In an interview for the Nouvel Observateur, reported in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune at the end of January 2007, Jacques Chirac stated that a nuclear weapon launched by Iran against Israel ‘would get no further than 200 metres into the sky before Tehran was wiped out’.⁽¹⁾ The following day he qualified this remark as ‘somewhat schematic’ and ‘a joke’. The qualification has done nothing to calm the controversy, and reveals the level of realism concerning an eventual Iranian nuclear weapon which currently prevails in debate in the international arena. What would the scenario be? Who would wipe out Tehran: Israel? The United States? A coalition, and if so, of whom? It was not spelled out, but if the subject can be tackled with that sort of vocabulary in Paris, it is understandable that it should be even more openly and passionately discussed in Israel, in the corridors of power, in public and in the media. Effectively, within a few years (perhaps only a few months), the government in Jerusalem could be drawn towards a decision of the heaviest consequence in the entire history of the Jewish State: a decision to attack Iranian nuclear installations before Iran can acquire the bomb.

For the moment, Israel’s position, frequently reiterated by its leaders, remains unchanged: Tehran’s race to achieve nuclear capability concerns the entire international community. It is their responsibility to take the necessary measures to prevent disaster on a global scale if the ultimate weapon should fall into the hands of Islamic fanatics. In recent years, in the course of laborious negotiations, Tehran’s Western interlocutors have behaved, in Jerusalem’s view, like paper tigers offering respite after respite to Tehran, and have only been able to come to agreement on sanctions that have no real coercive power.

Much more militant language is being heard in Israel, to the effect that it is up to Israel to prevent the predicted genocide and ‘politicide’; and that before it is too late.