Attacking Iran is not only about stopping its nuclear program, but preventing nuclearization of other rogue regimes who are now waiting to see the outcome of international quarrel with Iran.

Destroy Iranian oil refineries, bomb pipelines, stop gasoline deliveries. Iranian economy strained to the extreme. Security build-up for Sistan, Baluchistan, and Kurdistan cost Iran a lot of money. Iran had to scrap long-term economic programs.

Why not hit Ahmadinejad’s plane on his trip to Belarus or similar destination? General Doolittle similarly objected to bombing emperor’s house during the war with Japan.

Iran is not the biggest nuclear threat. The biggest is Pakistan. It supports nuclear development programs in many Muslim countries. Muslim radicals heavily influence Pakistan policies and are strong in its military, especially due to the close security-military-religious cooperation in Kashmir insurgency. Pakistan enjoys Saudi Arabian political and financial backing. Pakistan is basically a front for Saudi Arabia nuclear proliferation activities.

Other Muslim countries are also dangerous. Islamists purchased nuclear waste in Kazakhstan and Albania; some got caught, but probably many other shipments went through. It is unknown whether Libya ended its nuclear program or transferred it to a safer location. Algeria and Morocco have nuclear programs. Jordan intends to build a nuclear reactor under Israeli nose, and with the fall of Jordanian monarchy Palestinians will get a lot of radioactive material for dirty bombs. Egypt can develop nuclear weapons in the matter of years, and Saudi Arabia most likely stocks some of the Pakistani nuclear bombs; Saudi also received top-edge aircraft from the US capable of delivering nuclear bombs into Israel.

Some naïve souls harbored the dream of North Korea abandoning its nuclear program in return for $300 million foreign aid. The unveiled North Korean nuclear cooperation with Syria dispelled such nonsense. Nuclear weapons are too profitable in strategic and financial terms to part with them. The North Korean ship which delivered nuclear cargo to Syria made two conspicuous stops in Egypt and Lebanon; North Korea cooperates with those countries, too. A ballistic missile strike against North Korean nuclear facilities is the only proper response to its nuclear proliferation efforts. Israel can safely launch the missiles when no hostile satellite watches the area.

Just about every Muslim country, from dangerously large to irrelevantly small, is pursuing some sort of nuclear program, ostensibly peaceful. There are no peaceful nukes. Any nuclear reactor can be used to harvest weapon-grade uranium, and most reactors produce plutonium. These reactors are traditionally thought of as peaceful because harvesting enriched fissile material requires stopping them for weeks or even months, leaving electric power supply short. Muslim regimes, however, can live with power shortages. The Soviet Union built its peaceful reactors with an eye to using them as a backup source of plutonium. Peaceful nuclear proliferation will give Muslim regimes easy access to radiological weapons.

Whatever Israel does to stop nuclear proliferation, the nukes will proliferate. Muslim regimes will be happy to nuke Israel. The only policy that can perhaps prevent that scenario is the announced retaliation against all major Muslim targets: Mecca and Medina, Cairo, Damascus, Tehran, Islamabad, and so on. There are of course Christian countries, notably Russia, which would be equally happy to fry the Jews in nuclear mushroom; they deserve a similar response. When Tel Aviv is annihilated, Israel should not seek saving Haifa but avenging Tel Aviv.

Israel must deal a crushing blow to Islam. Just like the destruction of Jerusalem in 135 signaled a change of Judaism from a state-oriented into purely spiritual religion, so the nuclear destruction of Mecca and Medina with the concomitant radiological contamination will render the concept of jihad senseless. The idea of ripping off the heart of Islam is ambitious but doable and feasible.

Invincibility of Israeli army is over-touted. Training in the hi-tech branches is superb, but overall planning and logistics are awful, especially in the infantry. From the earliest days of the 1948 war into the muddle of the 1973 war and until the strategic defeat of Lebanon-2006, IDF's operational planning was terrible. That is only expected given the Jewish indecisiveness, opinionated mentality, and politicking. Sharon's thrust behind the Suez was improvised; Lebanon war was finished by non-feasible massing of firepower. Lack of the depth of defense after the giveaway of Sinai, Judea, and Samaria makes Israeli trademark vacillation suicidal, but Israeli military culture offers no alternative for the better. The army becomes worse: less ideologically charged, driven apart by opposite political views, corrupt, inefficient. Arab armies become better day-by-day. Their modern weapons and better training aside, they possess the most significant wartime advantage - of coherent leadership. They also possess the human and territorial mass.

Jews are smarter and braver than the Arabs. In short limited war, we would defeat the Muslim enemy. In a longer or total war, Israel stands no chance. There is no alternative to the first use of nuclear weapons.

