Those who decry executions in Iran forget that those are mostly the Torah’s sentences: execution for adultery and homosexuality, tit-for-tat corporal punishment, etc. Though some may dispute the Torah’s corpus delicti, its punishments are eminently sensible. The Torah doesn’t condemn criminals to decades in jail at public expense: fines, flogging, execution, and possibly banishment are the only forms of punishment. Liberals protest execution on constitutional grounds as “unusual and cruel” punishment, but it is the usual, time-sanctioned punishment. Also, arguably, execution in a sterile environment of jail is not cruel relative to the crime or the alternative of life in abominable jails. The precautions which jail administrations take against suicide prove that for many inmates long lingering in jail is worse than quick death.

Modern law prohibits singling out for prosecution. The Jewish law, on the contrary, relies on exemplary punishments, especially the “purity legislation” of the Leviticus. In one instance (Lev20:18), having sexual relations with a menstruating woman is punishably by death. The punishment seems disproportional until we realize that it was unenforceable for the lack of witnesses; here the lawgiver relies on threat. Almost all other “crimes against purity” are similarly unpunishable: who can testify to non-generative incest or homosexuality? Other such crimes were punished extremely rarely: adultery was very hard to proof. In a sense, the Torah doesn’t single out for prosecution: every offender is liable, and every offender unfortunate enough to have his crime witnessed, is punished.

Iran executes only dozens of people for the crimes of immorality annually, perhaps a few hundred by the highest estimates. That’s in the order of one person in a million. Many more Iranians die in car accidents than from enforcement of the moral law. But the effect of enforced morality is very high. Iranians are some of the nicest people around. No doubt that adultery is much rarer in Iran than in the liberal Israel.

After the millennia of the Exile, Jews are not used to sovereignty. Jews developed a habit of appealing to policeman: to protect their ghetto before, to protect their state now. And so the Israeli lobby bends over backwards to garner international support for sanctions against Iran. Just in case someone has missed it: Iran lives under sanctions for the last 29 years, since its Islamic revolution. The touted third round of sanctions is as senseless as the other two: it would freeze some empty bank accounts and impose travel ban on those who can travel under any name they choose. The sanctions are illegal, too: why should Iran, a member of Non-Proliferation Treaty, be punished for acquiring civic nuclear technologies if the US officially acknowledged that Iran has no military nuclear program? In the interconnected world, sanctions are never efficient, especially the import sanctions: Iran can transship its imports through UAE, Syria, or any other country, and use UAE banks and even havala money changer networks for financial transactions. The only efficient sanctions against Iran would be export sanctions, banning oil purchases from that country, but no one cares so much about the Jews as to pay extra at gasoline stations.

Indeed, why should anyone care about Jews? Does any Jew who read about Holocaust honestly cares about Gypsies killed in the death camps? Why should a French company refrain from making a quick buck in transactions with Iran? We the Jews had no problem cooperating with South Africa in developing nuclear bomb, or helping Latin American dictatorships to keep their population in check. When Russia sells missiles to Syria, and America – advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia, why should not Siemens build a telecom network in Iran? Besides, if Siemens won’t do that, Samsung will, or one of the telecom start-ups in Eastern Europe.

Jews can claim Holocaust, compassion, basic human decency – and even make the Western governments pay lip service to those notions, but in the end the governments know they have no fiduciary obligation to the Jews. In fact, most of their constituents would even enjoy if the Jews are fried in the nuclear blast.

Other countries need not fear nuclear Iran. There is no way that Iran would nuke America, Russia, France, or Egypt – both for the fear of overwhelming retaliation and simply because it has no reason to attack. The horror tales of Iran selling nukes to international terrorists are nonsense: Iran did not even allow Hezbollah to use Zelzal-2 rockets in the 2006 Lebanon war. The only countries which have a good reason to fear nuclear Iran are Israel and Iraq.

Sanctions against Iran are a classic example of “quiet diplomacy,” the quintessential Judenrat policy which invariably failed: it did not stop pogroms in tsarist Russia, caused Allies to save the European Jews, or freed the Soviet Jews. Quiet diplomacy requires Bismarck’s brains and Germany’s stature. Jews should loudly pound at the doors, preferably with bombs.

Israel can bomb Iran, suffer the consequences, and reestablish her international stand and deterrence for another twenty to thirty years. Or she can rely on the foreign powers to do the job they don’t have to do, and appear in disregard, surrounded by nuclear Arab states and eventually fried by one of them.

