A nuclear fireball detonated over Jerusalem would kill a substantial fraction of the city's half-million Jews - and the city's quarter-million Palestinians. But not only lives would be destroyed. Next to the Kaaba in Mecca, the most sacred site to Sunni Muslims in the world is the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which comprise the Haram esh-Sharif, the noble sanctuary on top of Temple Mount.

A nuke would turn the noble sanctuary into radioactive dust. This is what Iran's terrorist leaders are threatening to do. So all you Palestinians, all you Sunni Muslims out there, wherever you are, get the picture: Wiping Israel off the map means wiping your sacred noble sanctuary off the map, as well. It's an inescapable package deal.

The Palestinians have more to fear from a nuclear attack on Israel than the Jews. Iran might be able to build a handful of firecracker fission (atom bomb) nukes in the 10- to 20-kiloton range. Set any of these off in an above-ground airburst to maximize lethality, and the heat fries everyone within a mile radius. The neutrons travel not much more and gamma rays much less, killing folks with radiation poisoning within a radius of less than 2 miles.

In other words, the radiation effects are very localized. Anyone 5 miles away would just get a sunburn. The greatest danger more than a few miles away is flying glass from blown-out windows caused by the shock wave. (Avoiding the flying glass was the purpose of duck-and-cover practice of diving under school desks back in the '50s.)

Any effective nuking of Israel would thus have to score multiple detonations in Israel's population centers. There is no way to do this in a country the size of New Jersey without devastating the Palestinian population at least as much as the Israeli.

In any nuclear attack on Israel, Iran would have to make a choice: Use its handful of bombs to hit the population centers or hit the Zechariah nuclear missile base southeast of Tel Aviv. Iran cannot do both.

It will take multiple direct hits to incapacitate Zechariah, collapsing the underground tunnels for the TELs (transporter erector launchers). These launch the Jericho-2 missile with a range of 2,000 miles carrying a nuke far more lethal than an Iranian firecracker.

Israel has at least 200, and possibly as many as 400, nuclear warheads, many of which are fusion (hydrogen bombs) in the range of 150 kilotons, many times more destructive than whatever the Iranians come up with. The Jericho-2 can easily reach Tehran or any other location in Iran. A nuclear strike by Iran upon Israel could precipitate the nuclear retaliatory annihilation of Iran.

The mullahs need to realize the name of Zechariah was chosen with a purpose for Israel's missile base. It is Hebrew for: "God remembers with a vengeance."

It is Sunni Muslims who need to be terrified of a nuclear Iran. And indeed, Ahmadinejad's wipe-off-the-map bluster may be misdirection, for he must know that Israel and the Jews would survive his attack, and he and his country would not survive theirs. It is then more likely that Ahmadinejad intends to be an 800-pound Shiite nuclear gorilla, pushing around the Sunnis of the Middle East.

Sunni Saudi Arabia - hated by Iran's mullacracy - would be defenseless. So would Sunni Jordan - hated by the mullahs. So would Dubai and the emirates. So would Kuwait. Iran is going to aim its nukes at them. They either become colonial subjects of Iran - or (get ready for this) make a deal with Israel and be placed under the protection of an Israeli nuclear umbrella.

They could try this with another nuclear neighbor, and a Sunni Muslim one at that: Pakistan. But Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is devoted to protection from India, and it is limited (around 25 or so low-kiloton fission warheads). An Israeli umbrella may prove an irresistible option.

"We can protect you from Iran," should be Israel's message to Sunni Arabs from Ramallah to Riyadh. "The only price for our protection is peace between us."

Jack Wheeler is the editor of To The Point at www.tothepointnews.com.

Appearing before the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Brig.-Gen. Ilan Bitton - head of Israel's Air Defense Forces - said that, while the Arrow was highly effective against the Scud missiles that make up most of Syria's arsenal, it "needed improvement" to face the challenges posed by Iran's Shihab-3.

Improvements were recently made to the Arrow, the officer said, explaining the new confidence, and it was now able to detect even a missile carrying a split warhead and armed with decoys meant to fool the anti-missile system.

Asked about the danger of the Arrow taking out a non-conventional or nuclear missile over Israel, the officer said that the incoming missile would be destroyed at such a high altitude that it would disperse and destroy its payload without causing any casualties.

"There is constant pressure to always stay a step ahead of our adversaries," the officer said. "They developed decoys on their missiles and we developed ways to detect the decoys and to be able to accurately strike the incoming threat."

The Arrow 2 was last tested in December and succeeded in intercepting an incoming rocket simulating an Iranian Shihab at an altitude higher than ever before tested in the previous 13 Arrow launches. While the Arrow was Israel's first line of defense against an Iranian-launched missile, air force Patriot batteries - known for their action during the first Gulf War - also followed incoming missiles and served as the country's back-up interception system.