Russia wants nuclear proliferation: mild enough to preserve Russian nuclear dominance, but sufficient to upset the US security. Chinese, Indian, North Korean, and Iranian nuclear weapons are Russian peripheral wars against America. Instead of financing the wars, Russia tacitly approves of proliferators in the Security Council. Cheap and efficient. Russia accepts to have some of its nuclear material stolen in order to keep heat under the US, but resists large-scale pillaging which would establish Russia as failed state unable to control its nuclear arsenal and could even provoke the talks of American intervention.

The news of Georgian police catching a smuggler of weapons-grade uranium are suspicious. The smuggler was caught and sentenced months ago, but no information was leaked to the public. That's incompatible with very talkative nature of Georgians. Local law does not provide for closed trials, and smuggler would have an attorney who would surely talk. Uranium is usually easy to trace to a particular production facility; Georgians claim they cannot. The embattled Georgians possibly framed the hostile Russia. Nevertheless, Russian nuclear stocks are leaking. Security services of various countries intercepted stolen weapons-grade uranium on occasion. While many labs could enrich small quantities of uranium to over 90%, the black market uranium and plutonium is likely Russian. Most of the intercepted sales involved small quantities, but about 3kgs of uranium were caught in 1994. Hardly all sales were stopped, many certainly went through. It takes only 16kgs of uranium or 5kgs of plutonium to build a high-end 15kt nuclear bomb. Russian, Ukrainian, and Pakistani physicists and mathematicians could design sophisticated bomb for nuclear aspirants. And so Zawahiri's threat of reprisal far worse than anything the Americans have seen sounds credible.

What does the West expect from negotiations with Iran and North Korea about their nuclear programs? Does anyone seriously believe North Korea will surrender all its fissile material and honestly refrain from the clandestine transfer of nuclear technology? Does anyone expect Iran to abandon its ambitions of Middle East dominance which cannot be realized without nuclear capability?

China is somewhat active about the North Korean nuclear program which threatens Chinese regional hegemony. Russia and China lack truly global interests and do not feel threatened by the Iranian nuclear development. Russia and China, pushed out of the major Muslim markets, bet their Middle East influence on Iran. Russia tried that policy in Iraq shortly before the US invaded. The Russians supplied Iraq with weapons and protected it in the UN. In return, they entered the Iraqi political focus and received oil concessions.

The Chinese excuses for not acting against Iran are that its nuclear program is ostensibly peaceful and that Iran is a Non-Proliferation Treaty member. No reasonable country would announce that it is developing nuclear weapons illegally; peaceful intentions are the standard ruse. NPT membership is irrelevant: non-members have developed nuclear weapons, and members like China have transferred nuclear technology to others.

The Russian position on Iran is even emptier: the Russians declared it wrong to call Iran to negations on one hand and to impose sanctions on the other. How about the stick and carrot doctrine? Hadn’t the similar approach just been applied to North Korea? Didn’t the Russians destroy Chechnya before negotiating with it?

Why would Russia and China oppose sanctions against Iran? They won’t oppose any against, say, Djibouti. Their protection of Iran is mercenary, and the West should not bow down to it.

A civilization that detonates nuclear bombs that throw mushroom clouds 40 miles into the air has gone mad.

Too many states have or can develop the bomb rapidly. Proliferation is easy, aided by the ostrich attitude: trusting Libya to dismantle its nuclear program, imagining trade measures could reverse the Iranian or North Korean programs, ignoring the Pakistani nuclear arsenal and unaccounted for Soviet nuclear weapons.

Societies exist in flux and only dynamically stable. The stability of chaotic systems depends on all impacts being statistically minor. The introduction of high-energy objects destabilizes chaos. Civilization withstands large-scale wars with moderately destructive weapons. Such weapons are applied gradually, and expectations, defenses, and responses are adjusted. Nuclear weapons cause large damage immediately and potentially destabilize social systems beyond their ability to adjust.

Huge countries like the US could survive a couple of nuclear explosions. One or two explosions would cement the nation: people would look to the government for aid and still believe the army protects them. Many explosions—like in the Soviet attack scenario—would still leave large parts of the country intact and habitable but destroy the framework of the state. People submit to states mostly for security, and nuclear attacks discredit a state in its citizens’ eyes. Worse, the citizens see that the state’s policies caused the attack. America will survive repetitive nuclear attacks as territory, though not as a state. The attacks need not be massive, only repetitive. Half a dozen North Korean bombs delivered one per month in containers to various US destinations and detonated in Customs would bring the state down no less than a massive Soviet attack. Similarly, several nuclear bombs could solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem amicably for other Muslims.