The biggest problem, however, is not Iran, but the nuclear weapons of Islamist Pakistan and rogue North Korea.

I hate lies. Lying is an art, and government lies are as ugly as modernist paintings. Professors of art can teach painting but are lame painters themselves; politicians’ proficiency in lying doesn’t make their lies good or credible. Lying is a high art.

The story of Ahmadinejad’s “promise” to wipe Israel off the map is shocking. Not because it is a lie. Political lies don’t shock me already for decades. The story showed that the king is naked; the king, here, is Western analysts on Iran. It won’t be shocking had they only missed that Ahmadinejad quoted a famous line by ayatollah Khomeini; ignorance is widely acceptable in the intelligence community. What is shocking is their complete lack of the intuitive feeling of Iranian mentality. It is extremely unnatural for an Iranian to promise to wipe a country off the map. Such ugly straightforwardness is part and parcel of Western culture, specifically of the rationalist fast food culture. Every analyst who works on Iran had to immediately jump up screaming that an Iranian just couldn’t say those words. “To wipe off the map” is an American language rather than Persian. Khomeini, years ago, promised that the Zionist state would vanish from the book of time. That statement implied no violent role for Iran whatsoever. In Western parlance, that’s an equivalent of “justice would prevail.”

Iran is the only Muslim country with large, thriving, and content Jewish community. We the Jews have never had institutional or otherwise lasting problems in Iran. It is disgusting to see Israel appealing to the chorus of Jew-haters against the country most tolerant to Jews.

Muslim rulers of Iran naturally have a problem with Zionist regime. Good Jews, too, have a problem with it. Such attitude is not peculiar to the ayatollahs. Shah of Iran, a murderous dictator and close friend of America, didn’t embrace Israel, either. In the terms of foreign relations, Iran has every right to subvert a regime it doesn’t like: Israeli regime. The United States searches for “distant monsters” around the world to destroy; CIA subverted scores of regimes abroad. Israel, too, cooperates with Kurds to subvert the ayatollahs. Iran works against the post-Zionist regime which took hold of the Jewish land: that possibly makes Iran an enemy, but not at all a demonic state it is often pictured.

Iran supports Palestinian and Lebanese independence movements. It is Iran’s right and a logical stance for an honestly Islamic regime. Short of the Arab guerrillas, Israel would still occupy South Lebanon and refuse statehood to Palestinian Arabs. Polls show that Israeli support for Palestinian statehood correlates with Palestinian terrorist campaigns. Arab suicide bombers made Israel accept Palestinian national aspirations. That’s not to say that Israel should abandon South Lebanon which is the northern part of the Promised Land, or agree to Palestinian statehood. The point is, Iran is a decent adversary not deserving the hysterical hate poured on it.

Iran shows restraint in supporting Hezbollah and Hamas. After Israeli Air Force destroyed a transport of Zelzal missiles in Lebanon, Iran didn’t try resupplying Hezbollah with mid-range missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv. The bulk of Iranian aid to Hezbollah and Hamas goes to charity; their military capabilities are largely provided for by Syria and smaller foreign donations.

Israeli rulers happily made Iran into a straw man and scarecrow. High-ranking Israeli traitors from Beilin to Lieberman united against the Iranian threat. Other problems are set aside, the urgent problems: IDF became a US Army-like bureaucratized, overly expensive monster unable of lightning (before the media strikes back) offenses, enemy armies grew huge enough to make conventional wars prohibitively dangerous for Israel, mid-range and anti-aircraft missiles of Arab countries tremendously constrain the IDF attack capabilities. The Iranian nuclear threat is inflated specifically to hide the real, existential problems Israel is incapable of dealing with: Pakistani loose nukes, nuclear proliferation by North Korea, some of the Pakistani nuclear warheads reportedly stocked in Saudi Arabia, and Egyptian, Algerian, Moroccan, and Libyan nuclear programs.

Iran would never attack Israel with nuclear weapons. A historian would be hard pressed to recall the last instance of a major aggression by Iran; the minuscule Tunbs invasion seemed an aberration until the recently opened British archives confirmed that Sharjah emirate requested the invasion as face-saving measure. True, Iran will brandish its nuclear weapons and possibly provide nuclear defensive shield for Syria – but thousands of Syrian mid-range missiles, many with chemical and biological warheads produce an equally potent shield.

It is not even clear that Iran indeed has a military nuclear program. It might insist on domestic enrichment solely to satisfy the national pride. As a member of Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to enrich uranium, and winding down its program means bowing down to the US pressure.

