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Why Israel Fears Containment of a Nuclear Iran

(National Interest) Avner Golov and Uri Sadot - While scholars and policy-makers in Western capitals contemplate containment scenarios in Iran, Israeli leaders defiantly state: before containment, we will choose preemption. Israelis are predisposed to believe that their enemies are irrationally bent on destroying the Jewish state, even in the face of nuclear retaliation. For Israelis, their country is too small to comply with existing mutual-deterrence models because only two or three bombs are what it would take to wipe out their entire country. Israelis see themselves as faced with not a single enemy that can be deterred, but rather with a broad league of states and nonstate entities who are out to get them. Such a quantitative asymmetry can only be balanced by securing an overwhelming qualitative advantage. A nuclear-capable Iran would unravel the existing balance and would leave Israel defenseless against various types of provocation. In 1981, Israel attacked Iraq's nuclear program for precisely those reasons. Polls show two-thirds support among Jewish Israelis for a "preemptive" strike as a final resort. Avner Golov is a researcher at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies. Uri Sadot is a Research Associate at the Council on Foreign Relations' program for Middle East Studies.
2014-05-22 00:00:00
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