Beside a few stolen bombs, Russian arsenals will degrade peacefully in relative safety. North Korea won’t attack Japan or China with nuclear warheads. Pakistan has barely enough bombs to deter India. Iran only has regional ambitions. The European powers would shrink from nuking each other. Nuclear weapons will be employed in the near future only as terrorist devices and won’t spell the end of civilization, except perhaps the Jewish civilization recklessly concentrated in Israel.

The US is a good empire. Bad empires barely outlive their creators. Empires, like states, depend on more or less extorted consent and have to be nice. Rome was culturally and politically attractive to its protectorates, and so is the US. It would be a pity if the Americans, like the Romans, succumbed to barbarians.

The Asian nuclear arms race is good. If Asians used nuclear weapons in their wars, Europe and the US will get used to reports of nuclear attacks, and nuclear explosions in America won’t destabilize society very much.

Have no fear: a nuclear blast will happen. The destruction won’t be great: a Hiroshima-size bomb kills effectively only in about a 1,500ft radius, even less if exploded at ground level. Minimize the damage by promoting low-rise reinforced concrete buildings and dispersing the population and offices into suburban areas. Tel Aviv, Haifa, Ashdod, New York, and Washington (also Las Vegas if the terrorists with nuclear weapons are fundamentalist) are likely targets, and people must be suicidal to live there.

The 9/11 attacks left the US establishment wondering about a proper response. Contingency plans should be made for nuclear terrorism as for any other military scenario. Make clear that the US will not search futilely for the particular perpetrators but will hold proliferators collectively responsible. The West should destroy proliferators’ major nuclear facilities to make the contingency threat credible.

Al Qaeda’s warning to Muslims to leave the United States could prove true. Muslim guerillas have no record of bluffing. In the Arab mentality, private honesty does not exist, but the public image must be maintained at any cost. Arab public pronouncements are often truthful, though evasive.

The warning immediately followed the North Korean nuclear test. The Korean communists acted unreasonably and predictably angered China, their main sponsor. North Korea could ask the world community for endless aid in return for abandoning the nuclear test; it didn’t—perhaps because it has a better offer.

The North Koreans exploded an unusually small bomb, too small to build up their military image. The test could be intended for a customer.

Would North Korea risk selling nuclear weapons to terrorists? After the attack, the seller would be obvious. North Korea’s rulers need cash and don’t care about retribution against their people. Quite possibly, North Korea undertook to sell nuclear weapons in exchange for A.Q. Khan’s assistance in their nuclear program. Khan, ousted from the Pakistani nuclear conglomerate under US pressure, definitely wants revenge.

Al Qaeda first warned of massive attacks about the same time North Korea produced its first enriched uranium or plutonium. Bin Laden offered himself as spiritual guide to convert the Americans to Islam. He asked the US to withdraw from Muslim territories. Later, he offered a truce. Finally, he told his fellow Muslims to flee. Bin Laden has exonerated himself before a major attack.

Given a chance of nuclear attack against the US, what is to be done? Analysts are probably checking C-130 plane flights from Pakistan to North Korea in recent days. The customers took a plane. The major thing, however, is a counter-threat.

The United States must issue an ultimatum: in case of nuclear attack, it won’t seek out the perpetrators but inflict reciprocal damage. Mecca is America’s best defense and the dream hostage. Pass a law or at least issue an executive order than the US will annihilate Mecca after any terrorist nuclear attack on American soil. Including a couple other cities, like Hyderabad and Teheran, would be useful but not essential. Mecca is critical for both shiites and sunnis, Saudis and Pakistanis. Muslim terrorists could not afford to be blamed for annihilation of Mecca.

The Israeli army was lean, mobile, and ingenuous. US military aid created a behemoth addicted to new, untested, and tremendously expensive weapons. They often do not work as advertised, become obsolete before seeing battle, and are not cost-effective. An arms race bankrupted the Soviets, and Israel cannot win one, either. Israel can do away with American military supplies and return to its trademark army: technically only moderately advanced but highly trained, motivated, smart, and ready to accept losses. Such a turnaround runs against the vested interests of both the American and Israeli military bureaucracies and military-industrial complexes and would be very difficult. Divestment from the US is the best way to achieve military reform in Israel.

