What would the nuclear powers do if Iraq nuked Israel?

Great Debates
21

Never underestimate the capacity for an advanced nation to react with extreme violence.

Probably after the US joined Israel in nuking Iraq into the stone age – while 3/4 of the worlds media wails about the death of innocents, the beastly Yanks and the savage Israelis – when the dust settles there will be a determined hunt for Sadaam Just like with Hitler. Any remains found will be checked right down to the molecular level to make sure it is him. If found alive, he might have an ‘accident’ while being captured. If he survives, he’ll be put to death after a War Crimes Trial, along with any of hi surviving military leaders.

Then, the US and Israel will star carving up Iraq, while every surrounding nation complains about national rights, religious land rights, traditional ownership, US invasion and ‘illegal’ retention of Arabic territories and the squabble in Egypt will end in a hurry.

Then every other nation will line up to try to get a portion of the oil the place contains.

22

Unless a sub-megaton device were to be detonated I think it would be pretty hard to avoid significant, if not catastrophic, damage to Jerusalem as well.

Considering the religious significance of The Dome of the Rock to all Muslim people any such act would leave Iraq in an unsupportable position, and pretty much open to any and all retaliation from whomever.

23

Okay, let me be explicit in saying that I learned NBC policy in about 1988, in about an hour, with no follow-up, and with absolutely no practical real-world study. Things likely have changed. I’m far from being an expert.

Nevertheless, I’ll be happy to front the Cold-Warrior position, and I’ll be equally happy to be torn down to the roots. I’d like to address the one guy who had the nads to stand up and take it, a guy whose MP3 collection I’m sure I would love to collect and trade for:

London_Calling is astute in pointing out that it’s:

That, as far as I understand, is the point. Rogue nations and totalitarian states are not excepted in NBC policy. This, I think, is the rationale: if a nation is so irresponsible as to be unable to control their own government, and that nation nevertheless manages to procure a weapon of mass destruction and has the stones to use it in light of the well-known consequences, those people are culpable for the actions of their leadership. While it is an imposition of democracy and responsibility upon a no-doubt innocent people, it is the territory that comes with the turf. Hey, they dropped the bomb. This is big-league, nation-destroying shit, and we’ll be damned if we won’t send the message right back home, post paid, informed or not. There are a hell of a lot of others who will get the message fast while the perpetrators glow.

The incident presupposes an act of irresponsibility beyond the pale, with innocent victims. The United States holds the soon-to-be innocent victims of such an act equally responsible. Hell, look at the fools in Palm Beach–do you think they’re making this shit up? Okay, maybe they are, but that’s how it is, for real. We have our policy, and we’re not fucking around on this one.

But London_Calling also has another good point. The glaring hole is that while we don’t fear holding nations culpable, individuals are responsible only for themselves. If Osama bin Laden manages to take out Cleveland, or Sheboygan, or Eliat, what is the U.S. going to do about it? Blast Saudi Arabia because he inherited his fortune there? Blast The Sudan because he had a pharmaceutical company there? Blast the Pakistani/Afghan frontier because he hides out there? Who does he lead? Who did he forcibly control? Where is his nation? This guy is far more of an asshole than he is a nation. How do you hit him back, in kind?

I don’t know that you can. All I can say is that it’s fucked up that weapons of mass destruction now have the potential to fall into the hands of individual people–at least in our imaginations. All I can recommend is that if some fucked-up puppy pulls off something like that and gets caught, all six billion of us have a right to stand in line and excoriate him at length.

24

My own personal opinion.

  1. We would not nuke Iraq, we can achieve what we want without nukes.

  2. We would try to prevent Isreal from responding with nukes (probably unsuccessfully)

  3. Whoever’s the president will ask congress for a full declaration of war.

  4. We will accept nothing but a full unconditional surrender.

  5. Finally we will occupy the country like we did Japan and Germany post WWII. Everyone involved who’s left alive will face War Crimes Trials.

note: We = the U.S. plus any of our allies who help.

25

I suspect grien based his prediction on the 1981 Israeli bombing of a yet-to-be-completed Iraqi nuclear reactor. (Radioactive materials had not yet been installed.) Israel was internationally condemned for this.
Mediocre cites:
http://198.234.193.26/Int.%20Diplomacy/Iraq/iraq_forgien_polocy.htm
http://www.asian-history.com/chap_4.html

26

Nota Bene: Bin Laden did not own the pharmaceutical company. It previously, as I recall, was owned by a Sudanese state entity and was built by a company connected to Bin Laden (although how I do not recall). It was later privatized. Although the owner, a Sudanese citizen resident in Britain I believe, may have had business contacts with Bin Laden, in his contracting capacity, I don’t believe anyone ever provided evidence he had a sustained relationship.

In short, it appears the poor bastard got whacked incorrectly.

27

Thanks for elaboratig on my very late night post, Sofa King. That’s pretty much what I should have said in the first place !