Shiite Persian Iran is Israel’s natural ally against Sunni Arab enemies. Iran would be a much more welcome and honest arbiter of Israeli-Arab conflicts than Egypt which currently holds the de facto office of regional arbiter. Nuclear Iran would create great unrest in Azerbaijan and other Russia’s surroundings, bankrupt Israel’s Arab enemies through the arms race, and share the status of their collective enemy alongside Israel.

There are good reasons for Israel to attack Iran, destroying its nuclear facilities. Reinstating the Jewish deterrent is an important consideration. Preventing the rush of Arab regimes toward their own nukes is another reason. Maintaining psychologically important regional monopoly on nuclear weapons is also a casus belli.

In the Christian-Islamic-Black-Asian world, Israel has no friends. Sometimes we have to attack friends to scare off our enemies.

Recently, I suggested that the US Administration reached a separate peace agreement with Iran. According to the US-Iran peace deal, Iran winded down its support for Iraqi guerrillas, and the US guaranteed it won't bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran made good on its promise, and allowed the US Administration a tactical PR victory of reduced casualties in Iraq. The US Administration waited with fulfilling its part of the game until after the Annapolis peace show. Refusing to attack Iran over its nuclear program earlier would have likely derailed Israeli commitment to the Annapolis peace parley.

Immediately after the Annapolis, in the highly unusual move the US Administration allowed for publication of unclassified summary of the US intelligence report which asserts that Iran winded down its nuclear program… in 2003, and now "only" enriches the uranium to weapons grade. The absurd report still suggests that Iran "may" produce a nuclear weapon before 2015. Still more ridiculously, the report suggests that Iran needs several more years to produce enough nuclear material for a bomb. In fact, Iran's 3,000 centrifuges produce enough fuel for two bombs in a year, and Russian-built Bushehr reactor allows Iran to harvest enough plutonium for a nuclear bomb in just four months. Such harvesting only requires the Iranians to stop the reactor for three weeks - not something they would hesitate to do even at the expense of reducing power supply to the national grid.

The US intelligence on nuclear developments is laughable: it missed the crucial developments in Pakistani, North Korean, Libyan, and Syrian nuclear programs. Israel intelligence estimates that Iran will have nuclear bomb by the late 2008 or 2009. Iran has nuclear-able ballistic missiles, and all the technology for producing nuclear warheads from Pakistan and North Korea.

The US Administration tolerated Pakistani nuclear weapons. The US-North Korea's nuclear arrangement amounts to scam: North Korea merely shut down its reactor, transferred the technology to third countries, and remains ready to revamp its nuclear program at any moment. The US Administration similarly has no problem with Iran obtaining nuclear weapons. The US stand-off with Iran over the nuclear issues meant only to push Iran to negotiate on Iraq. America will continue pushing for the empty sanctions against Iran, but not attack its nuclear facilities. The US Administration sold Israeli security for Iranian help in Iraq.

The US Administration pushes Iran to become a second Nazi Germany. The incubator effect is the main reason behind the Nazis’ rise to power. The Entente powers humiliated Germany, closed it off, but didn’t destroy its economy entirely. The offended, enterprising, cultured, ideologically motivated Germans developed the worst political strain: economically efficient, politically aggressive, and ideologically charged. A similar situation is observed in today’s Iran. Its people are relatively educated, civilized, business-minded, technically savvy, and ideologized. They even subscribe to the very ideology of Nazis: Aryanism. Persian Iranians believe in their racial supremacy just like the Nazis did. The West closed Iran politically, humiliated it with sanctions but allows huge money inflows from oil sales, and thus created the incubator for viable political radicalism. US administrations ignored the Iranian attempts at rapprochement: from offering major oil concessions to American companies to the 2003 offer of peace talks with Israel and abandoning the Iranian support to Hamas to the very sympathetic 2007 Iranian TV series on the Holocaust.

There are major differences between Iranians and Germans. Iranians are tolerant, specifically tolerant to Jews whose community in Iran is the only significant Jewish community in the Muslim world (there’s a small number of Jews in Morocco and negligible numbers elsewhere). Except for the isolated incidents, Iranian Jews never suffered persecution. There is no institutional anti-Semitism of the German type in Iran. Still, Iranians proved themselves fairly militant and suicidally minded in the recent war in Iraq; for example, Iran marched its teenage soldiers through minefields to clean them on the cheap. Unlike the pre-WWII Germany, Iran is past the ideological peak which brought the ayatollahs to power, and actually disenchanted with them. Bulging young population, however, supports nationalist radicalism of Ahmadinejad’s – the mildly religious – type. Besieged by the US, Sunni separatists, Kurds, and Saudi Arabia, Iranians fall back into xenophobia and fearful militancy.