Mobile, tactically superior armies have let empires prevail against numerically larger enemies. The current situation, however, is different. Imperial forces have generally fought other armies; the enemy population was little involved. Conscription changed that. Israel faces virtually unlimited Muslim enemy. Egypt can mass ten million people at the Suez and march them through the Sinai into Tel Aviv. Israel couldn’t kill a significant part of such a crowd. Egypt does not even need an army for that matter: millions of unarmed Egyptians could as well push the Jews into the sea. Implausible? Iran employed exactly such tactics against Iraq: Iran marched its teenagers through Iraqi minefields to clear the mines. Or think of unorthodox measures: how about Egypt sending a five-million-strong army into the Sinai and surrendering it, then rejecting a ceasefire? Israel won’t be able to carry on a war with five million POWs on her hands. Israel cannot always win by mobile warfare.

The doctrine of the nuclear first strike has several advantages and hardly any downside. Relying on nuclear weapons, Israel could substantially dismantle her army. The economic advantages of demilitarization are immense. The nuclear deterrent will be credible if Israel lacks other weapons. An Israeli nuclear response doctrine would practically exclude war with a regular Muslim army. None would risk the retaliation, especially if Israel announces retaliation targets like Mecca beforehand. Israel can also lay collective responsibility on the Muslims countries and promise nuclear retaliation against any or all of them, not only the attacker. Let them police each other.

Nuclear retaliation for terrorist acts is not always reasonable, though an Israeli nuclear threat against Iran would have prevented her war with Hezbollah. We don’t need a huge army to fight terrorists. Israel can retaliate with nuclear weapons against any country that attacks her with a regular army and retain small mobile forces for antiterrorist operations.

Other countries could introduce sanctions against Israel if she counters aggression with nuclear weapons. Such an outcome is extremely unlikely: Muslims won’t attack if they know Israel has only nuclear weapons. In the almost impossible scenario that a Muslim attacks a nuclear-only Israel and Israel retaliates, the West would see that Israel behaved reasonably: with no major forces to counter the aggression, she used her only—nuclear—option to survive. The sanctions, if any, would be half-hearted, temporary, and inefficient. Whatever economic damage sanctions would inflict on Israel, she will save much more by dismantling the army.

The worst sanctions imaginable would last, say, ten years and cost Israel all her exports. That would reduce the GDP by 30% at most, likely much less because of gray exports, import substitution, and reorienting some exports for internal consumption. Israel now wastes about that much on the army. In other words, we are wasting approximately what the worst sanctions might cost us. Given the infinitesimally small probability of the Muslims starting a war with a nuclear-only Israel, the effect of the compound tax rate (save money now, suffer sanctions later) and the relatively short term of the sanctions, a nuclear response doctrine is economically feasible for Israel.

The West might impose sanctions on Israel if she announced a nuclear retaliation policy before she actually used the weapons. Such sanctions would be very weak: the West hesitates to apply them even to illegal nuclear proliferators. Weak liberal democracies hesitate to counter anything but immediate threats. Strong sanctions in response to a mere policy are unlikely. If anything, the West would try to stave off nuclear confrontation by bribing Israel, offering free conventional weapons, and pressuring Muslims not to provoke Israel. Still another option is to announce the policy implicitly. Israel does not formally acknowledge even owning nuclear weapons. She could dismantle the army and leak the information about a nuclear response doctrine. Israel suffered no sanctions when she developed a nuclear bomb.

Israel is a tiny country surrounded by a sea of hostile Muslims. They have expelled Christians from the Middle East often before, even though they took decades or sometimes centuries to do it. Israel cannot survive with regular defense arrangements. The Muslims are ready to sacrifice their armies at Israel’s borders. They have failed several times but will try again and again. Their downside is limited: an army, perhaps a few cities, destroyed. Israel’s only chance to shed the Muslims is to increase the downside of aggression. Israel has enough nuclear bombs to wipe the Muslim Middle East out. The Muslims will not attack Israel if they know that a wholesale attack on Israel spells the end of their world. Muslims submit to the strong and would acquiesce to a strong Israel but never to a weak Israel that limits retaliation.

Israelis would feel much safer under a firm nuclear umbrella. Conscription will be short with few or probably no mobilizations. The tax burden will decrease. The economic distortions caused by a huge army will disappear. Her Muslim neighbors will respect a strong and dangerously mad Israel. A nice country it will be.

Want a nuke? Go build one. The low-IQ president could not have made his message clearer.

India, not a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, builds nuclear weapons, and the United States humbly asks to inspect her civil nuclear facilities. What about the military facilities, the most important thing? Who cares?

And the message to Iran is: go on, guys. What an NPT outlaw can do, surely NPT signatories can do.

Sanctions would not have worked? Who tried them? Who stopped selling India weapons? Who firmly isolated the nuclear aspirant with an iron curtain? It takes Sir Winston’s guts to oppose evil. It evidently doesn’t take any brains to stick your head in the sand. Push it a little deeper, the mushroom looms.