In the wake of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Considerable academic attention has already been focussed on preventive war and
Michael Walters classic account of anticipation already appears injustice,
unjust wars. I think the recent sanctions on Iran and the debate over its nuclear program suggest the usefulness of a
forward looking perspective on preventive war rather than a retroactive perspective that was offered so far,
primarily with reference to Iraq.
I'm going to focus here on the contemporary literature and just war theory, much of which I would say opposes early military strikes.
And I'm going to suggest that it actually contains the resources to support an early Israeli strike on Iran.
Ultimately, I'll propose that Iran is a legitimate candidate for early military action designed to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.
I agree that in principle, under certain conditions and when the time is right,
a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran would be justifiable, both morally and legally as self-defence.
First, what are we talking about as an issue?
And David wrote in, pointed out in the introduction to their collection and pre-emption, the terminology of this discussion is significant.
Pre-emptive war aims to avert an imminent harm. Preventive war aims to avert the harm that its temporally distant.
Preventive war is widely condemned morally and legally prohibited.
By contrast,
many contemporary just war theorists and many international lawyers regard a unilateral response to an imminent attack as justifiable self-defence.
Though the precise meaning of imminence as well as individual cases remain contested.
Physically, legal scholars ask the same questions about the legitimate onset of war and the meaning of imminence.
But this distinction between pre-emption versus prevention is less prominent in their discussions.
Legal disagreements are phrased in terms of the license granted to states or their inherent right recognised in
the UN Charter to act in self-defence if an armed attack occurs while the U.N. charter system aims to avoid war.
Chapter seven of the Charter recognises two exceptions to prohibitions on the threat or use of force self-defence
if an armed attack occurs and military action undertaken with authorisation by the Security Council.
For the lawyers, the question is whether any particular act of belligerency in question can be assimilated to self-defence.
Otherwise, it can be legal only if authorised by the Security Council.
At what early stage might we regard an armed attack as having occurred or begun to occur justifying self-defence?
Judge Fletcher offers an interesting conceptual point about various commentaries on Article 51.
He says on the plausible assumption that an imminent attack is one which is already actually present in progress and in that sense has begun to occur.
There's absolutely nothing pre-emptive about responding to it.
You don't need a broad notion of what constitutes an armed attack and the theory of pre-emptive war.
One or the other will do. But why should we wait to be attacked at all?
Striking earlier may well prove less costly in human life than waiting for the threat to mature.
Different points out the following with reference to Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear facility in 1981.
Israel reasonably believed that if it did not attack immediately,
it would have lost its only realistic chance to eliminate this threat to its continued existence.
In fact, the reactor in the sun with when French engineers who were building the plants were absent.
It is indeed an important feature of this example.
The man says that there were no legitimate human targets and thus no attacks, whether intended or unintended, on the innocent.
Although his preventive attack was clearly illegal and was universally condemned at the time,
a very strong case can be made that it was an instance of legitimate prevention.
And while Senator Armstrong makes a similar point about the Israeli attack.
From a consequential point of view.
If they had waited to bomb it when it was active, then very many people in Iraq would have been killed by the explosion and in nuclear fallout,
whereas only a few people were killed when they bombed the reactor before it was active.
Israel's attack on Osirak was widely condemned.
It was condemned by the Security Council without a US veto.
But the limited casualties it incurred suggest that striking early, at least in some cases, is morally advantageous,
both from consequential perspective and from the perspective of the rights of the potential victims.
And in fact, most writers on this topic point out that from the 16th to the 19th century Europe.
In the war theorists argued straightforwardly for the legitimacy of preventive war and to forestall even the most remote type of threats,
particularly any alteration in the European balance of power.
And it's also noted by Walter and David Grodin and others that their logic ran as follows.
War is inevitable. Fighting later rather than sooner will be far more costly, if possible, at all.
So why wait? Why wait?
The answer, as usual, comes from Michael Walzer, and it's been restated many times since stated flatly there are two basic reasons for waiting.
One concerns consequences, the other concerns the rights of the potential victims of attack.
As for consequences, reinstating a permissive doctrine of prevention with lower the threshold for war.
And again, make war too frequent and routine, this time with devastating modern weapons.
It would make for to frequent because the doctrine of preventive war would justify too many wars calculating far in advance.
If war is in fact inevitable, and what the relative costs would be would be based on biased and imprecise calculations.
This would also be open to bad faith abuse. It would make war too routine because the doctrine of preventive war treats war casually
as an instrument of policy rather than a last resort in the face of actual aggression.