The majority of Iranians are skeptical of Ahmadinejad’s nuclear weapons project, but its completion will boost his popularity. Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear facility would also rally the nation around Ahmadinejad. The toothless sanctions, easily circumvented by local businessmen, make them okay with Ahmadinejad’s policies; the initial irritation from minor business disruptions gave way to contentment.

It is too late to discuss the Iranian nuclear program; bombing the installations is the only proper solution. Iran, however, need not be demonized: the Iranian nuclear threat is non-existent, certainly negligible when compared to the Pakistan’s threat. And talking to Iran is a must. And talking a lot.

America erred in Iraq by seeking democracy rather than traditional consensus. Multi-religious countries such as Lebanon or Iraq cannot afford democracy: when majority rules, minority fights. These countries maintained shaky balance by governing through consensus: liberal in Lebanon, authoritarian in Iraq. The West loves tales of Saddam’s totalitarian regime, but Saddam actually imposed consensus: he rejected Shia’s right of majoritarian rule and insisted that Sunnis have an equal say. That seemed undemocratic to America, but was the only prescription against Shia-Sunni violence.

America, on the contrary, did not invite Sunnis to negotiation table immediately after invasion – and they revolted. Sunnis are not a negligible minority, but native population of the land; Iran flooded Iraq with Shiites to create instability. Sunni Arabs, moreover, can get along with Sunni Kurds for a while. Sunnis welcomed the US troops in Fallujah, Baghdad, elsewhere, but were democratically excluded from the political process.

Minor thug Muqtada Sadr makes headlines but real Iranian support goes to Sistani and Mahdi army, named after the twelfth prophet who would lead Shiites to the final victory against infidels and Sunnis. Ayatollahs won't shake hands with the likes of Sadr, the aim much higher – at Shiite revolution in Iraq, not terrorist insurgency. Sadr only paves the way for the real action to happen after the US withdrawal leaves Iran a failed state of Iraq to annex into its sphere of influence. Wise and cynical monsters in Saudi Arabia understand the situation, and express full support for Iranian "peaceful" nuclear program. They cannot beat Iran and accept to befriend it. Likely, Saudi Arabia will support Iran financially and logistically against sanctions. Buying off an enemy is their standard policy: recall the construction contract for the Medina mosque the Saudis offered bin Laden to keep him away from Yemen. At the same time, Saudi Arabia unwinds its nuclear program and reportedly hides some of the missing Pakistani nuclear warheads.

America defended Kuwait but got none of its oil free or even cheap; defended Iraq similarly unfeasibly. The invasion of Iraq was profitable to Saudis: getting rid of a militant neighbor, dangerous whether under Sunni totalitarian regime or Iranian Shiite influence. Saudis also profited tremendously from the predictable rise in oil prices after the Iraqi debacle. War in Iraq and protracted confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program are immensely profitable to oil corporations which enjoy rising prices. American soldiers die defending Saudi Arabia; American taxpayers finance the conflict which makes American consumers pay unreasonably high prices for gasoline. Ain’t the Saudis smart?

Ahmadinejad, uniquely in the Muslim world and elsewhere, walks without guards, sits among people in mosques during Friday sermons. Muslims are used to Mubarak being glassed away from common Egyptians at the events down to football matches, with army patrolling the streets and helicopters hovering in the air; they admire Ahmadinejad as a symbol of freedom and non-corruption. Khatami, whom the US touts as a moderate, frantically traverses Africa and Islamic countries to establish Shiite footholds. Wahhabites fund madrassas while Khatami funds also schools and hospitals to draw the population to madrassas, but otherwise Iran spreads Shiism like Saudis spread Wahhabism.

Sunni Arab countries don’t care about Iranian nuclear bomb. It is unlikely that Iran would nuke Egypt or Saudi Arabia, though a good reason to do so can spring anytime: recall the unexpectedly savage Iran-Iraq war over nothing. Sunni rulers care a lot about Shiite enclaves created in their countries through Khatami’s efforts because Shiites are loyal to the chief imam in Iran, ayatollah, not to the country of citizenship. Sunnis lack such centralized religious authority. Iran is like the eleventh-century Vatican with a nuclear bomb: both exert vast religious control over others’ subjects.

