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«The use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground.»

Hashemi Rafsanjani, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Long ago Israel placed Iran as its No. 1 national-security strategic threat. The five leading intelligence services (those of the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, France and Germany) have warned about the Iranian nuclearization program. The Islamic Republic has at least seven nuclear facilities. According to military experts, Iran could produce its first nuclear weapon in one to three years, and dozens annually afterward.

This — as Chen Zak, who served in the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, points out — despite Iran being the only state in the Middle East that is party to all nonproliferation agreements. That should be least surprising, given recent experience with Iraq and North Korea — both signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and holders of advanced, clandestine nuclear-weapons projects nonetheless.

The CIA describes Iran as the world’s «foremost state sponsor of terrorism.» It shelters al Qaeda leaders, provides military and financial assistance to Hezbollah, Hamas and other radical Muslim groups and already has weapons of mass destruction. This fundamentalist theocracy is ideologically and theologically committed to Israel’s annihilation.

Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland, head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Planning and Policy Division, said cryptically: Everyone should be able to understand the nature of the conflict in the Middle East when there is an Iranian nuclear threat.»

The question is what to do, and much will depend on how the West — Washington and Jerusalem in particular — perceive Iranian motives. Is Iran’s nuclear program intended for defensive purposes only, a deterrent to a prospective foreign attack? Or is Iran intent on offensive aggression, as Rafsanjani seemed to have suggested? And against whom? Just Israel? If so, why is Iran developing missiles capable of reaching European capitals and the United States, too?

While the Iranians have shown to be more sophisticated than irrational Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the reckless Kim Jong IPs North Korea, questions remain as to how a nuclearized Iran might affect state behavior.

Michael Eisenstadt, a military and security affairs analyst, offers a few possibilities drawn from past experience: «During the Cold War, nuclear weapons generally moderated superpower behavior. Conversely, such weapons have not prevented India and Pakistan from engaging in low-level conflict and approaching the nuclear brink several times, while Iraq’s maturing weapons-of-mass-destruction programs bred confidence that led to increasingly aggressive behavior in the late 1980s, culminating in the invasion of Kuwait.»

While Iran’s potential conduct is not entirely clear, there seems to be consensus in Washington and Jerusalem about the need to stop, or at least contain or delay, Iran’s nuclearization project. And here another question arises: How to do it? First, diplomatic and economic pressure will be exerted. If this mix fails, a preemptive military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would not be ruled out.

Michael Knights, a defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, reminds us that preemptive strikes on nuclear sites are uncommon but not unprecedented. As Knights observes, Germany’s nuclear program was attacked during World War II; Iraq’s Osiraq reactor was bombed both by Iran and Israel in 1980 and 1981 respectively, whereas Iraq attacked Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant during the Iran-Iraq war.

Additionally, during the 1991 Gulf War the United States attacked the al-Tuwaitha nuclear site and in 1993 fired 44 Tomahawk missiles at the Zafaraniyah enriched-uranium facility.

Tehran could respond in various ways. It could use al Qaeda to attack U.S. cities by proxy. It could greenlight Hezbollah to launch the some 12,000 rockets it has, with hundreds of them able to reach as far as Haifa. It could sponsor terrorist operations against U.S. allies in the Gulf and Israeli and U.S. targets abroad.

It could try to destabilize the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. It could unleash a chemical and biological direct attack on Israel and U.S. interests in the region. And, of course, it could resort to a combination of, or all these options at the same time.

This is not a rosy scenario. But neither is the prospect of radical mullahs having the capability to produce a Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Middle East.

Julián Schvindlerman, a political analyst, is author of Land for Peace, Land for War (in spanish) and a member of the American Jewish Committee.