Furthermore, the preventive war doctrine generates conflict.
If states can expect to be attacked at any time by other states that view them as threatening.
Then they have strong reasons to attack earlier and pre-empt their adversaries, as it were.
But as Alan Buchanan points out, these consequential objections contain two separate arguments that can be overcome.
First, they point to the dangers associated with accepting a general rule permitting prevention.
They don't themselves rule out any possible case, exceptional case of justified preventive war.
Second, these consequential objections focus on potential error and abuse.
Buchanan. Buchanan himself believes that this can be overcome by subjecting preventive war to review by international institutions.
Others, like Henry Su, David Luban, George Fletcher,
call for more reliable intelligence information that was supplied prior to the American war in Iraq.
And all these consequential concerns have one further failing, as David Luban points out,
arguing that adoption of prevention is likely to license too many wars.
Begs the central question. By assuming that more preventive wars are necessarily worse than less preventive wars,
in particular, preventive wars are justified in terms of self-defence and preserving human rights.
Then sometimes more preventive wars might be better overall than fewer preventive force.
Sometimes it's in the late 1930s. Abstaining from preventive war may result in more war rather than less war.
Appeasement, as opposed to prevention, may actually lead to large scale war.
Though apart from these consequential reasons for avoiding escalation and conflict
and the aspiration to minimise human suffering associated with too many wars.
There are also principled, right based reasons. As long as the state and its members haven't engaged in any act of aggression.
How could they possibly be liable to attack a sovereign state and its members have a legal
and moral right not to be attacked so long as there's not engaged in any aggression.
Just McMann raises this problem, but he also supplies the answer.
He describes the type of threat that could justify preventive war as analogous to the domestic crime of conspiracy.
Putting an adversary at risk by committing a crime of aggression that falls short of attack.
In principle, can generate moral liability to attack. Though the burden of proving such conspiracies, McMahan says, is very high indeed.
David Lubin also suggests that in some cases,
act of preparation for planning purposefully to use weapons of mass destruction is analogies to conspiracy to commit a crime,
forming the wrongful intentions, intending to launch a large scale attack on basic human rights backed up by persistent and overt action to further,
this plan is comparable to the domestic crime of conspiracy and insufficient
to deprive a sovereign state and its soldiers of their immunity from attack.
So both the consequential objections and the liability of those oppositions to pre-emptive action can be overcome.
As for consequences, it's quite possible that the benefits of a particular pre-emptive strike will outweigh the bad consequences,
including the harm that the action will cause to the general rule against prevention.
As for liability, a state is liable to prevent a force if it acts in ways that are analogous to conspiring to commit a crime of aggression.
We're left with a legal requirement of imminence. Even if one of.
And I'm not sure many of you will. But something like a conspiracy is under way.
At what point would it be legitimate to resort to force in response?
As I said, ordinarily under the U.N. charter system, the use of force absent the prior occurrence.
But armed attack is illegal. It is, however, widely accepted, though admittedly not unanimously accepted,
that Article 51 permits member states not only to engage in armed self-defence after they have been attacked,
but also to pre-empt an armed attack that is imminent. When I say generally accepted, I'm citing George Fletcher.
I'm citing, for example, that David Rosen might disagree.
As Fletcher puts this, no one would reasonably propose a doctrine of self-defence,
but was limited to striking back only after being struck by a phalanx of bombers or guided nuclear missiles,
pointing out that such a requirement would turn self-defence into reprisal.
While it is clear, Fletcher continues in customary international law that the right of self-defence includes the response to an imminent attack.
There was no treaty explicitly defining imminence,
and it's consequently legally unclear what this actually means in terms of triggering the right to self-defence.
In discussing early military action,
Walter describes a continuum of anticipation rather than a stark dichotomy between imminent and not imminent threats.
At the most restrictive end of the continuum, we quotes the US Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, from 1842 regarding the Caroline incident.
Webster wrote In order to justify pre-emptive violence, there must be shown a necessity of defence.
Instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation.
Well also argues that this doctrine of pre-emption, popular among legal scholars,
is far too restrictive and permits no more than the obvious last minute reflex action in response to an attack which is already underway.
Welter states this doesn't address itself usefully to the real life cases of imminent war.
So Walter charts a middle course more permissive than Webster's reflex action, but falling short of promise of preventive war.
Walter argues that the point of sufficient threat justifying preventive action is met,
where the following three conditions obtain a manifest intent to injure a degree of active preparation that makes that intent
a positive danger and a general situation in which waiting or doing anything other than fighting greatly magnifies the risk.
