Israel should be the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons
Don’t get me wrong. Don’t rush to judge the content of the article by its title. I will first explain the context of this. I believe that nuclear weapons are the most nefarious product that science has ever been able to invent. We saw this at the end of World War II when 40% of the population of Hiroshima and 27% of the population of Nagasaki were annihilated by 2 atomic bombs of “only” 15 and 21 kilotons respectively. The effects of the radiation released by those two nuclear explosions persist to this day (almost 80 years later) in the last “hibakusha,” or survivors of the 2 atomic bombs detonated in Japan in 1945.
Currently, there are nuclear weapons that are hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of times more powerful than the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One example is the Tsar bomb of 50 megatons (50,000 kilotons), developed in the early 1960s by the Soviet Union. There are also between 12,500 and 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world, spread across 9 countries (Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea), with Russia and the United States owning 90% of these.
In the present, no greater risk to global public health is envisioned than a nuclear conflict. A pandemic is an “infinitely” lesser public health problem in comparison, and with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, governments and public health systems around the world gained some experience on the subject. Only the impact of a large asteroid could surpass a nuclear war.
For example, a 2019 study published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reveals how a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, using around 200 nuclear weapons between 15 and 100 kilotons, would immediately produce hundreds of millions of deaths and, in the medium term, a decrease in atmospheric and oceanic temperatures worldwide, lasting for a decade. There would also be a decrease in average global rainfall, affecting harvests in all countries around the world.
This would bring global hunger and malnutrition, even in some high-income countries. A nuclear war between the United States and Russia would produce the same effect, but on a much larger scale, as 5 to 10 times more teragrams (a teragram is equivalent to one million tons) of smoke from nuclear explosions and resulting fires would be released.
Once the moment arrives, the rulers who have survived the nuclear holocaust will want to know nothing more of nuclear weapons. But by then it will be too late. The damage will already have been done.
Some survivors would rather have been pulverized during the nuclear blast than live with the bodily consequences of the explosions in a completely collapsed world, without adequate hospitals, without enough healthcare personnel (since a large percentage of them will die during the attacks, as happened in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), without medicine, without medical supplies, without any public health program to treat emerging diseases such as HIV/AIDS, Ebola, Hepatitis C or acute diarrheal disease by rotavirus, among others, and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes or cancer.
Vaccination programs, programs to control child malnutrition in poor countries, both in Africa, Latin America and Asia, will disappear. Acute illnesses will not be adequately treated.
Elective surgeries will not be a priority, and many patients will have to be left to their fate if they need emergency surgery, such as appendicitis or perforating abdominal trauma, due to the destruction of many major hospitals, especially in the attacked cities.
Sanitation conditions will be so deplorable that infectious outbreaks among survivors will be common. In short, global public health will literally regress to the Middle Ages.
In agriculture, some crops will survive the catastrophe, but they will be quickly lost due to the effects on the atmosphere of the nuclear war and what can be harvested at that time will be insufficient for all the survivors. Resuming agricultural activity in a post-nuclear world will be extremely difficult due to environmental damage. Much of the livestock and poultry farming will eventually be lost due to the lack of cereals to feed the animals.
Stock markets will fall, paper money will be worthless, and economies worldwide will collapse. The new world powers will be those that have remained standing with the most resources.
Democracy will cease to exist in most countries directly or indirectly affected by nuclear warfare to make way for dictatorships to maintain some social order. Extrajudicial executions will be a more practical solution for anyone who disrupts or opposes the new order.
Many cities will be abandoned, and large regions near destroyed nuclear reactors, such as those around Chernobyl, will be uninhabitable for hundreds of years. People who cannot leave these areas or regions quickly will suffer the bodily effects of exposure to high levels of radiation from destroyed nuclear reactors.
Migration to moderately habitable regions will be common. Caravans where the law of the strongest will rule on their journey to promised lands will be numerous. The quality of life in them will be deplorable. There will be no manna falling from the sky every morning.
It is unknown whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) will play a role before or after a nuclear war. Artificial intelligence may evolve to the point where one day it is capable of hacking any computer program, including the systems responsible for launching nuclear weapons. Regardless of the role it may play before a nuclear war, Artificial Intelligence will survive it, will be present and will continue to evolve in the post-nuclear era with unsuspected functions and capabilities.
Once the general context of a sufficiently destructive nuclear war has been described, it can be concluded that it is not advisable for another nation in the Middle East to obtain nuclear weapons, but not only in the Middle East, also Europe, Asia or any other region of the world.
