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The "Deterrence Works" Fantasy

(Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer - Deterring Iran is fundamentally different from deterring the Soviet Union. You could rely on the latter but not on the former. Did the Soviet Union in its 70 years ever deploy a suicide bomber? Iran's clerical regime rules in the name of a fundamentalist religion for whom the hereafter offers the ultimate rewards. It's one thing to live in a state of mutual assured destruction with Stalin or Brezhnev, leaders of a philosophically materialist, historically grounded, deeply here-and-now regime. It's quite another to be in a situation of mutual destruction with apocalyptic clerics who believe in the supremacy of the afterlife and holy war as the ultimate avenue to achieving it. The Soviet quarrel with America was ideological. Iran's quarrel with Israel is existential. The Soviets never proclaimed a desire to annihilate the American people. For Iran, the very existence of a Jewish state on Muslim land is a crime, an abomination, a cancer with which no negotiation, no coexistence, no accommodation is possible. Israel, a speck on the map, is a "one-bomb country." A tiny nuclear arsenal would do the job. The confident belief that the mullahs are like the Soviets is a fantasy.
2012-08-31 00:00:00
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