Comment & Debate
“Analysts: Iran’s military poses little threat”. USA Today. March 6, 2007 – While giving the official state sermon at Tehran University on December 14, 2001, for example, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, current chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, argued that it might not be far-fetched to envision use of nuclear weapons against the Jewish state. Amid chants of ‘Death to Israel,’ he declared,
The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything…It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality.’
Meir Dagan, director of Israel’s external intelligence agency told a parliamentary committee in Israel that a nuclear Iran poses an “existential threat” to Israel, according to the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.[1]
KT McFarland. “The Doomsday Scenario – A Nuclear Iran?”. Accuracy in Media. July 10, 2008 – Why does a nuclear Iran pose such a unique threat? After all, we already have countries like Pakistan and North Korea in the ‘nuclear club’ and while we may not like it, we don’t think of it as catastrophic.
First, Iran has repeatedly declared its intention to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Nuclear weapons turn that from mere braggadocio to a tangible capability.
Joshua Muravchik. “Opposing View: Iranian Bomb ‘Intolerable'”. USA Today. November 20, 2007 – Iran also might launch a nuclear missile at Israel, which Ahmadinejad wants “wiped off the map.” Israel could strike back, but so what? Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani boasted “the use of an atomic bomb against Israel would totally destroy Israel, while (the same) against the Islamic world would only cause damage.” And he’s the “moderate” alternative to Ahmadinejad.