Total nuclear disarmament is ideal, but given its improbability, preventing another nation in the world from acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons is an achievable objective. Reducing the number of nuclear weapons, on the other hand, would lead to nothing. A very small percentage of all nuclear weapons is enough to destroy everything.
The problem is that historically, the Middle East has been the most conflict-ridden region in the world, and both the Iranian government and some terrorist organizations such as Hamas have publicly expressed their desire to erase Israel from the face of the Earth.
For example, North Korea has already threatened to destroy South Korea with nuclear weapons only if provoked. In short, North Korea can destroy South Korea but does not want to do so. Ultimately, they are still distant brothers. It will only do so if its territorial integrity is threatened by South Korea.
The nuclear doctrines of the 9 nuclear powers are very similar, and none of them has expressed a desire to eliminate another nuclear power, or any other non-nuclear power. The nuclear doctrines of these 9 countries have been defensive in nature to date.
Not even the Israeli government has set itself the goal of eliminating a country as hostile as Iran, although it could do so.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons. Although Israel is not part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it maintains a policy of nuclear ambiguity for national security reasons, that is, it neither affirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons. It is believed to possess between 90 and 400 nuclear weapons, which can be deployed throughout the Middle East through its nuclear triad composed of F-15 and F-16 fighter jets, cruise missiles launched from Dolphin-class submarines, and Jericho intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Like the rest of the nuclear powers, Israel has refrained from using them throughout this time despite the numerous wars in which it has participated in recent decades.
It should be noted that with just over 22,000 square kilometers, Israel is a country extremely vulnerable to hypothetical nuclear annihilation. Ten nuclear bombs of between 50 and 100 kilotons detonated in Israel’s most densely populated districts would be enough to decimate a large part of the Israeli population.

What would happen if Iran one day had the capacity to produce nuclear weapons on a large scale?
In some of my previously published articles on this blog, such as “Implications of a nuclear attack on Israeli territory”, “Medical effects on Palestinians in the event of a nuclear attack on Israel”, or “It is easier to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon than on Israeli territory”, I have hinted that a nuclear attack on Israel would be equivalent to a nuclear attack on the Palestinians due to the geographical proximity of both populations.
The political decision to do so would perhaps be the worst political mistake in modern world history, as it would also destroy one of the greatest political projects of all time, a project supported by 75% of the member states of the UN General Assembly, that is, the birth of a Palestinian State sharing its borders with Israel.
Perhaps Iran, once possessing enough nuclear weapons, would refrain for an indeterminate time from detonating them on Israeli territory, but the temptation to eliminate Israel once and for all might be greater than the desire to see the Palestinian nation flourishing in peace and developing as another member state of the UN.
Many Palestinians, if not the vast majority, would also be annihilated or die later from wounds and fallout. The Dome of the Rock, the third holiest place in Islam, would also be destroyed in the event of a nuclear attack on Jerusalem. However, once destroyed, it could eventually be rebuilt once those 22,000 km2 are re-occupied by the Arab world, which has almost 500 million inhabitants between the borders of its 22 countries.
On the other hand, Israel would also respond by using its nuclear weapons against its aggressors, producing more destruction in the Middle East.
A scenario like this could also produce a climate model similar to that of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, as we saw at the beginning of this article.
We already have enough with the current 9 nuclear powers. The world does not need another nuclear power, whether it is South Korea, Ukraine, Taiwan or one like Iran, which has expressed its desire to exterminate an entire country. Statements must be taken literally. We are not here to minimize words by redefining them to mean what we want them to mean.
Trying to annihilate Israel through a nuclear attack would jeopardize the fragile global stability we have. Collateral damage, loss of human life, and damage to the environment could get out of control. Even Russia, Iran’s current ally, should oppose Iran’s becoming a nuclear power one day.
Another risk is that the diplomatic path does not work in this case, and Israel decides one day to launch a preemptive and decisive attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which could also have a negative outcome for the region and the world. The overall picture, if the current trend continues, is not encouraging at all.
It should be remembered that Israel once destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor southeast of Baghdad in 1981 (Operation Opera) and in 2007, an apparent nuclear reactor under construction in the Syrian desert (Operation Orchard).
Given the foregoing, Israel should remain the only country with nuclear weapons in the Middle East, as long as its nuclear doctrine remains defensive. On the other hand, Israel cannot be asked to get rid of all its nuclear weapons if the same is not demanded of the rest of the nuclear powers.
Finally, this issue is not about Zionism or anti-Zionism, it is a matter of global security, an issue that could seriously affect the rest of the nations not involved in a nuclear conflict originating in the Middle East with an outcome difficult to estimate, but ultimately catastrophic.