Israel has at least two operational Arrow batteries, with reportedly hundreds of missiles for each battery. One is stationed at Palmahim to protect Tel Aviv and the other is at Ein Shemer near Hadera in the north.

The Iranian threat, the officer said, was not only felt by Israel but also prompted European countries that fall within the Shihab's long range to begin development of or negotiations to purchase anti-missile defense systems similar to the Arrow. Turkey was recently mentioned in the media as interested in purchasing the Arrow missile defense system in an effort to improve its aerial defense in light of Iran's procurement of the deadly Shihab.

"Europe has noticed the threat and is becoming a bigger player in the development of active [missile] defense systems," the officer said. "They are busy developing, researching and waking up."

Israel, the officer said, was constantly improving its capabilities in the face of the growing threats from its Arab neighbors. "The threats from the other side have become deadlier," the officer said. "But we have also been in the process of development and updating so we can always be a step ahead of them."

The Arrow project began over 12 years ago to address the threat posed by relatively crude Scud missiles, like the ones Iraq fired into Israel during the Gulf War. But as the project developed, the defense establishment was determined not to focus on past wars but to look ahead to future threats, including faster rockets launched from farther away, possibly with multiple warheads. Nearly $2.5 billion has already been invested in the missile defense system, with two-thirds of the funding coming from the US Missile Defense Agency.

But while Israel was protected from the Shihab by the Arrow, cities were left vulnerable and unprotected from Katyusha rockets - several thousand of which are in the hands of Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon - and Palestinian-developed Kassam rockets. While the technology to intercept and destroy these low-tech rockets was in existence, the officer claimed that the funding to develop systems to do so was not. The Arrow is irrelevant as regards missiles with a range of less than 60-70 km.

"There are constant efforts to develop a system," the officer said. "There will be a solution one day, since the technology exists and the problem is the financing."

After being branded as part of an "axis of evil" by U.S. president George W. Bush in January 2002, Iran has contended that its nuclear program aims to produce energy, not weapons. Only 20 per cent of respondents believe Iran is a threat to the U.S. that requires military action now.

In November 2004, the Iranian government announced a voluntary suspension of its uranium enrichment program following international pressure. In August 2005, Iran resumed uranium conversion activities at the Isfahan facility. In January, Iran removed the international seals from the Natanz site.

In his Jan. 31 State of the Union address, Bush said Iran "is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats."

On Mar. 1, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said a report prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could not prove that Iran is attempting to produce nuclear weapons, adding, "Iran (...) is exercising its right to possess nuclear technology with peaceful intentions. We are opposed to nuclear weapons."

The IAEA has said that the "lack of cooperation on the part of Iranian authorities" does not allow the body to effectively conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear activities taking place inside the country.

Therefore it must have come as a great shock to the system for Americans this week to hear Iran's former president, Mohammad Khatami, rail against the ignorant Holocaust revisionism mouthed by his successor, the hardline flibbertigibbet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Excerpts after the jump below.) Or rather, it would have come as a shock to the American system to hear Khatami's words – if Americans had actually been told about them.

But it serves no interests among America's own ruling cliques to dilute the current line of the day: that Iran is a hellhole of unremitting evil, a new Nazi Germany led by a new Hitler. So Khatami's remarks, reported widely elsewhere in the world, were not allowed to disturb the lie-drugged slumber of the American consciousness.

No one knows what dark dreams stir in Ahmadinejad's noggin, of course; he seems from most accounts to be an unpleasant character, as rabid fundamentalists usually are, proud of his willful ignorance, which he mistakes for steadfast integrity. (The type is not unknown among world leaders today.) However, in coming to grips with the Iran "crisis" that is being forced upon us, there are two salient facts to keep in mind.

First of all, Ahmadinejad's malevolent blather does not represent the entirety of the Iranian people – or even the entirety of the Iranian government, as even a cursory examination of current Tehran politics shows – any more than George W. Bush and his rapacious gang of cronies and cranks represents the entirety of the American people. (Although at the moment, Bush has far greater control over the American government than Ahmadinejad has in Iran.)

