How about they’re both crazy to varying degrees?
The difference is, that Iran is a large country that had a violent sectarian revolution 36 years ago, but it is not a true ethnostate; while Israel is a puny country with strong ethnostate tendencies due to the racialist nature of Zionism.
Iran is truly messed up, but it’s not geographically as insecure as Israel. Israel may actually be unsustainable geographically.
So Israel’s population crisis leads to migration out on a large scale, and also to nigh-genocidal policies against Palestinian Gaza. This is an understandable geopolitical effect. Iran, a generation after the revolution, is probably likely to de-escalate, while Israel is likely to panic. Of course, it’s possible there will be some kind of political movement, like the “Reagan Revolution” that entrenches the crazy, but Iran is a lot fatter and happier than Israel.
Furthermore, Iran is at least kind of trying to play by the rules, while Israel thumbs its nose at NNPT. And yet the USA insists Iran is the rogue state? Balderdash.
I think the Israel-bashing is leading us off topic here.
Well, as for the specific premise of the OP, maybe. But as for what’s really going on, not really?
Bibi has been pushing Iran paranoia. Elements of the media/political establishment in the USA are pushing Iran paranoia. But the fact remains that however evil the Iranian government may be to their own people, they haven’t given us reason to think they’re suicidal. Iran with an atom bomb isn’t too different from Iran without one.
And the government there can do basic game theory. A Persian bomb might provoke a Saudi bomb. They want “break-out capacity” so they can quickly develop their own bomb endogenously if the Arabian kings procure one by some trickery, but they don’t seem to want to get the bomb first and provoke a Saudi program.
If they do get a bomb, well, like I’ve said before, MAD worked on the USA, it’ll easily work on them.
The only bomb they could build would be a primitive gun-type Hiroshima bomb because Iran has no Plutonium. They would need about 59-60 pounds of 80% enriched U-285. The chances of this happening are almost zero. Their enrichment program is the most monitored in the world.
Even if they had one, it would have no strategic or military value. Serious people everywhere know this and know that the whole Iranian bomb brouhaha is just a propaganda campaign amidst geopolitical maneuvering in the region.
It would have some minor deterrent value. It would make other countries a little more hesitant to attack them.
Of course, no one currently is massing up assault formations on their border, so, shrug, what’s to deter?
ETA: slightly more seriously, what if Iran had a nuclear weapon during the Iraq/Iran war? They lost a lot of troops in futile assaults. Would they have been likely to use a warhead of they had one? Tactically, on the front lines, or strategically, against Baghdad?
It’s probably more likely for Israel to be nuked by the British than by the Iranians.
That’s just silly, Britain will nuke Scotland and Ireland first, and then Finland. If there are any nukes left the UK will nuke the Moon, Australia and my ex-wife.
What did Finland do?
It was lookin’ at England’s bird and spilled Ireland’s pint.
No regret.
No mercy!
So why the incessant anti-Israel blather (from Iran)? Is it for domestic consumption? When Nasser was issuing his bellicose speeches (just before the 1967 War), he was always going on about how he “would drive the Zionists into the sea”. He (apparently) thought the Israelis would not take him seriously. How far is it wise to go with these things?
Is it incessant? I haven’t been keeping up with Tehran’s rhetoric about Israel. I’d like to know if that’s still going on.
Absent a cite demonstrating that it is: What’s with the incessant anti-Iran blather from Netanyahu, to the point of irritating his country’s own intelligence services?
Historically, what’s the statute of limitations on conquest, the time it takes for the descendants of the dispossessed to stop claiming that someday they’ll get “their” land back?
No, they would never have used it, for the same reason they never used other kinds of WMD’s: Khomeini nixed the idea for religious reasons, and that was that.
100 years generally seems to do the trick. It’s long enough for the grandkids to grow up without ever knowing what was lost. Without that living memory, the issue falls into abstraction.
I think that’s a trifle optimistic.