Well I guess there’s lie’s, damn lies and statistics – and political shenanigans. One can collect and then analysis data any number of ways so perhaps before considering the numbers in a meaningful way it might be a good idea to determine how they were physically collated, who was included and what land area constituted the ‘State of Israel’ for any particular census.

That sounds like a full time job so how about considering the official CIA World Fact Book: Year 2000
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html
The Fact Book assesses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza individually.

Population of ‘Israel’ was 5.8 million of which 20% were Arab.
Population of the West Bank (lets assume 90% Arab) was 2 million.

I think we have an Arab majority without even considering Gaza.

Oh ok, lets………population of Gaza = 1,132,063 of whom 6,500 are Israeli settlers.

Of course, the Gaza citizens are considered ‘refugees’ and as such don’t count period and the West Bank Arabs enjoy ‘autonomy’ so maybe they don’t count either.
I’ve only been to Israel a couple of times (and only a few weeks on each occasion) but in my experience what you read and what you see and experience (in relation to the rights and treatment of non-Jewish inhabitants) are somewhat at odds.

28

I don’t want to hijack this thread further, London_Calling, and I can point to this argument coming up in numerous past threads. In fact, it is has been brought up in nearly ever Israel/Palestine thread in the past year.

The fact of the matter is that both the West Bank and Gaza are occupied territories, and have not been annexed into Israel proper. The Golan Heights have been annexed. The population living in the unannexed regions (West Bank and Gaza) are not Israeli citizens. I’m not even gonna go to the fact that citizenship was offered to them after the areas were occupied in 1967. The West Bank and Gaza are not part of Israel, therefore their population cannot be considered part of the Israeli one. I agree that there are more Arabs than Jews living in the general area. But your quote

That is not true within the borders of Israel, though. That is what I was disputing.

Israeli Arabs (Arabs living inside the borders of Israel) are given equal protection under the laws of Israel. What you saw may represent a societal bias, but I am not addressing that here. There is no governmental prejudice against them.

29

Oh, and my 12% number comes from numerous CNN articles in the past week about Arab Israelis and their voter turnout. On re-reading, it says that 12-13% of Israeli voters are Arab, not the population.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/meast/02/04/mideast.02/

I will gladly retract my 12-13% number and accept that 20% number if I can’t find another cite.

30

Great stuff, guys.

Does anyone know if US policy statements on such a scenario exist in the public domain? I’m sure we have written out for the military’s benefit what the standard response to nuclear exchanges would be–is it avail. to the public?

31

Thus far, everyone has been silent on something that I believe is a pretty fundamental part of this equation: Whatever the circumstances leading to it, primarily Muslim, Arab nations will never stand by and watch Israel bombing and killing in other primarily Muslim, Arab nations.

Remember the Gulf War? Israel basically needing to be tied down to its chair to avoid retaliating against Iraqi missile attacks? That was because the carefully built coalition would have crumbled instantaneously if Israel attacked Iraq.

Even our stronger allies in the region, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, would not stand idly by. It would be jihad time.

32

Toadspittle,

This scenario of yours is a likely scenario in my mind, which already sees Israel as obversely fomenting a popular Islamic fundamentalist movement beginning in the 1970’s, which helped topple Iran and threatens many Islamic countries today. However, I don’t think we can assume we will know who will ignite this hypothetical bomb, which we know to exist for practical purposes. The bombers will be dead, perhaps, and nobody in their right mind will take credit for it, or a puppet group will be arranged to take credit for it. Iran funds militants, so does Libya, Iraq, Afganistan, and groups connected with people like the Saudi Bin Ladn. Pakistan has the bomb. Russian arms dealers do business with anyone with cash. Let’s assume we will never know who would nuke a city in Israel, but we can assume that it will cause a huge war which we cannot easily be neutral in. Remember, if one medium-sized nuclear bomb hits Tel Aviv, then we can also assume that a huge number of soldier/reservists are casualities, not to mention the civil government and many war factories. Israel is so small and so concentrated, I’m sure her enemies can see how such a bomb would render her totally vulnerable. The US would have to intervene somehow, and then we would have the establishmentarians along with their chorus of armageddonists singing their swan songs of global conflict.

I firmly believe this estabishment/armagedonist viewpoint is why the US actively props up kings and sultans in the middle-east, because we distrust popular Islamic government due to our arranged marriage with Israel (its sometimes easier to do business with corrupt kings than elected governments when religious ideals are involved) and most Muslims still very much dislike the idea of Israel, in the same way most Americans dislike Cuba being a communist state. In this way the argument has become absurdly circular: We support Israel because its democratic and “they” are not, even though we do most of our cash business with those undemocratic partners. By the way, as per Israel, it is a huge fallacy to assume that one can correct a mistake by adding more to the problem, assuming it is a mistake as many of us do. I think that Israel is a planned failure, and like many people during wars, I don’t want to be associated with it. If anyone is overtly agnostic or atheist, I urge them to reconsider this hidden doomsday plan based on a stupid colonial-elitist idea. America has sacrificed everything we once stood for over this idiocy.

