Barak to Haaretz: World clueless what Iranian ayatollah would do if had nukes

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
05 May '11



[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:

Sure, the headline writers at Haaretz based their headline ["Barak to Haaretz: Iran won't drop nuclear bomb on Israel"] on his response when asked whether he thinks Iran would drop a nuclear bomb on Israel: Not on us and not on any other neighbor.

But in the very same interview he concedes that I don't think that anyone can say responsibly that these ayatollahs, if they have nuclear weapons, are something you can rely on...to say that somebody really knows and understands what will happen with such a leadership sitting in a bunker in Tehran and thinking that it's going to fall in a few days and it is capable of doing it? I don't know what it would do.

Put another way: OK children, daddy will tell you that everything is OK so you can continue with your lives. But in the event that things don't work out please note that I warned, for the record, that I am clueless as to what will really happen.

Mr. Barak declines to entertain the possibility that, driven by a set of values and belief that are absolutely alien to us, it turns out to make all the logic in the world to try to incinerate Israel with a nuclear weapon out of the belief that the act will bring about a mystical transformation of the world.

There are two problems with this approach:

1. You don't analyze and predict the actions of a third party by asserting that they follow your set of values and beliefs but instead on the basis of the third party's set of values and beliefs.

2. When Israelis assert that Iran is not a nuclear threat unless Iran itself is threatened, the message to the world is that a nuclear Iran would not represent a clear and present existential danger and thus efforts to prevent a nuclear Iran do not have to be a top priority for the world.]

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Barak to Haaretz: Iran won't drop nuclear bomb on Israel
Though the Iranian government seems to have largely eluded the wave of revolutions in the Arab world, the defense minister thinks it too could collapse.
By Gidi Weitz Haaretz 00:42 05.05.11
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/barak-to-haaretz-iran-won-t-drop-nuclear-bomb-on-israel-1.359870

If Iran succeeds in developing nuclear weapons, it is unlikely to bomb Israel, Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Haaretz in an Independence Day interview.

Barak said Israel should not spread public panic about the Iranian nuclear program − a position that seems to put him out of step with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who in recent years has repeatedly compared the Iranian push to develop a nuclear bomb to the Third Reich’s development of increasingly sophisticated weapons.

When asked whether he thinks Iran would drop a nuclear bomb on Israel, Barak said: “Not on us and not on any other neighbor.”

“I don’t think in terms of panic,” he said. “What about Pakistan, some political meltdown happens there and four bombs wind up in Iran. So what? So you head for the airport? You close down the country? Just because they got a shortcut? No. We are still the most powerful in the Middle East.”

All the same, Barak said Iranian rulers could not be relied upon to remain clearheaded.



“I don’t think that anyone can say responsibly that these ayatollahs, if they have nuclear weapons, are something you can rely on, like the Politburo or the Pentagon,” he said. “It’s not the same thing. I don’t think they will do anything so long as they are in complete control of their senses, but to say that somebody really knows and understands what will happen with such a leadership sitting in a bunker in Tehran and thinking that it’s going to fall in a few days and it is capable of doing it? I don’t know what it would do.”

Though the Iranian government seems to have largely eluded the wave of revolutions in the Arab world, Barak said it too could collapse.

“I think we are seeing the beginning of the end of the dictatorships in the Arab world, including the Iranian one,” he said.

Speaking of Israel’s failure to secure the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit, despite having offered to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, Barak said he thinks Shalit could have been freed three years ago.

Commenting on his wealth, he said he was indeed a millionaire but “not a tycoon.”

“I’m no wealthier than Bibi Netanyahu or Arik Sharon,” he said. “I don’t feel that I’m more hedonistic than Ehud Olmert, or Yitzhak Rabin, or Shimon Peres.”

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