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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Oct-04
Iran's plans to build nuclear capability likely to destabilize Mideast

Web Log - October, 2004

Iran's plans to build nuclear capability likely to destabilize Mideast

The question everyone's asking: Will Israel preemptively attack Iran?

Iran's new missle can reach past Israel into Egypt, and past Turkey into southeastern Europe <font size=-2>(Source: BBC)</font>

Iran's new missle can reach past Israel into Egypt, and past Turkey into southeastern Europe (Source: BBC)

For months, Iran has been openly moving ahead with a nuclear enrichment program. At the same time, Iran just announced that it's improved its missile capability so that it's missiles can reach Israel.

Putting these two capabilities together means that Iran will soon be able to deliver a nuclear weapon to the soil of its arch enemy, Israel.

Iran has openly flouted the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which passed a resolution last month demanding that Iran freeze all enrichment activities. Iran has also defied demands by the United States and the European community to cease such activities.

Iran has even rebuffed a proposal by Presidential candidate John Kerry to supply them with nuclear fuel if they agreed to give up their own fuel-making capacity.

Iran foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said on Sunday it would be "irrational" to accept the proposal. "We have the technology (to make nuclear fuel) and there is no need for us to beg from others," he said.

Iran itself claims that it's all for purely peaceful, legal purposes, but most of the rest of the world is very skeptical.

So what is Israel going to do about this? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon doesn't have a reputation for sitting by and letting threats of this sort develop unchallenged.

People with long memories will recall that in 1981, Israel preemptively bombed Saddam Hussein's nuclear plant near Baghdad. Israel received almost universal international condemnation for having done so, but since that time many critics have acknowledged that Israel was right to have done so. And who was Israel's minister of defense in 1981? Yes, Ariel Sharon.

If Israel is now going to take preemptive action against Iran's nuclear plants, then it may do so very quickly.

Giora Eiland, Israel's national security adviser, said last week that Iran will reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear weapons program by November. Presumably that means that if Israel waits until December, then it will be too late to stop Iran.

This happened shortly after Sharon himself said that Israel is "taking measures to defend itself" in the Iran situation.

However, many people doubt that Israel would be successful with a preemptive strike. Iran has built its nuclear capability with Israel's 1981 strike in mind, and has spread the capability throughout the country in places that Israel would be unlikely to know about.

But to conclude that therefore Israel dares not strike assumes that the Israelis don't have good intelligence in Iran. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but if they do then we can read Sharon's message that Israel is "taking measures to defend itself" to mean that a preemptive strike will occur before December, probably after the November 2 American election.

Finally, let me finish up by discussing a technical point in Generational Dynamics.

This issue was raised by a reader several months ago in response to another comment about Iran's nuclear intentions. He said, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you yourself claiming that they don't want a major war? Are you wrong about that?"

He was referring to my frequent statements that only one generation has passed since the genocidal Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and so the people of neither Iran or Iraq want another war.

The fact is that the Iranian people do not want another war. In fact, the Iraqis and Iranians are less desirous of war than many others in the Mideast.

As a forecasting methodology, Generational Dynamics applies to the beliefs and behaviors of large masses of people, not to the actions of individuals or small groups of politicians. You can predict how large masses of people are going to think and act, but you can never predict what any particular individual is going to do. The actions that we're talking about -- building nuclear missiles and threatening Israel -- are decisions of a small group of Islamic mullahs. I doubt very much that the Iranian people are happy today that their rulers are destabilizing the region and raising the threat of a nuclear war. (7-Oct-04) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Oct-04 Iran's plans to build nuclear capability likely to destabilize Mideast

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 7-Oct-04
Iran's plans to build nuclear capability likely to destabilize Mideast