Second, and perhaps most importantly, it is highly unlikely that Ahmadinejad would have ever been elected president if Bush and his crony-cranks had not relentlessly and ruthlessly undercut every attempt by the moderate government of Khatami to forge a new relationship between Iran and the United States. The greatest opportunity came after September 11, of course, when Iran sought to help the US break al Qaeda, a common enemy that threatened both nations. But Bush and his circle, as we now know, were not interested in breaking al Qaeda or fighting terrorism; they were interested in "establishing a military footprint" in Iraq, as part of a wide-ranging plan to "project dominance" over the energy resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, while fomenting "creative destruction" throughout the region, in the belief that when the resultant rivers of blood had at last subsided, there would be a series of obedient client regimes installed in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere – including, in the dreams of some of the crankiest cronies, new, even more obedient American satraps in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Therefore, there could be no accommodation with moderate elements in Iran; on the contrary, the existence of a moderate faction within the Iranian power structure could only be a hindrance to the Bushists' avowed goals. How could you maintain the profitable, fear-fomenting image of a dastardly nation – a member of the "axis of evil," no less – bent on the destruction of "the American way of life," if its leaders are trying reach an accommodation with you, if they speak of moderation, of a "dialogue among civilizations"? Khatami – already hemmed in by the hardline mullahs, unable to deliver all of his promised domestic reforms – was also left with nothing to show for his moderate foreign policy. Instead, Bush confirmed the mullah's criticism of Khatami: "You reach out to the infidels, and what do you get? They spit in your face, they try to destroy us."

(There is a remarkable parallel here to the curious dynamic between Bush and Osama bin Laden, whereby almost every action undertaken by Bush tends to confirm bin Laden's vision of the world: "You see? I told you America was a Crusader Nation bent on attacking Islam – and now Bush has invaded Iraq and all its holy sites for no reason whatsoever. You see? I told you America regards Muslims as nothing more than dogs and beasts – now see how they treat our brothers in their secret prisons!" And so on and depressingly on. Even Bush himself has acknowledged this odd symbiosis, when, just this week, he admitted that bin Laden's (or "bin Laden's") sudden appearance in the closing days of the 2004 presidential election tipped the race in his favor. As Eric Alterman and others have noted, bin Laden is more than savvy enough to know that such an intervention would have precisely that effect: bolstering Bush. Both men need each other to stoke the fear and hatred they feed upon.)

Just as the September 11 attacks were openly regarded by the Bushists as an "opportunity" for implementing their long-planned militarist agenda – "Through my tears, I see opportunity," Bush declared just days after the strike – so too the election of Ahmadinejad was a god-send for the gang: a hard-line goon straight out of central casting, waving the red flag of Holocaust-denial before the world. Now some serious warmongering and fear-fomenting could be done! For who would defend such a moral cretin? Through him, you could defame and dehumanize an entire nation: the necessary prerequisite for any mass blood-letting you have in mind.

But one doesn't have to defend Ahmadinejad – or Khatami, for that matter – in order to oppose the instigation of a foolish and murderous military action against Iran. It is self-evident that such an action would kill thousands of innocent people and set in motion a chain of monstrous consequences beyond anyone's control – including the certainty of more terrorism and more hatred for America, the great likelihood of global economic ruin, and the very real possibility of actually launching the world war between the West and Islam that the Bushists like to pretend is already taking place.

Yet that appears to be where we are heading. Although some say that the Bushists are now too weak politically and perhaps militarily to strike at Iran – an argument that is more of a projected wish than a reality, I fear – no one should ever underestimate the foolishness, recklessness, avarice, greed and callousness of the Bush Faction. The disaster in Iraq stands as indisputable proof of their own moral cretinism and incompetent folly.

So it would be nice if the American people could be given a more variegated view of Iran, as represented in the comments below from Khatami and some of the Iranian press. But where's the "opportunity" for war profits, war powers and world dominance in that?

Excerpts from Agence France Presse:

Iran's former reformist President Mohammad Khatami has described the Holocaust as a "historical reality" - a stinging attack on his controversial and revisionist successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "We should speak out if even a single Jew is killed. Don't forget that one of the crimes of Hitler, Nazism and German national socialism was the massacre of innocent people, among them many Jews," the cleric said in comments carried in the Iranian press Wednesday.

The Holocaust, he asserted, should be recognized "even if this historical reality has been misused and there is enormous pressure on the Palestinian people." Ahmadinejad has caused international outrage by insisting the Holocaust was a myth used to justify the creation of Israel.

Khatami served as Iran's president from 1997 to 2005, and attempted to open up Iran to the West and initiate a "dialogue among civilizations" - in stark contrast to the ultra-conservative agenda of Ahmadinejad. The former president, who has shied away from the political limelight since leaving office, also asserted Muslims were not out to persecute Jews.

"The persecution of Jews, just like Nazism, is a Western phenomenon. In the east, we have always lived side by side with them. And we follow a religion that states that the death of an innocent person is the death of all of humanity," Khatami said…

Ahmadinejad also came under attack from the prominent and centrist Shargh newspaper, which complained that "the Holocaust has, as wished for by the president, become a topic of our foreign policy. The Jewish question was never a problem for Iran or Islam, and is a Christian-European problem," the paper argued. "Don't we have enough with the nuclear question, human rights, free elections and political in-fighting, so do we need to add another problem to that?" it said, saying Iran would be better off "thinking of the creation of a Palestinian state rather than the destruction of Israel."