MAD: The Biggest Lesson the Media’s Missing on Iran

As I was hiding in bomb shelters in recent days together with a group of brave US travelers, most of whom had never been to Israel before, I understood the tradeoff that was underway: our temporary safety for the long-term security of democracies, including Israel.

If only the media understood and presented reality. Through my podcast and newsletter They Stand Corrected, I cover the endless stream of lies, distortions, and “open mic nights” for propagandists that big mainstream media offer in lieu of fact checked reporting. In this case, it took no time for major news agencies to downplay or deny Iran’s dangers and cast Israel’s actions as some sort of unnecessary aggression.

The problem isn’t just that the media ignores vital details — Iran’s enrichment activities; its constant threats against Israel, the United States, and the West; its sponsorship of Islamist terrorist groups wreaking havoc on the Middle East and the world. The media is also missing the most crucial, overarching point to put all of this in context: The doctrine of “mutual assured destruction” is not a trustworthy deterrent for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

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For decades, the MAD theory has helped people at least feel that a nuclear war is less likely. The idea, put simply, is that if a nuclear power launched an attack on another, the other would respond in kind, destroying the party that started it. The thinking behind this belief boils down to: Who would do that?

When it comes to Iran, the doctrine of ‘mutual assured destruction’ is not a trustworthy deterrent.

This is where a key lesson from the September 11, 2001, attacks comes into play. In the wake of that horror, there was talk about the “failure of imagination.” In fact, the 9/11 Commission Report listed it first: “We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures: in imagination, policy, capabilities, and management.”

Understanding the nuclear threat from Iran requires applying this lesson to MAD (which is sometimes written out as the more grammatically accurate “mutually assured destruction”). We need to imagine: What if there was a nuclear power that doesn’t care about mutual destruction? Or, worse, a nuclear power that had radicalized its population to believe death is good when it means killing Jews and others?

Once we open our minds to the possibility, we can suddenly see that it’s already a reality. Leaders of Iran’s proxy Hamas say, “We love death for Allah like you [Israelis] love life.” They have been working to spread this ideology far and wide. As Israel Hayom columnist Nadav Sharagi explains, former Palestinian Authority mufti Sheikh Ikrima Sabri “declared years ago that ‘the Muslim loves death and martyrdom, just as the Jews love life.’ This ideology has formed the basis for Hamas, Iran, and their PA partners to indoctrinate thousands of terrorists, who – inspired by rulings of the late prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and senior Al-Azhar officials – sanctify death when it facilitates killing Jews and harming them.”

It takes no logical jump to think that Iran would be willing to “sacrifice” many of its own citizens in order to kill as many Jews as possible. This is especially likely given that Iran routinely kills its own dissidents, even exiles. Iran’s leaders may also think of it as a perverse numbers game — Israel has fewer than 10 million inhabitants, while Iran has 92 million; there are fewer than 16 million Jewish people worldwide, compared to 2 billion Muslims. In Iran’s view, Muslims would repopulate — and the fact that about half the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel is an opportunity for mass extermination.

Of course, this battle is not just about Israel or Jews. Islamist terrorism has been exploding worldwide for years, with Christians increasingly under attack. Iran is the chief state sponsor of terrorism, and many Arab nations want to stop it as well. On my podcast, Egyptian political analyst Haisam Hassanein described the Middle East as divided between two axes: the “evil axis,” which he also calls the “Iranian axis,” and the “moderate axis.”

To Iran, the fact that about half the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel is an opportunity for mass extermination.

The fight to stop Iran is also a fight to protect democracy in the world. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz got this right when he said, “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.” Of course Merz is being attacked by activists for acknowledging this. But all the screaming in the world can’t erase the truth.

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A battle is underway to protect democracy from anti-democratic forces on the far right and the far left — the latter of which, amazingly, has glommed onto Islamist terrorism despite its overwhelming similarities to far-right white nationalism. As the world’s front line in the battle against Islamist terrorism, Israel doesn’t have the luxury of Ivy League keyboard warring. It has to be realistic and strategic, and do the historic work of preventing a new Holocaust.