Israel, alone among all the civilized nations in really taking Iran as seriously as it deserves, has just ordered two more nuclear-capable Dolphin submarines from the Germans.

I do not except even the United States. I believe that George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld truly take Iran as seriously as they ought; but they're not the whole government or even the whole of the Executive. In particular, Congress does not really grasp the enormity of the threat from Iran. And since we are not a dictatorship, the president cannot simply decree an appropriate response.

But Israel lies under such immediate and obvious existential threat, that there is likely not a single member of the Israeli cabinet who does not feel Persian fear in the pit of his stomach. They may disagree over what to do, but that is for the same reason that different bomb-squad members may disagree over which wire to cut: everybody understands how dangerous a bomb is, but nobody wants to snip the wrong wire.

However, there are some things everyone in Israel can agree upon; and one of those is that they desperately need a "second strike" capability. To the extent that the Iranians have any rational survival instinct left, if they believe they would be wiped out by Israeli retaliation, they might think a second time about launching a first nuclear strike, should they manage to obtain (by cyclotron or A.Q. Khan) nuclear weapons.

[Read on.]

Of course the Israelis wouldn't need their own second-strike capability if George Bush would do what he should have done months ago and promise that the day a nuke goes off in Israel the U.S. will incinerate the capitols of every Islamic nation in the Mideast.

Contributed by Bill Faith on August 25, 2006 at 08:27 PM in Bill Faith, Iran, Islamism Delenda Est, Israel | Permalink

Comments

Posted by: Rurik

Sorry, but the whole issue is moot. Dolphin Class submarines are attack submarines, not missile launchers. They might be capable of firing a nuclear torpedo, but nobody's going to torpedo Teheran. Nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles are also very unlikely to be within the Dolphin's capabilities - as if Israel had such weapons anyway.
The idea of being able to buy nuclear missile launch submarines from non-nuclear Germany should have bee the second tip off. The first was - Don't we know any better than to trust a story from AP?

Posted by: Rurik | Aug 27, 2006 11:35:58 AM

Posted by: Rurik

I see that dafydd has picked up on this point with an update to hsi Big Lizards post.
Whether the Israelis have, or are considering acquiring any of those Turbo Popeye nuke-capable cruise missiles is unclear but relevant. So is the question of their practical range, which is unknown to me. However, maintaining a second strike capability is already solvable by dispersing Israeli missiles and their air assets. Any plausible threat for the intermediate future is unliely to be able to take out all the current resources at once.
These submarines are far more relevant in the context of sea control and interdiction. Remembre the incident a few years back with the Karina-A intercepted carrying SCUDs to the PLO or God knows for sure whom? And all the political turmoil which ensued before the missiles were sent back to Yemen? Wouldn't it have been so much cleaner if some torpedoes from out of nowhere had blown the ship out of the water with no provable fingerprints, leaving everyone to wonder if it was an attack or an on-board accident? Israel is going to have a lot more challenges with seaborne infiltration/interdiction in the future. The Dolphin Class boats will be much more useful there.
What I find particularly disheartening is AP News quotes from Paul Beaver. Beaver,who used to be (and maybe still is) with Jane's as a defense analyst, should have known better. That is not up to his usual quality of analysis. But ever since Jane's was swallowed up by the Thomsen Group, based in France, their technical expertise has been on the skids in favor of "geopolitical punditry" (meaning euroshit).

Posted by: Rurik | Aug 27, 2006 7:37:11 PM

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