Since that time has been noted more than once that imminence may no longer be
comprehensible in the straightforwardly temporal sense in terms of weeks or days,
especially in the age of weapons of mass destruction. The requirements of imminence may be fundamental to justifications of self-defence,
but this requirement need not necessarily be a simple countdown of weeks or days before the impending attack,
but rather the notion that a first strike is justifiable when it is undertaken at something like the last moment.
First, successfully preventing the horror with is intended to forestall.
This understanding essentially adopts the just for requirements of last resort to the spear of anticipation.
Fletcher supplies the following example Suppose a terrorist threatens to implant that
undetectable nuclear device that is set to explode in a year if it would stop now.
Once the device is implanted, it will be too late. In these cases, the attack is not imminent, but the threat is real and ineluctable,
and recognising the right to legitimate defence would seem sensible and appropriate.
Arguing for a restricted doctrine of preventive war which would justify first strikes against rogue states constructing weapons of mass destruction.
David Lubell interprets imminence in probabilistic rather than temporal terms in the traditional legal understanding of imminence.
A first strike can be assimilated to self-defence when the wrongful aggression is imminent.
In simple terms, Lubin argues that the same logic an attack that is imminent in terms of probability being all but
certain justifies preventive war in self-defence when suffering from the aggression of a rogue state,
Lubin says, is imminent in the probabilistic sense when it is virtually a sure thing.
Preventive war is assimilated to self-defence just in the same way as pre-emptive war is assimilated to self-defence.
Usually the Luban defines a rogue state as a threat state,
a state fostering a militaristic and violent ideology backed up by a track record of violence and a build up capacity to pose a genuine risk.
This restrictive doctrine holds that preventive wars are permissible against
rogue states when a rogue state is one whose policies and past track record.
Overwhelmingly likely that it is aiming with belligerent intentions.
Now, this understanding of imminence in probabilistic rather than in temporal terms is persuasive because responding to a temporally imminent
nuclear threat is entirely meaningless to self-defence when simply cannot defend itself against a nuclear attack that is literally on its way.
Continuing to regard imminence and purely temporal terms renders the inherent right to self-defence totally void in the nuclear age.
While it a free for all doctrine of prevention as most undesirable permitting military action,
only once an armed attack has literally begun to occur is a hollow license in the nuclear age.
But how likely exactly does a nuclear attack have to be in order to qualify as imminent?
In the probabilistic sense, Lumen doesn't say. But in a later article on preventive war and human rights.
He adds, What I think is the is an indispensable comment.
The higher the stakes in a single attack by the enemy, the lower the threshold for preventive action.
The sheer magnitude of anticipated harm and not only its mathematical likelihood,
has to be taken into account in assessing the risk we face and therefore the legitimacy of military action.
Risk equals magnitude of harm, times the probability of its occurrence.
Once we reasonably exchange the temporal understanding of imminence for a probabilistic understanding.
The probability of the impending attack and its enormity replaced.
The idea that it's instant and overwhelming the magnitude of harm and not merely its likelihood of maturing, becomes part of its overwhelming nature.
Clearly, even when the stakes are high enough, the probability of an actual attack has to be very likely and look at fluence as this as well.
It can't just be some national psychosis about pending holocausts.
The threat from one's enemy has to be real and likely, and not just a far off chance of some fluke disaster happening sometime in the distant future.
Nevertheless, if high probability should replace temporal imminence as a sufficient condition for justified prevention,
this is because we perceive the overwhelming nature of the threat in terms of its enormity, not merely in terms of its temple proximity.
It's the extent of the projected horror multiplied by the likelihood of its overtaking us.
That renders the risk overwhelming, though it may still take some time to mature.
Okay. Finally, Israel and Iran. Jason, everybody's waiting for.
In late August 2010, shortly after the opening of Iran's nuclear power plant and the US Obama administration assured Israel that the threat,
while real and not far off, was nonetheless not imminent in the temporal sense.
At that time, American assessments were talking in terms of a year, a year from August 2010 before Iran could construct nuclear weapons.
In recent events, it looks like that timeframe is probably a little bit further off, maybe as far off as 2015.
Either way, despite denials from Tehran, the US, along with much of the international community, not only Israel,
strongly suspect Iran of developing a secret nuclear weapons program not so secret in
fear that it will attain nuclear military capability in the not too distant future.
Israel is by far not the only possible target of Iranian aggression.