Iran waited for America to invade Iraq and then announced its latent nuclear program, figuring out that America cannot prosecute wars in Iran and Iraq simultaneously and would hesitate to attack Iran which shapes the war in Iraq. When Iran warned Americans that it can make Iraq burning under their feet, that was true. Shiites will obey the ayatollah's orders. Shiites are much more militant and suicidal that Sunnis, possibly a function of living under Sunni siege for centuries but also a matter of apocalyptic doctrine. Iran marched its teenager soldiers through minefields to clear them cheaply, and can similarly swarm enemy states with suicide bombers; Saudi knows that well. Iran controls Syria and therefore borders Israel. Iran quietly builds a far-flung Shiite empire that spans continents and moderate Khatami whom the US supports to replace Ahmadinejad spearheads that drive. The West finances spread of Shiism, more dangerous that Wahhabism, with oil purchases. The West "slaps" Iran with meager sanctions, but showers it with oil revenues. Iranians easily circumvent the sanctions by routing their shipments and finances through Dubai and other countries. Iran needs a nuclear bomb to become a full-fledged empire. Iran cooperates with outcast Sunni states, particularly the nuclear Pakistan. Shiites are apocalyptic, consider the name of Mahdi army, and blindly trust the ayatollahs. Iranian secularism erodes the fervent religiosity that Khatami works to expand, but nuclear imams won't easily give the power away. Threatened with domestic unrest, they will start a foreign war, invade Iraq on the request of its Shiites or Saudi Arabia to claim the holy mosques. By promoting insurgency in places like Baluchistan, America pushes Iran into a full-scale war whose fronts are unpredictable.

And Bush announced the security situation in Iraq continues to improve - with 1,800 dead in August.

No electable Israeli politician will attack the Iranian nuclear facilities. Every one of them is too broad-minded for that. Olmert, Livni, Netanyahu – anyone’s mind is besieged by hundreds of considerations. US? Europe? Russia? Left? Human rights? Saudis? Home front readiness? Public approval of the subsequent fighting? Chances of Iran rebuilding its nuclear facilities? In the conundrum of those questions, the question of Iranian nuclear threat is lost. Indeed, most analysts agree, there is no direct threat. Iran won’t nuke Israel but rather provide nuclear shield for Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas to wear Israel down with conventional and guerrilla operations with no fear of massive reprisal.

The Iranian nuclear threat is vague. Iran only runs 1,300 centrifuges, a far cry from the minimally feasible 3,000 centrifuges. Things often go wrong with nuclear enrichment. Centrifuges don’t now produce weapons-grade uranium; further enrichment is required, certain to be noticed by IAEA inspectors. Nuclear warhead design isn’t an easy job; even if constructing a nuclear warhead, Iran would shrink from risking its one or two nuclear charges in easily interceptable missiles. Delivering a large nuclear assembly in sea container would result in low-yield ground-level blast only. Thoughtful analysis suggests that the Iranian threat is over-hyped – at least, for the current prime minister’s term.

It took Menachem Begin’s simplicity to bomb the Iraqi reactor. For Begin, the issue was only one: the immediate security of Jewish people. To that end, young Begin was prepared to cooperate with Nazis against the British occupiers. Begin didn’t play diplomatic games: when the World Zionist Organization frantically discussed the creation of Israel with foreign states, Begin’s Irgun kept bombing British installations in the occupied Palestine. The WZO screamed that Begin harms Jewish prospects for ever-diminishing state. Perhaps. Begin, however, didn’t attempt to calculate a few moves in advance. He was solving the immediate problem.

When accused of violating his electoral promises of tough response to Palestinian terrorism, Ariel Sharon remarked that what is seen from here (prime-minister’s office) isn’t seen from there (the streets). How true. Prime minister’s horizon is much wider than of any individual Jew. Prime minister considers many things, and the immediate security of rank-and-file Jews is only one consideration among others. If a prime minister narrow-mindedly concentrates on Jewish interests, other members of the Security Cabinet would remind him of diplomatic, economic, humanitarian and whatever other consequences. Even if Olmert decides on bombing Iran tonight, the Labor side of the Security Cabinet would block his move.

Israeli politicians became too sophisticated to simply destroy Iranian nuclear capabilities. And anyway, there are 53 Pakistani nuclear bombs.

