Just out of curiosity. I’m talking all methods (legal and illegal, moral and immoral). The only caveat is that the methods work and not be outrageously immoral. The reason I pick Israel is because that is a nation who actually has faced this issue and from what I can tell they are more proactive than other nations in this situation. ie, South Korea doesn’t do the stuff to stop North Korea from getting nukes that Israel does to stop Iraq, Syria or Iran from getting them.
This isn’t meant to be a pro or anti Israel thread. It isn’t even meant to be pro or anti nuke. I jut picked Israel because the Israelis do not mess around, they take their survival seriously.
So far I know Israel has done the following to nations like Iraq, Iran & Syria:
[ul]
[li]Diplomatic pressure[/li][li]Assassinating nuclear scientists and missile engineers in hostile nations[/li][li]Assassinating military leaders pushing nuclear programs[/li][li]Creating computer viruses to destroy enrichment facilities (this is what the Stuxnet virus was, a virus created by Israel & the US to damage Iranian nuclear facilities)[/li][li]Bombing nuclear plants (Israel did this to both Iraq and Syria).[/li][li]Bombing nuclear equipment and missile equipment when it was being shipped from foreign nations to hostile nations[/li][/ul]
They’ve also undermined the efforts of an American president to negotiate with Iran to stop their nuclear weapons program. Not sure how that helps, but that’s what they did.
I don’t think diplomatic pressure is really on the table unless it’s applied through a third party. Most of Israel’s neighbors have no diplomatic relations with Israel so there’s not even anything to apply leverage on.
Same thing with economic sanctions. Trade doesn’t generally exist so it can’t be used as a means of trying to influence policy.
I disagree. Diplomatic initiatives could be helpful. For example, lets take a scenario that is unrealistic: Israel writes a treaty to declare the larger Middle East a nuclear-free zone, and opens the treaty up to all its neighbors and the major nuclear powers. That could be a very effective diplomatic initiative, except there’s no chance Israel would do it.
Is Israel going to give up their nuclear weapons? In return for other countries not developing nuclear weapons? And agree to inspections and so on from Iran and Saudi Arabia, and so on?
They could disavow nukes themselves and disarm. I’m not at all convinced that Iran, Iraq, and Syria want the nukes but one could argue that they’re faced with a hostile neighbor with nukes and just want to defend themselves. They seem to be insistent that they be the only power in the area with nuclear weapons and that stance may not be in their best interest.
The same logic applies to every country owning nuclear weapons - none want further ‘proliferation’, but few (save I thin South Africa and Ukraine) have ever voluntarily given them up - and Ukraine probably regrets doing so, given that it received completely worthless guarantees in exchange, and has since been dismembered by Putin’s Russia.
So far, history (in the specific case of Ukraine) has been against voluntarily disarming; though in favor of the plan in the specific case of Israel is that, unlike Ukraine, Israel remains so strong conventionally that its neighbors do not currently pose a military threat.
Right now, “Iraq and Syria” are of course in no position to seek out nukes, although both have done so in the past, because their countries are involved in massive internal wars. They don’t have a few billion in resources to spare for nukes.
Israel doesn’t have the right equipment for an aerial bombardment to destroy Iran’s Fordow facility. However, they are getting some MV-22s sometime in the near future, so they could potentially pull off an Entebbe-ish raid with commandos, enter the facility, and plant explosives inside to destroy it. It’d be really cool to read about afterwards.
