In the book of Judges of the Old Testament, Samson, who stands out for his supernatural strength, is trapped by the Philistines, traditional enemies of the Israelites, and in a last-ditch attempt to get out heroically, he kills himself, at the same time leading to the death of thousands of “foreigners”.
In modern geopolitics, the legendary hero’s name is used to describe his nuclear deterrence strategy, which makes it clear: if Israel is pushed into what it perceives as imminent danger, it will respond with overwhelming nuclear retaliation.
Definitions and situations
It is worth noting that this particular doctrine is called “Sampson’s Choice”, a name inspired by the book of the same name (1991) by the multi-award winning American journalist Seymour Hersh. Since then, it has been informally adopted by Israel’s political and military leadership circles and by all researchers of the country’s nuclear program, marking a convergence of views on how Israeli nuclear doctrine should operate in the event of an existential threat.
At present, on the military front of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, and in the situation that has developed since the US-Israeli coalition launched a war against Iran, no such danger is visible.
But despite the great losses (more than 1,400 dead and tens of thousands wounded) the theocratic regime shows remarkable resilience, even managing to launch massive retaliatory strikes against Israel and US-allied Gulf countries.
Even the proud of its highly developed defense technology Israel counts at least twenty dead and about 4,000 wounded from the Iranian attacks. The asymmetry between the two hostile states is judged to be abysmal, but the fact remains that the Islamic Republic continues to prove a “tough nut to crack,” disrupting Israeli social and economic life.
Disaster scenarios
In this context, the debate on the inevitable scenario of the use of nuclear weapons comes back to the fore. The one who re-introduced it into the public sphere in fact is the special adviser to the US president on artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies, David Sachs.
On the popular podcast All-In, Sax stated: “”. He even predicted that “if the war continues for weeks or months, it risks disaster” and warned: “And then you have to worry about the possibility of Israel escalating the war, thinking of resorting to the use of nuclear weapons.”
A Haaretz newspaper report said that so far no Israeli official has mentioned the possible use of nukes. However, other analysts share the same concerns as Sachs. “If the Israelis lose to Iran … they will still be next to an Iran that is very dangerous from Israel’s perspective,” University of Chicago political science professor John Mearsheimer told the website Middle East Eye. And he added: “If they can’t deter Iran by conventional means, then we’re getting to a scenario where they’re going to think about using nuclear weapons.”
And the US military website National Security Journal in the US agrees, noting that “Israel’s nuclear threshold is lower than France’s or the US’s because it is more vulnerable.”
It is recalled that to date Israel has neither denied nor officially confirmed that it possesses nuclear weapons. It follows a standing policy called “nuclear ambiguity” or “nuclear opacity.” However, the established belief of analysts, think tanks and intelligence agencies is that Tel Aviv has nuclear warheads, with the non-governmental organization Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation and the Stockholm International Peace Institute putting their number at ninety.
Reports of Tel Aviv’s possession of nuclear weapons were already being made in US intelligence reports in the 1960s, while in September 1979 the US Vela satellite recorded a double flash between Africa and Antarctica, in what CIA and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) reports listed as Israel’s first large-scale nuclear test.
