by Lawrence Kadish
If this conflict accomplished nothing else, it has shown that Iran's ballistic missile program represents an existential danger to countries in both the Middle East and Europe -- because Iran seeks to put nuclear warheads on those missiles.
Like the fighter who distracts his foe with feints before bringing an uppercut that knocks out his opponent, the world has been exclusively focused on Iran shutting the Straits of Hormuz while ignoring the chilling fact that it is a regime of theocratic extremists who have launched ballistic missiles capable of hitting Europe as well as US bases in the Indian Ocean. Iran's ruling ayatollahs want to put nuclear warheads on those missiles. That is where the real threat lies -- not in a Middle East waterway -- but in Iran's missile silos and nuclear weapons program.
While this conflict has seriously degraded Iran's military capability, it has also revealed the stunning fact that a regime sworn to erase Israel from the face of the planet, and which describes the U.S. as "the Great Satan," has produced an assembly line of ballistic missiles whose extended range sends a chilling message throughout the Middle East and as far as Europe.
American and Israeli strikes have reportedly destroyed aboveground launching facilities, made some underground missile factories untenable, and destroyed some stocks of Iran's missiles. But military experts say while Iran's ballistic missile program has been seriously damaged, it has not been destroyed.
"I don't see Iran making a fundamental change to their missile strategy if the regime survives," Nicole Grajewski, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, told a reporter recently.
If this conflict accomplished nothing else, it has shown that Iran's ballistic missile program represents an existential danger to countries in both the Middle East and Europe -- because Iran seeks to put nuclear warheads on those missiles.
For the record, last month Iran launched two ballistic missiles at Diego Garcia, the joint American-British military base in the Indian Ocean, roughly 2,500 miles from Iran. One of the missiles failed in flight; the other was intercepted by a US Navy destroyer's anti-missile array. While neither struck the base, the attempt revealed that Iran has long-range missiles the world did not know it had – a type of weapon Iran had repeatedly denied possessing.
Now add a nuclear warhead to those missiles, and you begin to appreciate what this conflict is actually all about -- especially for cities such as Athens, Vienna, Warsaw, and Rome.
We can focus on the Strait of Hormuz and the price of gasoline at the pump, but all of these topics are little more than a feint, distracting us from the genuine threat of that "upper cut." President Donald J. Trump, an astute observer of the martial arts, "gets it." He has bought Western democracies the precious gift of time. Now it is up to the rest of the world to decide how to make use of that gift.
Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.
Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22405/trump-preventing-nuclear-iran
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