Israel Cannot Tolerate Iran as a Nuclear-Threshold Power

The news that Iran has launched hundreds of ballistic missiles at targets inside Israel has moved the widening war in the Middle East to a new and very dangerous stage.

Israel will not be able to tolerate the prospect of a hostile, nuclear-threshold power that is in the business of repeatedly launching hundreds of missiles at its territory. No sovereign nation could — let alone a nation that conceives of itself as the primary and ultimate guarantor of the Jewish people’s survival.

The origins of the present crisis go back many years and certainly encompass the Obama administration’s attempt to conciliate the revolutionary regime in Tehran through the failed 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a.k.a. the Iran nuclear deal. During those negotiations, the implicit position of the United States government towards Israel was that Iran’s ballistic-missile program would be no threat because Iran’s nuclear program would not be militarized under the deal and, conversely, if Iran’s nuclear program ever were militarized, Iran’s ballistic missiles would be no grave threat to Israel anyway because the Iranian regime would know better than to shoot ballistic missiles at the State of Israel.