Tehran openly states that Israel faces disaster and most Israelis do not seem to believe the Iranians. As of writing, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is publicly training for a scenario where Hezbollah will unleash 2 000 projectiles a day for several weeks and where Hezbollah will commit chemical weapons attacks along the Israeli-Lebanese border. The IDF has stated that this scenario will lead to overcrowded hospitals in Israel.
However, this is not what Iran threatens to do. Iran threatens to wreak major, indeed maximum destruction on Israeli cities without restraint. Why would they limit themselves to 2 000 projectiles a day? The IDF is clearly trying hard not to frighten its own population. The truth is that the only option considering the severity of the Hezbollah projectile threat is a joint IDF-SDF strategic operation to reorder the northern Levant that would establish an Aramean Christian state (Aram), annex Median Jewish (Alawite and Druze) regions of Syria and Lebanon to Israel and let an AANES-ruled Syria annex the remainder of Lebanon. There is no other known option for comprehensively defeating Hezbollah which is completely intertwined with its Syrian and Lebanese state sponsors.
Wreaking maximum destruction on Israeli cities certainly includes using chemical weapons and not only against the city of Tel Aviv, Israel’s economic capital. Does Ali Khamenei care that this will cause Israel to nuke Qom, the clerical capital of Khomeinist Iran? This is a difficult question to answer. Iranian strategists probably think that Israelis are not ready to use nuclear weapons and if it happens may be ready to sacrifice Qom. While this may be difficult to understand for outsiders, the Iranian regime lives in an apocalyptic world of struggle between good and evil where they themselves implausibly represent the good guys and the Jews (who in the Islamists’ imagination rule America) are the evil ones. Unless Israel nukes Qom, it will effectively invite more WMD attacks. Israel will have to reestablish nuclear deterrence the horrible way.
At some point will the Israeli government need to prepare the Israeli public for the gruesome reality of the upcoming war where Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) will unleash their entire arsenals of military projectiles against Israeli civilian targets within the shortest possible time frame. Many of Hezbollah’s missiles will have chemical warheads. Saddam Hussein’s genocidal chemical weapons attack against the Iraqi Kurdish city of Halabja killed between 3 200 and 5 000 and injured 7 000 to 10 000, the overwhelming majority civilians. The Iranian plan is no doubt to create many Halabjas in urban Israel.
Israel finds itself in a very difficult situation vis-a-vis Iran because it has absolutely no deterrence whatsoever against Iran. Iran is effectively on Israel’s northern borders and Israel faces attempted genocide. Yet, despite the terrible price, Israel has no choice but to survive. The alternative would be for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and for Israel to let Iran subsequently annihilate Israel by means of a nuclear Holocaust. Yet, for Israeli leaders to order the annihilation of Qom in response to chemical weapons attacks against urban Israel will be a very bitter decision indeed, one they will be forced to make against their own inner will. Israeli leaders therefore find themselves in an impossible situation, to annihilate or to be annihilated? This is not an impossible choice as some might think as the answer is for Israel to survive indeed. Yet, Ali Khamenei is truly wicked and perhaps mildly senile for forcing such a truly horrible choice upon the very Jewish state that rose from the ashes of the Holocaust.
Aliyah Organization 