If the U.S. does not strike a deal strictly prohibiting Tehran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel will be forced to attack Iran in order to preemptively defend itself from annihilation, according to Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who appeared Monday on "America’s Forum."
"Israel has to assume that Iran would use the nuclear weapons against it," Dershowitz said on the
Newsmax TV show. "It's the only suicide nation in the world that sent 100,000 of its own children to die in the war with Iraq, giving them tokens to heaven."
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"It talks about the culture of death all the time. It has explicitly threatened to annihilate Israel so Israel has to assume that
Iran having a bomb means Iran using a bomb, even if there's only a 5 or 10 percent chance that's true," Dershowitz said. "That has to be their operating assumption and so Israel will attack Iran if it is on the threshold of making a nuclear bomb.
"That's why it's so important for the United States to make a good deal which stops the centrifuges from spinning, stops them from developing nuclear missiles, stops them from developing nuclear triggers."
Israel will be compelled to take the same tack that the U.S. did during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he said.
"The United States would do the same thing if somebody had missiles directed at it,” Dershowitz said. "It did that in Cuba, obviously ... during the Kennedy administration and Israel will not allow a threshold nuclear state that is sworn to its destruction to be a few hundred miles away."
The United States should also not be short-sighted in its forcefulness with Iran considering Tehran is designing a blue print to become the leader of the Middle East and build "intercontinental ballistic missiles."
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"You don't need that for Israel, you need that to reach the United States," he said. "They also have the capability of building suitcase bombs given to Hezbollah which is its surrogate.
"Remember Hezbollah once before blew up an American military barrack killing several hundred Americans, so America is at great risk from a nuclear threshold Iran and I hope this administration will understand that.
"What I fear is that my friend Barack Obama may become the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century if he makes a bad deal the way Chamberlain made a bad deal with the Nazis in the 1930s," he said.
"I don't want to see that happen. I want to see a good deal or no deal and military action if necessary, but the worst thing would be for Iran to develop nuclear capacity, the worst thing for the United States, the worst thing for Israel and the worst thing for world peace."
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