Nor is it the only nation in the Middle East or elsewhere gravely concerned with this threat.
In McMahon and Lupin's terms,
it's widely believed that Iran is conspiring to obtain nuclear weapons with which to threaten and possibly use against a variety of adversaries,
most notably Israel. Four rounds of international sanctions have been implemented quite successfully,
I say, and the U.N. has asserted its authority to oversee Iran's nuclear plant.
More stringent sanctions have been implemented by the US and its closest allies.
Deep concern about the prospect of a nuclear Iran within the more westernised Arab states match those of Israelis.
When I first wrote that, people question that. But I think the WikiLeaks have solved my problems, their fear of a nuclear Iran,
presumably backed up by considerable international intelligence information and nothing like what predated Iraq,
is not merely an Israeli panic about a second Holocaust, though needless to say,
the construction of an atomic energy plant or even a possession of nuclear weapons does not automatically constitute just cause for war.
Even with regard to military capability,
Walter cautions that the standard military preparations that characterise the classic arms race do not necessarily
count as sufficiently serious threat to justify war unless it violates some formally or tacitly agreed upon limit.
In the present case, Iran's nuclear project, particularly its enrichment of uranium,
is already in violation of international limits set by the U.N. Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency resolutions.
Furthermore, there's a good case to be made for limiting Iran's nuclear capability as the international community aspires to do.
And it's a case that would not apply to all other nations in the area.
Unfair as this may seem,
there is a significant real life difference between nuclear power as a doomsday weapon in the hands of a stable democracy with a provable no first use
policy and a nuclear weapon and nuclear weapons in the hands of a totalitarian
regime which actively supports terrorism and repeatedly threatens to life.
A member of the United Nations off the map.
Some of you will disagree, but I don't think I'm going out on much of a limb in arguing that Iran is a rogue state.
We can call it a state of concern. I'm not interested in branding it with the axis of evil.
I call it a threat state following David Luban. Internally, it's a domestic despotism.
Internationally, it's a major sponsor of terrorism.
Its ideology, hatred of the U.S. and Israel may be no yardstick for openness, but utter contempt for liberal democratic values.
I feel Iran's track record of severe restrictions and human rights, terrorism, brutality,
aggressive public speeches, introduction of drone bombers dubbed the ambassador of death,
Holocaust denial and so forth indicate a violent ideology when combined with the build up capacity to pose a genuine risk.
This makes Iran into a threat state to be reckoned with.
It remains to be seen, of course,
when and how Iran ought to be reckoned with and suggested preventive military action against a specific type of threat.
Threat states amassing weapons of mass destruction can be justified as self-defence.
Iran potentially poses just the right type of threat that warrants early military action.
I'm afraid the theoretical discussion in the literature cannot possibly determine whether all the necessary conditions have thus far been met.
Bearing in mind that much of this needs to be settled in the realm of practice rather than theory,
I do have a few further hesitant comments to make on the specific case.
First, what should we make of President Ahmadinejad's statements about Israel back then?
Just an unjust war, as also warns that the boastful ranting to which political leaders are often prone isn't in itself threatening.
Israel must be offered in some material sense as well. Nor are, nor are provocations the same as threats.
Ultimately, sufficient threat in Walter's term is largely a matter of material injury and context.
Someone was the discussions of Ahmadinejad's ranting concern,
the precise translation of his alleged threat to wipe Israel off the map from the Guardian's office in The New York Times.
Some commentators believe that these don't really sound that bad in the original.
It's been suggested that they more accurately translate into a call for Israel to be wiped away or simply express the
vague hope that it will somehow miraculously vanish or collapse without any specific plan for bringing this about.
One expert suggests that MASH should be understood as a book of countries, or maybe simply as some sort of metaphor the pages of time and history.
Admittedly, I don't speak Persian, and so all this complicated philology is largely lost on me.
I can only say that in Hebrew as well as in English. I think this all sounds quite bad enough.
Then there's Ahmadinejad's reference to the Jewish state as the occupying regime of Jerusalem.
This, again, when taken on its own, surely does not constitute just cause for war.
Certainly, the Iranian president cannot be faulted for his lack of Zionist enthusiasm.
President Ahmadinejad may be expressing no more than the view espoused by some Western liberals,
probably some of them in my audience here who call for the establishment of a binational Arab Jewish
state from the Jordan to the sea in place of what is today the state of Israel and the West Bank.
None of this necessarily indicates any hostility towards Jews or any ill intent towards individual Israelis.
