 December 25, 2007 -- A doomsday war between nuclear-armed adversaries Iran and Israel would kill up to 28 million Iranians and destroy their nation, but the Jewish state might survive, according to a prestigious US think tank.
| Good thing we have think tanks to tell us this stuff. |
The nightmare "what if?" scenario concluded that Israel's state-of-the-art missile defense would intercept most of Iran's nuclear-tipped missiles. That would limit Israel's deaths to as "few" as 200,000 - while its much more numerous and more powerful nukes would obliterate Iran, said the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
| I'm not sure Israel's missile defense is that good. But I'm fairly certain that right now the Iranians couldn't hit the broad side of a nuclear barn. |
"Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term, though Israeli recovery is theoretically possible in population and economic terms," analyst Andrew Cordesman wrote.
| Assuming their neighbors the Paleos would let them, which would require our direct intervention. In the chaos of the first days after a nuclear strike the advantage is to the Paleos: they're used to chaos. |
The findings could cheer Israeli hawks who dispute the recent US National Intelligence Estimate that Iran is not seeking nukes.
| No, the NIE depresses them because it makes them realize that they're on their own. |
But the study also indicates that Iran wouldn't use them even if it got them, because a war would lead to the same kind of "mutually assured destruction" that kept the US-Soviet Cold War from becoming hot.
| Unless the Mad Mullahs™ really are mad. It's 'moderates' like Rafsenjani who claimed that a nuclear war would be okay even if Iran was seriously wrecked as long as Israel was obliterated. I haven't heard him say that he's changed his mind. |
"The 'War Game' paradox: The only way to win is not to play," the study concluded.
| Again, you have to be sane to think that way. I'm sure there are Mullahs who do, but there are too many of them in Qom who think that a world cataclysm would encourage the twelfth iman to appear. Israel really can't afford to see who wins the arm-wrestling contest in Iran, and that makes a pre-emptive strike from Israel more likely. If they can't do a pre-emptive conventional strike today, it could well be a nuclear first strike in the future. |
An exchange of nukes would last about 21 days and immediately kill 16 million to 28 million Iranians and 200,000 to 800,000 Israelis.
| 21 days? I think it would be over in a few hours. Any longer than that and the U.S. and Russia would get involved. Russia could sortie aircraft to prevent Israeli nuclear strike aircraft from getting through, and we'd do the same to cover Israel. We might also put an Aegis-equipped ship near Haifa. |
Long-term deaths, from the effects of radiation and other causes, were not estimated.
| But of course they'd be high, and higher in Iran. Israel wouldn't be able to do much about the radiation casualties as their medical facilities would be overwhelmed, but Iran would have a ten-fold problem with far fewer resources. They'd be pretty close to being back into the 11th Century. |
The greater Iranian death toll is explained by several factors:
* Israeli bombs have a bigger kaboom bang. Israel has produced 1-megaton nukes, while Iran would be unable to produce anything more than 100 kilotons, a weapon with one-tenth the impact.
* Iran would have fewer than 50 nuclear weapons, while Israel would have more than 200.
* Israel also has an Arrow-2 missile defense, buttressed by US-made anti-missile weaponry. Iran has a limited missile defense.
* Israel's missiles would be more accurate, due to high-resolution satellite imagery.
If Syria joined its ally Iran in a wider war, it could attack Israel with mustard gas, nerve agents and anthrax in non-nuclear warheads. That could kill another 800,000 Israelis, but in response, up to 18 million Syrians would die, the study found.
| It would mean that Syria, for sure, would cease to exist as a nation. It would also cause massive damage (from fallout, etc) to Iraq, Lebanon and southern Turkey. That amount of fallout would circulate around the world. It would be a catastrophe. |
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