistan
and India — Iran has every reason to arm itself in equal measure,
although U.S. intelligence believes it has not yet decided to do so.”
The best way to stop Iran from going nuclear is to turn the entire
region into a nuclear-free zone, starting with Israel which never
signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the Insider said….
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/hush-now-mitt-a-nuclear-iran-is-not-the-worlds-greatest-threat/260837/

August 8, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, Israel, weapons and war