Iranian nuclear explosion in New York would end some lives, but reestablish something more important: a sense of civil responsibility. A nation that votes for phonies deserves to be stricken back into the world of reality. Witness the new sanctions against Iran. The Security Council intends to ban the Iranian arms exports and freeze foreign assets of some key figures in the Iranian nuclear program. But Iran doesn't export arms in any substantial quantity. Sanctions won't stop illegal arms shipments to Hezbollah and the like outfits. Assets freeze is a similar sham: during more than a year of the deliberations, the accounts in question are long cleared by their owners. In the age of offshore corporations, illegal money transactions present no problem. The sanctions are no less silly than the European Trio's offer of building a uranium enrichment facility in Iran on the condition of supervising its operation – until one day Iran kicks the observers out.

Bogged down in senseless nation-building campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US tries to share the responsibility for Iran with countries like France, Russia, and China – a Western supporter of Khomeini, a sliver of the communist empire which has Muslims as the only customers for arms and nuclear technologies, and the anti-Western cynical regime with no reason to fear the Iranian nukes. After the failure in Vietnam, engraved in the world memory, and the Iraqi fiasco, America could reestablish credibility of its power with a single act of nuking the Iranian nuclear facilities. For all its bragging, Iran has nothing to retaliate with. Russia would shut down and admire. Europe would scream bloody murder, as usual. The planet would be a bit safer. Still better, Israel could pull the operation herself, destroy the mobile forces of the Iranian army with preemptive strike, re-acquire a position of regional hegemon shattered in 1973 and subsequent inept negotiations, and obtain enough international respect to shelve the issue of Palestinian state.

If smart, Iran would nuke Brooklyn rather than Manhattan to prove the Americans that the problem is about the Jews. Combined with a threat of more nuclear strikes at the US mainland in case of retaliatory invasion, that tactics might not be suicidal for Iran but establish it as Muslim hegemon.

In the meanwhile, Russia supplies Iran with TOR-1M missiles to defend its nuclear facilities.

Unnoticed by Western analysts, Iran became a drastically different country. Khomeini led a closed totalitarian state. At the end, population hated him enough that still in 2001 Iranians went to the streets to support America after 9/11. Ahmadinejad created a popular regime. Iranians are relaxed, travel abroad – even Iranian Jews travel to Israel without fear of being accused of spying. No resentment against the rulers, like in Arab countries. Iranians are devilishly smart. They won’t start the war, but would provide a nuclear shield for Hezbollah. Iran seeks to reestablish itself as Muslim hegemon, and patiently creates Shiite axis. Iran is unconcerned about Israel; anti-Zionism is only PR move, a flag to rally other Muslims which otherwise resent Persian dominance. Iran might not be a bad choice; Israel is better off dealing with civilized Iran than with the Arabs of semi-nomadic mentality. The West could help Iran to ascend in Muslim world, starting with joint efforts on pacifying Iraq.

Russia announced interesting news, that it suspends all work on the Iranian reactor because of payment delinquency. The amounts involved are not major. It might be that Iran and Russia found a face-saving way to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

How could Iran retaliate for destruction of its nuclear facilities? It arms anti-Israeli forces in Lebanon and Palestine, anyway, and extends worthless protection to Syria. If Iran launches Zelzal-2 from Lebanon against Tel Aviv, Israel would again flatten Beirut; the missiles launched from Iran core are easy to intercept. At any rate, damage to Israel from the Iranian reprisals would be less than the danger posed by the Shiite nuclear weapons. In the best-case scenario, Iran will react hysterically with the campaign of international terrorism and prompt Western invasion.
For all the ensuing rhetoric, other Muslims will be happy to lose a nuclear neighbor. Failure to destroy Iranian nuclear program would prompt other Muslim regimes to acquire nuclear weapons to counterbalance Iran. Nuclear Iran means nuclear Middle East, especially after the West demonstrates its impotence in imposing the sanctions. A sight of the Muslims nuking each other out would be heart-warming if not for the fallout effect on Israel and deliveries of loose nuclear bombs to America, Spain, and Israel.
Cowards and leftists recall the reported spiraling of Iraqi nuclear program after Israel bombed Osiraq. That is hardly an option for Iran which already strained its resources in the extensive nuclear program. Iraq was years from the bomb, Iran - months.
Destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities could not make the situation worse for Israel. The Natanz site is too covered and dispersed for conventional bombing with limited number of aircraft. It should be attacked with nuclear weapons in order to contaminate the territory and equipment above the tolerable levels.