But what these generous understandings of Mr. Ahmadinejad statement neglect to point out is precisely their wider context.
Liberal cosmopolitans will support political change within Israel that usually compliment their stand on multinational
states with Holocaust denial and aid to terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Islamic Jihad.
Nor do they combine their statements on atomic energy with their hopes for the demise of the Jewish state.
Iranian threats have to be interpreted in the context of enhanced uranium enrichment, holocaust denial, ambassadors of death and aid to terrorism.
We need to look no further for material injury offered by Iran than its long standing
support for terrorist organisation responsible for the murder of countless Israelis.
The all too familiar suggestion that a murderous dictator is expressing no
more than reasonable anti-Jewish critique shown by some segments on the left,
and that some of his grievances are actually reasonable.
Uttering harshly in the European years.
Sometimes the boastful ranting of political leaders turns out to be sufficiently threatening when his hopes regarding the absence
of Jews are expressed against the background of considerable build-up of arms and complicity in the murder of civilians.
But this last point about murdering civilians brings out a further bit of the context in which the Iranian threat ought to be judged.
Whether or not Ahmadinejad literally threatens to wipe Israel off the map.
The crucial issue here is not the annihilation of the Jewish state or the Jewish people as such, but rather the basic rights of individual Israelis.
The primary threat under consideration is the prospect of a genocidal attack against the large number of Israelis, Jews and Arabs,
by the way, and the collateral effect on Israel's neighbours as well as other countries, as well as direct attacks on other countries.
Though it's sometimes pointed out that a resort to nuclear warfare on the part of Iran would be totally irrational.
It would be utterly suicidal, given what we know about Israel's military capability for Iran to resort to nuclear war with Israel.
And so these rational wishful thinkers point out to Israelis, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Those apparently unclear to the international community that Iran would, under all conditions, refrain from using nuclear weapons against Israel.
Why not? In an article entitled Optimal War and you said, bellum,
both sides argue that the tourists might be ineffective against leaders who are not particularly concerned with their people.
Leaders themselves might have reasonable hope of escaping the consequences.
Or they might be religious fanatics or ideologues prepared to launch an attack regardless of possible retaliation.
Consider the religious zealots who believe that death during war against enemies will bring them to a blissful existence.
I'm only partly convinced by this argument. Both sides argue that Iran's public and government have strong religious motivations.
It is not obvious the threat of retaliation following an actual attack will dissuade aggression by such government.
Far, far more significantly, to my mind, they also question whether.
Deterrence is going to be terribly effective against terrorists and their supplier states.
It's the fear, which I think it is in this case, is partly of states dispensing some form of nuclear weapons to terrorist groups.
There may be little possibility of deterring them, either cooperate with the threat of retaliation.
International terrorists without much of a permanent base are notoriously difficult to deter.
States are unlikely to suffer the brunt of nuclear retaliation for a terrorist attack,
a nuclear attack on their entire population as a response to an assault,
however massive launched by a handful of terrorists is going to be regarded and ruled out as utterly excessive and disproportionate.
In cases such as this one, in which the concern is partly about terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
It is at least questionable whether deterrence is always a feasible option given Iran's track record of aiding terrorist organisations.
It's overwhelmingly likely to supply US terrorist clients with weapons of mass destruction, with the hope of avoiding retaliation on its soil.
Now, even if Iran were to refrain from any of this for the time being,
the infliction of perpetual terror in itself constitutes an attack against Israel.
This type of attack on the basic rights of Israelis to live safely and freely living under Iranian
threat is virtually certain with a significant prospect of a genocidal attack backing it up.
Now, of course, if Iran obtain nuclear weapons, individual Israelis could leave and thus avoid any threat to life and limb.
Even the Jewish experience of persecution and genocide, this is not unlikely.
Undoubtedly, this is one of Ahmadinejad's hopes because this would leave Israel open to be overrun.
But it's absolutely no defence of the Iranian president to point out that he might prefer that Israelis simply leave,
leaving Israel very vulnerable than actually killing them,
while also captures this type of terrorising fear when he considers that a threat
may be sufficient to justify defensive war against states and nations that are,
in a sense, already engaged in harming us and who have already harmed us by their threats, even if they have not yet inflicted any physical injury.
Furthermore, as noted, Iran has already inflicted physical injury with its complicity in terrorism.
Certainly support for such attacks indicate manifest intent to injure possibly.
Such attacks already constitute armed attacks against Israelis.
Much more active preparation and clear direction. And Iran's intent becomes a positive danger.
