Special to Arutz Sheva “It must not be forgotten that it is perhaps more dangerous for a nation to allow itself to be conquered intellectually than by arms .” Guillaume Apollinaire, The New Spirit and the Poets (1917) More than anything else, Israel’s power in world politics rests on intellectual supremacy. Such supremacy must be maintained at tangible policy-making levels. Accordingly, certain strategic elements of this advantage should be rendered more conspicuous. Until now, prima facie, it is only at tactical or operational levels that Jerusalem’s analytic superiority has been unambiguous. There are many pertinent details. Even with a continued nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, Jerusalem will need to optimize military advantage at multiple strategic levels. On urgent matters concerning a protracted or enlarged war with Iran, Israel will have to clarify that its military assets are purposeful at all levels of destructiveness. As a practical matter, this includes an evident capacity to achieve “escalation dominance” in extremis, during any expanding crisis. For the moment, the most plausible paths to an unmanageable Israel-Iran war (a war in which Iran would remain non-nuclear) would involve escalations against Tehran’s jihadist proxies. During such unprecedented war, even a not-yet-nuclear Iran could elicit “limited” Israeli nuclear responses. Though such responses could be made consistent with authoritative international law,[1]their cumulative effects on friend and foe alike could be destabilizing. Notably worrisome escalation dangers would lie in Iranian use of radiation-dispersal weapons and/or Iranian conventional attack on Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. In a presumptively worst-case scenario, an already-nuclear North Korea would engage Israeli military forces on behalf of Iran. In such an under-examined but increasingly credible scenario, North Korea would operate as an “equalizing” state surrogate for Iran. On this point there is a relevant historical footnote. North Korea engaged militarily with Israeli forces in the past, most visibly during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Last year, on October 31 2024, Pyongyang successfully completed missile tests demonstrating ICBM capacities against the United States. Israel, at least for targeting comparisons, is less than half the size of Lake Michigan. For Jerusalem, there are immediately important specifics to identify and monitor. By definition, all conceivable scenarios would be unprecedented or sui generis. This means, among other things, that related and derivative predictions could never express anything more convincing than “quasi-scientific” exercises. In formal logic, assessments of probability must always stem from a determinable frequency of past events. There has never been a pertinent past event. There has never been a genuine nuclear war. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not parts of such a war. They represented solitary atomic attacks within a protracted conventional war. Even if Iran were to remain pre-nuclear, Jerusalem could sometime calculate that it would be gainful to cross the nuclear combat “firebreak.” This concerns circumstances wherein any non-introduction of Israeli nuclear weapons could allow Iran to gain an upper hand during crisis bargaining. During existential crisis, Israel could decide to “go nuclear” at intentionally limited levels to maintain “escalation dominance.” These are all weighty analytic matters. They are not in any fashion matters of “common sense.” In such complex matters, common sense is a beguiling enemy of science and logic. Looking ahead, whether in Israel or the United States, arcane matters of nuclear peace and nuclear war ought never be left to politicians, generals or pundits. For Israel, nuclear weapons and deterrence remain essential to national survival. Israel’s traditional policy of deliberate nuclear ambiguity or “bomb in the basement” goes back to early days of the state. During the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, understood the need for a dramatic "equalizer" vis-a-vis larger and more populous regional enemies. For “BG,” those original enemies were Arab states, primarily Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Today, in yet another telling irony, some of these Sunni states share Israel’s apprehensions of Iran and could sometime “sign on” as a surreptitious Israeli ally. What next for Jerusalem? Still facing an intransigent and potentially nuclear Iran, Israel needs to update and refine its posture of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.” The key objective of such urgently-needed changes would be credible nuclear deterrence, a goal requiring prompt policy shifts to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Though markedly counter-intuitive, Iran will need to be convinced that Israel’s nuclear arms are not too destructive for operational military use. There will be variously perplexing nuances. For Israel to fashion reason-based