Iranian nuke vs. Israeli nuke: Which is the problem and which is the solution?

Most of mankind's experience with nuclear weapons has been with nations pointing them at one another. My nuke deters you from using your nuke and vice versa. I don't have a degree in strategic thermonuclear war but I don't think I need one to suggest that most of the nuclear weapons being deployed today are themselves pointed at other nuclear weapons. To find an example of a nation that doesn't aim their nukes at other nukes you would have to go to Israel. Israeli nukes appear to know no other nuke as a target, being deployed instead to deter conventional assault by one or more of any number of enemies it has in the region. Given the disparities in population, land area and wealth (oil) between Israel and its enemies, it isn't very difficult to see why Israel would want to have these kinds of weapons.

But at the same time it isn't difficult to see how such a unilateral deployment of nuclear weapons goes well beyond providing deterrence, it constitutes a threat to the other side greater than the one it was designed to meet; that it doesn't do anything to address an imbalance in power between Israel and its neighbors, indeed, it only makes the problem worse.

What I can't help thinking is that if Israel's emergence as a regional power were balanced by similar progress by one of its neighbors we'd be in a much better position today in moving towards peace in the region.

It's hard to see how Israel would have been able to justify the risk of establishing more and more settlements, deeper and deeper into Palestinian territory, if there was a nation that was simultaneously sympathetic to the Palestinians' plight and in possession of nuclear weapons.

And if the same stalemate that ultimately gave way to a better relationship between the U.S. and Russia only succeeded at putting an end to the cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, it would be the beginning of hope for that part of the world. There are bitter disagreements that go beyond the occupied territories, but none of these are given the kind of fuel the atrocity-of-the-day in the occupied territories provides. These other disagreements eventually fade from memory. But the occupation, it keeps going. It keeps the wounds fresh. And every day it continues we are given another day we have to wait before we can ever hope it will stop.

Israel's advocates want to ascribe all criticism of the state as anti-Semitism, but really, I think it has more to do with the fact that there seems to be no end-game that causes so much concern. Congratulations, you guys have succeeded in pissing off all of Islam... and in making them pissed off at us too! Now what? Kill more Palestinians? Take more land away from them? Destroy more lives?

Does anybody seriously believe that this is going to solve anything? More

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