An early military strike against Iran might then be justified as defensive.
It will also serves when a general situation emerges in which waiting or doing anything other than fighting greatly magnifies the risk to others.
All right. I suggested that the threat of a nuclear Iran is credible and that the risk is genuine.
Precise probability of an Iranian attack, either directly or by terrorist proxy seems extremely difficult to gauge.
And I'll admit that this, I think, is where magnitude of harm fits into the risk factor.
And quantitative rather than straightforwardly temporal interpretation of imminence has to come not only for the likelihood of a future attack,
but also for the extent of harm,
the magnitude of harm in question and anything but the most antiquated understanding of imminence relevant only to attack with conventional weapons.
The sheer vastness of the of the possible atrocity has to fit in poor calculations
of risk and urgent necessities as part of the overwhelming nature of the threat.
Of course, recognising that the magnitude of harm lowers the threshold for prevent prevention is looming,
does doesn't in itself justify any particular attack.
So in thinking about this specific case, I think we should resist easy answers from those who would entirely disregard international
constraints in favour of renewing an overall permissive doctrine of pre-emption.
I think there's quite a lot of literature like that John Yoo, Alan Dershowitz and so forth.
But routine and predictable opposition to any early military strike under any conditions is equally dangerous and simplistic.
There's no call for automatic rejection of the military option. Neither from the perspective of the just war tradition, nor from international law.
Both has the resources for authorising such such action in the appropriate cases.
Possibly the language of pre-emption and imminence may not even be necessary
when one recognises Iranian sponsored terrorism as armed attack against Israel.
That has already occurred. Certainly funding and supporting these attacks offer a material injury and constitute
manifest intent to injure on the part of Iran and ultimately any early strike on Iran.
It is a national endeavour and not an Israeli endeavour.
It would be authorised in advance by the U.N. Security Council and backed by the United States.
This is extremely unlikely. Failing that, to conclude, should Israel attack Iran?
Like any military action,
such an operation would only be justified at the point of last resort as an absolute last chance at averting a catastrophic harm.
And the most crucial practical questions here cannot be answered.
In theory, when would that be similarly satisfying?
The just war requirement of proportionality, I believe, will depend on the extent of military action required and its costs,
both direct and collateral, as against its projected benefits.
All this is widely disputed, even among military experts, and I'm not a military expert.
It's obvious that Israeli preventive action would be limited and falling far short of conquest and regime change of the type we saw,
obviously, in Iraq. Just look at the size of Israel. Look the size of Iran. On the other hand, it's wildly optimistic.
In fact, impossible to think that the threat of a nuclear Iran can be thwarted by a
single in and out Israeli air strike of the type that took place in Iraq in 81.
On all accounts, the situation is extremely dangerous and extremely complicated.
Such a strike is likely to cause considerable collateral damage.
It might result in enhanced terrorism against Israel, probably enhanced terrorism against Jewish communities abroad.
Conceivably, it might result in war with neighbouring Arab countries such as Syria.
I think that's a bit less likely. As for the benefits, admittedly,
the optimal aim of an Israeli strike would be forestalling of developing harm and postponing the threat as far as possible into the distant future.
It's doubtful whether any nation can be prevented indefinitely from obtaining nuclear power if it remains determined to do so.
Halting a genocidal threat and significantly postponing its recurrence with the hope
of future improvement in the overall situation is nonetheless no small achievement.
As for appropriate timing, American assessments indicate, as I've suggested,
that the threat to be averted in relation to its imminence is to be judged is not an actual Iranian attack on Israel,
but rather the point at which Iran could obtain nuclear capacity.
President Obama's position that. A. Nuclear.
On it would be unacceptable implies that this eventuality in itself would constitute a harm to be averted whenever it emerges as imminent.
Certainly it can be averted after it matures.
Pre-emption in such cases, once a threatening nation is armed with nuclear weapons and poised to attack, is clearly not a feasible option.
If this is so, then if and when all else fails and I stress that if and when all else fails and
subject to reliable international intelligence gathering and proportionality,
the right thing to strike would not be when an actual nuclear attack is on its way,
but rather when Iran is on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons any later than that.
And the response is too late. Useless and probably suicidal any sooner.
And the threat is not imminent in any sense of the word. However, if there is to be any margin for error,
I suggest the magnitude of the risk implies that it would be preferable and justifiable for
Israel to err on the side of striking somewhat too early rather than striking too late.
Stated plainly there's something too much to lose.
Thank you. Thank you for.