Israel Has Nuclear Weapons. It May Use Them.

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : Samson, the namesake of Israel's nuclear option, brought down the temple of Dagon.
50% : But Israel is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons -- and it may use them if it feels like it has run out of options.
46% : It can be deployed by submarines as well as long range missiles and is considered by Israeli planners to be the "Samson option," named after the last biblical judge of Israel who tore down the columns of the temple of an ancient fertility God to destroy the Philistines.
46% : Though it is unclear how much of the stockpile it still has access to, Iran had 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent purity before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) left the country following the US withdrawal from the nuclear deal, an exit lobbied for by Israel.
45% : Israel has a large nuclear arsenal, officially undeclared, of over one hundred warheads that it built with the help of the French and hid for a decade from the Americans.
45% : Both nations are rich in myths of heroic and suicidal battles: Masada for Israel and Karabala for the Islamic Republic.
42% : The main targets are "transporter erector launchers," specialized trucks stored deep underground, which emerge from mountainsides across Iran's vast territory to fire on Israel.
42% : Tel Aviv is a city of only twenty square miles, and half of the population of Israel lives in its larger metropolitan area, so it is not difficult to imagine this threshold being passed in the mind of Benjamin Netanyahu.
41% : But winning against such insatiable enemies could provoke a cornered Israel to turn the war nuclear.
40% : Despite impressive penetration of Iranian intelligence, the United States and Israel have simply failed to destroy Iran's ability to violently counterattack.
39% : In its Twelve-Day War in June, the US used up a quarter of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles in the defense of Israel.
38% : Postol is just one of a number of scientists and scholars, including several Pentagon insiders as well as Israeli engineers, who have for years questioned Israel's claims about its layered missile defense systems.
38% : Although Iran claims Pakistan would deploy nuclear weapons against Israel in the event of a nuclear strike against it, few analysts take this claim seriously.
36% : There is little sign that Israel is achieving its war aims against Iran.
36% : The US and Israel have also so far failed to achieve their war aims of regime change.
36% : Iran has destroyed key radar stations that sustain the US-Israeli security constellation in the area, and Iranian planners are pursuing a long war to remove US presence in the region and finally defeat Israel, which has been decisive in maintaining the belief over several US administrations that Tehran is a peerless US enemy, which should be either put forever in a box or otherwise destroyed.
36% : After all, Israel has so far succeeded in bringing its regional adversaries to their knees through genocide in Palestine and decapitation strikes and ongoing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, not to mention its covert wars in Syria and Iraq.
36% : And the US and Israel have effectively removed the diplomatic breaks by nakedly using negotiations as a weapon of war.
35% : The logic of victimhood and revenge has deepened within Israel more broadly; most of the country's citizens believe that they can only deal with their enemies by eradicating them.
35% : This is the second war waged since last summer by the United States and Israel against Iran.
33% : A Trump adviser recently warned that Israel might use a nuclear weapon against Iran.
33% : Even if Israel knows Iran has a bomb, it may not be deterred.
33% : "My concern is that [Israel] will resort to using a nuclear weapon against Iran.
29% : What will happen if Iran, a country seventy-five times larger than Israel, makes Israeli military planners decide the country itself is at risk?
20% : While the true extent of Iran's retaliatory attacks on Israel remains unclear, the Islamic Republic has for two weeks managed to strike both military and civilian infrastructure across Israel.

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