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Why Defending Against Iran Is a Security Imperative for the Middle East and the West
(Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs) Catherine Perez-Shakdam - While the world debated the potentiality of an Iranian nuclear weapon, Israel acted on the certainty of it. Faced with this reality, Israel did not wait for disaster. It prevented one. And in doing so, it has not only defended its own people. It has bought time for the rest of us. Israel's intervention has saved the non-proliferation regime from collapse. Had Iran achieved nuclear breakout, a cascade of proliferation would have followed. Saudi Arabia has declared it would match Tehran "without delay." Egypt and Turkey would not be far behind. Israel's strike was not a regional destabilizer. It was a stabilizing act of necessity. Every IRGC scientist removed from the battlefield, every centrifuge dismantled, every underground tunnel collapsed, is a step back from the brink. The alternative was not peace. The alternative was the irreversible empowerment of a regime that has shown time and again that it cannot be trusted with even conventional weapons, let alone nuclear ones. The strike also sends a clear message to the West: there is still one nation willing to act when others equivocate. Israel did what needed to be done. In striking Iran's nuclear program, Israel has not launched a war. It has prevented one. The writer, executive director at the Forum for Foreign Relations, is an associate scholar at the Jerusalem Center.