Today, I received a copy of Anthony Cordesman’s assessment of a nuclear exchange betwen Iran and Israel. He sets the time as 2010. He estimates Israeli casualties at “between 200,000 and 800,000 Israelis dead.” Iranian casuaties would be far higher at “some 16 million to 28 million Iranians dead within 21 days.” His analysis of the outcome ?
“It is theoretically possible that the Israeli state, economy and organized society might just survive such an almost-mortal blow. Iran would not survive as an organized society. “Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term,” Cordesman notes. The difference in the death tolls is largely because Israel is believed to have more nuclear weapons of very much higher yield (some of 1 megaton), and Israel is deploying the Arrow advanced anti-missile system in addition to its Patriot batteries. Fewer Iranian weapons would get through.”
The effect on the rest of the world ?
“Walker concludes that Cordesman’s analysis spells out “the end of Persian civilization, quite probably the end of Egyptian civilization, and the end of the Oil Age. This would also mean the end of globalization and the extraordinary accretions in world trade and growth and prosperity that are hauling hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians and others out of poverty.”
Does anyone want to see that happen ? Ahmadinejad seems to be one of very few who might. His UN speech ended with the messianic appeal to God to “hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace”.
Who is the Twelfth Imam ? Here is a current account of the devotion in Iran right now.
Here is more. If you haven’t read about this, you should. These people may be planning to bring on this nuclear exchange in the belief that the Imam will return when the world ends in chaos. And they are trying to build the bomb. I’m not sure that diplomacy will accomplish any more than it did with Hitler, another messianic leader with a vision.
What a sad vision. But it looks like, no matter what *anyone* does, there will be bad results. I’m sure that Israel will defend itself by whatever means necessary. The world has gotten small, however…