Israel's Cuban missile crisis - all the time - -
By Victor Davis Hanson
May 28, 2009 12:00 AM
Israel’s Cuban Missile Crisis — All the Time What will happen if Iran gets the bomb.
By Victor Davis Hanson
The National Review
Why would the Iranian government spend billions of dollars trying to develop a few first-generation nuclear bombs (as nearly everyone believes is the case) when the country is so poor that it has to ration gasoline?
A lot of reasons have been offered by various experts.
Upon developing a nuclear weapon, states win instant prestige and attention beyond what they otherwise might have earned. Take away its bomb and North Korea would be in the news about as much as Chad.
Nuclear weapons also can change the nature of conventional warfare.
Israel’s Arab neighbors have not waged a full-scale traditional war against Israel since 1973 — in part because there is no longer a nuclear patron, in the form of the Soviet Union, to threaten the use of nukes should Israel strike back too strongly against its aggressors.