Israel Needs A Preemptive Nuclear Strike Against Iran

Evidence of Iran building nuclear weapons.
After Iran stated that it will "wipe Israel off the map" Israel must now act to defend herself.

By Jonathan Ariel
Israel News Agency

Jerusalem ----- June 24...... One of the best ways to ensure the world doesn’t get wobbly over Iran, is to make it understand that although Israel prefers to regard the rogue Islamic regime as an international problem, we will, if necessary, do whatever it takes to ensure our survival, including a preemptive nuclear strike.

In 1936, when Hitler marched into the Rhineland the allies appeased him, even though they could have been in Berlin in two weeks. In 1938 they once again let him off the hook, even though the allies could have been in Berlin within two months. Shortly after the appeasement of Munich, Russia signed a non-aggression treaty with Hitler, setting the stage for what it hoped would be his defeat of the West, which would pave the way for Russian domination of Eurasia, from Lisbon to Vladivostok.

Now we have Iran, a country led by Ahmadinejad, an equally deranged and evil maniac. He is driven by an ideology combining elements of Nazism and Mahdism, with a tad of Maoism as well, a lethal cocktail of three of the most evil ideologies of human political history.

By most current intelligence estimates, by 2008, exactly 70 years after Chamberlain announced on his return from Munich he had achieved “peace in our time”, the Iranian Islamo-Nazi regime will have succeeded in developing an atomic bomb. Although it seems that the international community has belatedly begun to awaken to the danger, it is still far from certain that this will actually lead to concrete and concerted steps to ensure this doesn’t happen.

Moreover, even if the West does get its act together, three is no guarantee that Russia will not revert to course, enacting a repeat performance of the Molotov-Ribbentrob pact. Putin seriously mulling double crossing the West.

This week new and highly disturbing evidence came to light that this is exactly what Russia is doing. According to a western intelligence report published earlier this week, satellite images showed large volumes of heavy Russian weaponry heading towards Iran. The weapons belonged to Russian military units evacuating Georgia, as part of the Russian-Georgian agreement signed in March, which calls for all Russian troops to be withdrawn from Georgian soil.

The Russians were evacuating their two big Soviet-era military bases in Georgia on the shores of the Black Sea – the 12th base in Batumi and the 62nd at Akhalkalaki to the north, 19 miles from the Turkish border. The mages revealed the retreating Russian units moving along not one but two routes. The first showed small groups of Russian officers and soldiers heading out of Georgia carrying only their personal kits, the second was jammed with convoys of trucks loaded with weapons and logistical systems, radar and ammo.

Freight trains were also pressed into service. This route wound out of Georgia and headed into Armenia where the vehicles halted at the Russian base near Gyumri. A Russian military spokesman explained this relocation by stating that “the property of the 62nd (Akhalkalaki), Georgia, would be reassigned to replenish Russia’s 102nd base in Gyumri, Armenia.” He added: “The transfer of this property to any other party is not envisioned.”

However Armenia was not the “the property’s” last stop. The close watch on the Russian supplies convoys continued and, lo and behold, a third route surfaced, this one heading out of the 102nd base in Armenia and into Iran.

Western military sources have traced the route these weapons took. From Gyumri, the trucks and trains rolled on to the Armenian capital of Yerevan. There, they were offloaded onto Armenian and Iranian trucks and trains, which turned south to the Iranian border. The freight crossed the border and halted at the Iranian town of Sadarak. Its next stop was the Iranian-Azeri town of Naxcivan and then on to Tabriz. Subsequent shipments by truck and rail followed the same route, They included APCs, heavy artillery, Grad rockets, BM-21mm missiles and anti-aircraft systems.

So far this year, Iran has purchased over $7 billion for arms from Russia, including anti-air, nuclear-capable Tor-M1 cruise missiles, considered by experts the most advanced of its kind in the world. Iran has purchased these missiles to secure the Bushehr atomic reactor and other nuclear sites. These sources say that Teheran is using the Georgian weapons deal as bait, to get Moscow to part with weapons and technologies it has so far refrained from passing over to the ayatollahs, specifically technology transfers enabling Iran to begin domestic production of the sophisticated Russian X-5518 nuclear cruise missiles, known also as Kh-55 or AS-15s.

Tehran already has a dozen of these missiles, which have a 3,000km range and are capable of carrying a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead. They were purchased on the black market of Ukraine in 2005. Teheran has reportedly promised to significantly increase its purchase of conventional weapons from Russia, if it agrees to the missile technology transfer.

Despite the uncertainty as to whether Russia (and possibly China as well) would cooperate with the West regarding Iran, the conventional wisdom has remained unchanged, namely that Iran is an international problem, being dealt with accordingly by the international community, and that Israel should therefore take a back seat.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The world needs to understand very clearly that Israel cannot and will not allow a Holocaust –denying regime that openly calls for its destruction to wield a nuclear bomb. Israel needs to make it very clear that the consequence of it having to face a nuclear Iran by itself will be a preemptive strike against Iran.

The more the international community gets the message that the consequences of appeasement will be worse than those of action, the better the chances of action. The growing evidence of Russian perfidy makes it even more important that there be no room for misunderstandings in this regard. The best way to get that message across is to make it very clear that if Israel is faced between an Iran nuclear bomb, or having to launch a preemptive nuclear strike to prevent that eventuality, it will opt for the latter.

The world must be told loud and clear by Israel that the only way to avoid the first nuclear strike by a nation since Nagasaki is to take whatever actions are required to ensure Iran doesn’t get the bomb, and to prevent an Iranian conventional weapons build up to the point where a preemptive nuclear strike becomes the only option for dealing with the rogue ayatollah regime.

Jonathan Ariel, was an advisor to the South African government and is a former editor-in-chief of the Israel on-line Maariv International. He has filled numerous positions with well known Israel and international media organizations such as Maariv, Makor Rishon, Jerusalem Post, Ha'aretz, The International Herald Tribune, Israel Radio, SABC and the Independent Foreign Service. These include Managing-Editor of Makor Rishon and Editor-in-Chief of Maariv International. He has been interviewed and quoted by leading media organizations such as the LA Times, The Economist, The Guardian, The New York Sun, Times of India, The Australian, Sunday Times and the BBC. His articles have been translated into over a dozen major languages, including German, Danish, Dutch, Italian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. He has degrees in Political Science and Journalism. He speaks English and Hebrew at mother tongue level, French, Dutch (Afrikaans) fluently.