In one of the most startling developments in the middle east to date, the London Guardian revealed that the United States has provided Israel with nuclear missiles that can be launched from their Dolphin submarines.

This should eliminate any possible doubt that the US and Israel are complete allies, and any claims that the US is looking for impartial and fair solutions in the middle east are nothing but complete crap.

Israel already has nukes, even though they officially deny it. Two hundred nuclear weapons, according to reliable estimates.

Given that, why is the US so concerned about Iran developing nukes, and for that matter, why did they take the posture that Iraq needed to be invaded because they MIGHT develop nukes?

According to the Guardian news story, an American government source explained, "We tolerate nuclear weapons in Israel for the same reason we tolerate them in Britain and France. We don't regard Israel as a threat."

Israel isn't a direct threat to the US. But it certainly is to its neighbors, as witness the program of genocide being conducted against the Palestinians in the name of "rooting out terrorists" (the terrorists are doing fine, but thousands of innocent Palestinians are being subjugated, humiliated, starved, and harassed). Israel attacked a terrorist camp in Syria last week, claiming it was in response to a suicide bombing at a popular restaurant a couple of days earlier.

The US and the UN are both working to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear capability. All they have to do in response is point to Ariel Sharon and cite self-defense, and the US is going to have all kinds of fun trying to justify their position.

At least one Islamic nation in the region has both nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them, and that is Pakistan. Presently, that means that they are a direct threat to nuclear rival India, since Pakistani military despot Musharraf wants to distract his country from having an Islamic revolution, and India, a nation Pakistan has fought four times in the past 60 years, makes a great outside threat and thus is of major propaganda value.

But Musharraf's hold on Pakistan remains tenuous, and should an Islamic revolution or coup occur, Pakistan might decide that Israel, as a nuclear threat, would be easier to eliminate compared to the vast India. Ten nukes on Indian cities might kill hundreds of millions, but leave the country as a whole able to attack and smash Pakistan. Ten nukes on Israel would finish the place off, due to its relatively small acreage.

Upping Israel's nuclear capabilities like that is just part of the disturbing trend the Putsch regime has taken in regards to nuclear proliferation. Up until now, it had played the role of threatening to attack countries that DON'T have nuclear weapons while scurrying from countries that DO (Iraq as opposed to North Korea), a stance that convinced the rest of the world that they better nuke up, especially nations seen as potential targets, which would be all Islamic nations, Cuba and North Korea, and areas where American corporations have strong financial interests, which would mean most of central and south America, and southeast Asian and Pacific Rim nations.

Now it is actively working to increase the nuclear strike capability of the nation most hated and feared throughout the entire middle east, a nation that is already facing accusations of genocide. The days when Israel stood as a bastion of freedom and democracy and decency are in the past.

While it isn't probable that Israel is going to suddenly launch nukes any time in the immediate future, it eliminates any possibility that the US can continue to pretend to a role of mediator in the middle east ­ not unless it decides to share nuclear capability with the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, or the Libyans, and that doesn't seem real likely. While any middle eastern belief in the impartiality of America in their affairs, if it hadn't already vanished with the coup by the GOP in 2000, certainly vanished in the wake of 9/11 and the ascendancy of the "New American Century" cabal, with their designs to use Israel to impose economic and military imperialism on the entire middle east.

Additionally, the magazine der Spiegel and Reuters are reporting that Israel is in the final planning stages toward an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in the fairly immediate future. http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/348730.html. Israel got away with a similar attack against Iraq some 20 years ago, when nukes were much harder to acquire.

Of course, this sort of news will just increase the efforts of nations in the middle east to acquire nukes. They don't need a sophisticated delivery system. Israel is 7,800 square miles, and 91% of her six million people live in the major cities. A dozen nukes of Nagasaki strength would finish the place off.

Given the increasing nuclear proliferation, particularly among nations with an adversarial stance to either us, or their immediate neighbors, or both, I got curious and surfed the website of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, home to the famous "doomsday clock". They don't change the clock frequently (17 times in 53 years) and the most recent was in February of 2002, when they moved the hands forward to seven minutes to midnight. Over the half century, the clock has varied from two minutes to midnight in 1953, when both the US and USSR tested thermonuclear weapons, to as "relaxed" as seventeen minutes, in 1991, when the USSR collapsed and Yeltsin indicated a willingness to disarm. Seven minutes till, while not as scary as times in the 50s and the 80s when world wide nuclear tensions were extremely high, still represents a higher state of alarm.

And of course, since February 2002, North Korea has announced that it has achieved nuclear capability (the Bulletin in its May issue expressed skepticism not only of the range but of the very existence of the new long- range ballistic missiles NK was supposed to have ­ a view shared by the Russians, who would be even less happy than America to contemplate a nuclear North Korea). Iran is reportedly working on nuclear capability, but it's important to remember than many of those reports come from the administration, which has already shown its willingness to lie to the American people about such things with Iraq.

And now the United States is taking an active role in beefing up the nuclear capacity of Israel, a country that, like the United States, is in the grip of a bellicose and murderous right wing junta.

Nothing good will come of this.

Topplebush.com
October 13, 2003