nuclear policies, Iran’s leaders should generally be considered “rational.” But it is also conceivable that Iran would sometime act irrationally, perhaps in alliance with other more-or-less rational states like North Korea or kindred jihadi terror groups. In the case of North Korea, an actual and direct war against Israel would be much more challenging than any expanding conflict with Iran per se. Aside from North Korea, unless Jerusalem were to consider Pakistan an authentic enemy, Israel currently has no nuclear state enemies as such. Still, as an unstable Islamic state, Pakistan is subject to coup d'état by assorted jihadi elements and is also closely aligned with Saudi Arabia and Iran. At some still-indeterminable point, the Sunni Saudi kingdom could decide to “go nuclear,” not because of Israel, but in consequence of reasonable fears concerning Shiite Iran’s nuclear progress. This significant decision could be reinforced by parallel or coinciding nuclear decisions in Egypt and/or non-Arab Turkey. Israel needs less faith in “common sense.” It needs more faith in disciplined and refined strategic reasoning. Such reasoning will have to be logic-based and continuously dialectical. In principle, at least, its creators should approach J. Robert Oppenheimer or Yuval Ne’eman intellectual status. A tall order, to be sure, but compelling nonetheless. For Israeli nuclear deterrence to work longer-term, Iran will need to be told more rather than less about “the Zionist enemy’s” nuclear targeting doctrine and the invulnerability and penetration-capability of Israel’s nuclear forces. In concert with such major changes, Jerusalem will have to substantially clarify elements of its still-opaque “Samson Option.” The point of any such clarifications would not be to “die with the Philistines” (per the biblical Book of Judges), but to enhance certain “high destruction” options along its strategic deterrence continuum. Though the only purposeful rationale of Israel’s nuclear weapons could be viable deterrence at widely variable levels of military destructiveness, there will inevitably remain circumstances under which Israel’s nuclear deterrent could fail. How might such prospectively intolerable circumstances arise? It’s not a hypothetical question. A comprehensive answer could be extrapolated from four basic conflict scenarios or narratives. These narratives would result as a “by-product” of Israel’s expanding war with Iranian jihadist proxies or of a sustained direct belligerency between Israel and Iran. All of these narratives could be impacted, modified or changed by pro-Iranian surrogate interventions of Russia and/or North Korea. By definition, such game-changing interventions would remove Israel’s present advantages regarding “escalation dominance” and render more plausible the specter of Iranian-jihadist victory. Because such narratives would be without precedent, it will be impossible for Jerusalem to make any science-based judgments of probability. Here, intellectual supremacy would remain the font of all durable Israeli power, strategic and tactical, but not represent any absolute assurance of security and survival. In these scenarios, only utter unpredictability would be predictable. (1) Nuclear Retaliation If Iran were to launch a massive conventional attack against Israel, Jerusalem could ultimately escalate to a limited nuclear retaliation. If Iranian first-strikes were to involve chemical or biological weapons, electromagnetic weapons (EMP) or radiation-dispersal weapons, Israel could immediately or incrementally launch a calibrated nuclear reprisal. This decision would depend, in large measure, on Jerusalem's expectations concerning follow-on Iranian aggression and its estimations of comparative damage-limitation. A nuclear retaliation by Israel could be ruled out only in circumstances where Iranian aggressions were conventional and “hard-target” oriented; that is, aimed toward Israeli weapons and military infrastructures and not involve Israel’s civilian populations. Nonetheless, there are foreseeably residual circumstances wherein Israel could judge a limited nuclear weapons use to be rational, lawful and cost-effective. (2) Nuclear Counter Retaliation If Israel should feel compelled to preempt Iranian aggression with conventional weapons, that enemy state’s response would largely determine Israel’s escalatory moves. If this response were in any way nuclear, including “only” radiological weapons, Israel would likely turn to certain correlative forms of nuclear counter-retaliation. If this enemy retaliation were to involve other non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction or mass disruption (e.g., EMP weapons), Israel could still feel compelled to take enhanced escalatory initiatives. This vital decision would depend on Jerusalem's considered judgments of Iranian intent and its corollary calculations of damage-limitation. If the Iranian response to Israel's preemption were limited to hard-target conventional strikes, it is unlikely that Israel’s decision-makers