Experts say Israel may strike First

How the Begin Doctrine justifies preemptive strikes
I’m an international security scholar who studies Israel’s proactive use of its military to prevent nuclear buildup in the Middle East.

Israel has a counterproliferation policy, called the Begin Doctrine, which allows it to wage preventive strikes against enemies with weapons of mass destruction programs. Using the Begin Doctrine as a justification for preemptive strikes, the Israeli government has for decades quietly decimated nuclear and chemical facilities across the Middle East.

When President Saddam Hussein’s potential nuclear military ambitions raised concerns in 1981, the Israeli government destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in a surprise attack called Operation Opera.

“On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction against the people of Israel,” a government release stated at the time. “We shall defend the citizens of Israel in good time and with all the means at our disposal.”

In 2007, Israel responded to Syria’s failure to report its uranium processing by striking a nuclear reactor in the Deir ez-Zor region. The United States, which was reportedly informed ahead of the attack, made no effort to stop Israel.

Israel has also been accused of sponsoring the assassinations of at least four Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010. The incidents have never been fully investigated, and Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the targeted killings.

Israel has also deterred nuclear proliferation in the Mideast using less lethal, more high tech strategies.

In 2008 and 2009, Israel used computer malware called Stuxnet to disrupt Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. The program infected the software that controlled centrifuge speed at the Natanz nuclear plant, alternately speeding up and slowing down the machines that produce enriched uranium to cripple production of the material. The Obama administration secretly supported the cyberattacks.

Though the United States, United Nations and other world powers officially condemned some of these unprovoked Israeli military aggression, other preemptive Israeli attacks have been met with silence from the international community.

The international community may even appreciate Israel’s role as a nuclear nonproliferation watchdog in the Middle East, my research suggests. Israel has never been punished for attacking its neighbors’ weapons programs.

Decades after Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear plant, President Bill Clinton called it “a really good thing.”

“It kept Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear power,” he said at the 2005 Davos World Economic Forum.

“But it’s not clear to me they have that option in Iran,” he added.

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