33

edwino - Agreed the debate has been done many times before and consensus is no more likely here than on the ground.

I think we maybe got a little side-tracked by my mentioning of the makeup of the State of Israel’s population. However (trying to get back to the OP), by looking at the geographical location of Gaza and the West Bank, we can see that Saddam can’t target only Jews. Not only that but the majority of the victims (taking fallout and the breakdown of medical services, etc. into account) are likely to not be Jewish. That was the point I was trying to make albeit, in a mischievous / contentious manner.
So in the scenario envisaged (Saddam attacks Israel, the West responds in kind) and both in the initial strike and the retaliation, the oppressed of both regimes suffer far more than the intended targets - assuming, of course, one accepts the people of Gaza and the West Bank are oppressed. Which I sense is unlikely !

34

Here is a little blurb about American NBC policy. I still can’t figure out what sort of response is required for an attack on an ally.

35

I very much doubt the US would respond with an NBC attack, for several reasons:

[ul]
[li]The US and Western European allies have enough conventional air, sea and land power to inflict massive damage on Iraq.[/li][li]If Israeli military or civilians or allied land forces are present, indiscriminatory use of NBC weapons may kill or wound many of them.[/li][li]The US has traditionally played the global policeman role with a distinct moral overtone when it comes to non-conventional weapons. If the US were to launch the first nuclear strikes since World War II, or the first chemical attacks by a western power since World War I (IIRC), the US’ standing among other nations may reduce dramatically.[/li][li]Using NBC weapons encourages other nations to start, continue or restart their own NBC programmes. After all, if the US won’t practice what it preaches, why would they bother sticking to the non-proliferation treaties the US and Europe are constantly promoting?[/li][li]If Iraq had only used one weapon, hoping the retaliation would be limited to a conventional arse-kicking, a US NBC strike would remove any hesitation to use any other weapons.[/li][li]The US and Europe’s standing would also be damaged by the use of such massive and indiscriminate weapons. Remember the soul-searching over missiles hitting civilian buildings in the Gulf War or Bosnia? I’m not convinced that the US would be prepared to take a “you kill lots of Israeli civilians, we kill lots of Iraqi civilians” line.[/li][/ul]

I read a novel recently that ends with a very similar scenario to the OP. An Islamic coalition headquartered in Baghdad launches a bacteriological strike on Israel, releasing a horrific new strain of smallpox. Israel retaliates with nuclear weapons on Iraq, Syria and so forth. The US’ response (and it’s supposed to be a hard-line President) is to launch Trident strikes on Israel to prevent them destroying half of the middle east.

In short, the sole advantage of an NBC attack (mass destruction without loss of own forces) would dramatically reduce the “moral” standing of the US and Europe (and maybe increase geopolitical instability) and may encourage NBC development across the globe.

36

One point, though. It didn’t stop Saddam from firing missiles over them during the Gulf War. IIRC, many of the Scuds actually did land in the West Bank and Jordan. IIRC, Palestinian fervor for Saddam continued unabated.

He is a madman. Killing a few innocents wouldn’t stop him. In his mind, those who die in jihad go straight to heaven. He is basically assuring those innocent Muslims an eternity in paradise, while taking out a few million infidels.

I don’t see it as a deterrent, unfortunately.

37

What a horrible vision.

Were Israel to nuke Baghdad (or another Iraqi site) in retaliation, the Middle East’s extremists would devote their last dying breaths to ensuring the destruction of Israel–even if it took 50 years and required the deaths of Arab Israelis. Moreover, I see it sparking a wild attempt by every player in the Middle East to acquire its own nuclear stockpile by whatever means possible. I would also guess that the world’s terrorists would have commercial airlines falling from the sky like so much confetti while taking their own retaliatory strikes–and plenty of them–to the heartland of the U.S. Right wingers in Russia would go ape, regardless of whether they could prove the U.S. were somehow involved in this nuclear strike, and someone with a lot to gain would whip the old-timers into a frenzy to do something about it rather than just “whine” as some suggest. Also, were Israel to resort to a nuclear attack of an Iraqi city (they apparently have at least 100 in stockpile, sources say), they would kill untold thousands of innocents–including foreigners, embassy personnel, and innocent kids whose burned/irradiated bodies would be displayed on every newspaper and television in the world.

Also this: what power would launch a nuclear strike against another country without having at least one additional nuke at the ready? (And housed at a different location.) And just finding Saddam could take months. On the other hand, were Israel NOT to retaliate, the internal tensions would be devastating. I also doubt the U.S. would ever launch such a strike in this situation. The geostrategic implications would be terribly destabilizing.

It’s also obvious that the U.S. and Israel have already discussed this–and many other possible–scenario over and over, as well as the expected long-term, geostrategic implications of each decision. For all the reasons the other posters have cited, I think Israel’s future is bleak.

Supposedly, bin Laden is already trying to purchase enriched uranium.