would move toward nuclear counter-retaliations. If, however, the Iranian conventional retaliation was "all-out" and directed in whole or in part toward Israeli civilian populations, an Israeli nuclear counter-retaliation could not be excluded ipso facto. Such counter-retaliation could be ruled out decisively only if Iran’s conventional retaliation were presumptively proportionate to Israel's preemption; confined to Israeli military targets; circumscribed by codified legal limits of “proportionality” and "military necessity" and accompanied by variously persuasive assurances of non-escalatory intent. (3) Nuclear Preemption It is highly unlikely (perhaps inconceivable) that Israel would ever decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike against Iran. Though circumstances could arise wherein such a strike would appear rational in strategy and permissible in law, it is implausible that Israel would allow itself to reach such “end-of-the-line” circumstances. In principle, at least, an Israeli nuclear preemption could be expected only where Iran had (a) acquired authentic (chain-reaction) nuclear and/or other weapons of mass destruction; (b) clarified that its intentions paralleled its capabilities; and (c) was believed ready to begin a "countdown to launch.” Also incentivizing would be the belief by Jerusalem that exclusively conventional preemptions could no longer be consistent with preservation of the Jewish State. (4) Nuclear War Fighting If nuclear weapons should ever be introduced into a conflict between Israel and Iran, some form of nuclear war fighting would ensue. This would hold true so long as: (a) Iranian first-strikes would not destroy Israel's second-strike nuclear capability; (b) Iranian retaliations for an Israeli conventional preemption would not destroy Israel’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability; (c) Israeli preemptive strikes involving nuclear weapons would not destroy Iran’s second-strike nuclear capabilities; and (d) Israeli retaliation for conventional first-strikes would not destroy Iran’s nuclear counter-retaliatory capability. For the time being, at least, any Iranian nuclear capacity sans Russian or North Korean surrogate state backup would be limited to radiation dispersal weapons and/or conventional rocket attacks against Dimona. Jerusalem’s overriding security focus should remain fixed on Iranian capabilities and intentions, but ought also to include variously coinciding intersections with state and sub-state surrogates. In the final analysis, the Iran/jihadi threat to Israel is not “just” an isolable terror threat, tactical threat or strategic threat, but a multi-dimensional peril that could sometime trigger nuclear warfare with Iran.[2] As for the incendiary warnings blaring from Tehran, acting to fulfil such genocidal threats without tangible Russian/North Korean assistance would prove more injurious to Iran than to Israel. Plausibly, this conclusion is well-understood by authoritative leadership elements in Tehran and Israel will retain the upper hand in still-impending struggles for “escalation dominance.” To best ensure that this critical Israeli advantage remains continuous and undiminished, however, Israel should promptly (1) declare verifiable shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure;” and (2) reveal the most potentially persuasive contours of its “Samson Option.” Both intersecting remedies should be oriented not to nuclear war-fighting strategies or tactics, but to advantage-based postures of nuclear war-avoidance. What should be concluded? For these postures to “work,” Jerusalem should heed 20th century French poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s generic advice about avoiding intellectual conquest. Though Israel has already established intellectual primacy at tactical levels of warfare, it has yet to prove convincingly that Jerusalem’s strategic primacy is similarly well-established. For the Jewish State, this core task is necessarily antecedent to every other form of national security progress and should always be considered “job one.” LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). Born in Zürich at the end of World War II, he is the author of many books, monographs, and articles dealing with Israeli nuclear strategy. Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, he has lectured on this topic for over fifty years at leading universities and academic centers for strategic studies. Dr. Beres' twelfth book, Israel's Nuclear Strategy: Surviving amid Chaos, was published in 2016 (2nd ed., 2018). https://paw.princeton.edu/new-books/surviving-amid-chaos-israel%E2%80%99s-nuclear-strategy Professor Beres is the author of seven principal articles at Oxford University Press’ annual publication: Oxford Yearbook on International Law and Jurisprudence. In 2003-2004, he was Chair of Israel’s “Project Daniel” (Iranian nuclear weapons/PM Ariel Sharon). Beres was also an early recipient of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Rabinowitch Prize.
