Iran’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons Continues Apace

In December, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the Islamic Republic had tested a ballistic missile that could easily be equipped with a nuclear warhead. Last week, Pompeo warned Tehran to refrain from launching satellites with certain types of rockets since these use the same technology employed in ballistic missiles. Farzin Nadimi puts these remarks in context:

The [description of the missiles as given by Pompeo] in December match those of the Khoramshahr, a relatively new medium-range ballistic missile unveiled in September 2017 and test-fired on at least three occasions. . . . The Khoramshahr can reportedly carry a far heavier payload than would be required for a weapon whose purpose is pinpoint accuracy—its claimed 1,800-kilogram warhead would make it the largest in Iran’s arsenal. One possibility is that this extra capacity is designed to carry multiple warheads. . . . If Iran has in fact successfully tested such a capability for the first time, it would be an alarming milestone, since multiple warheads have a better chance of defeating missile defenses.

The Khoramshahr’s large payload would also make the job of mating it with a first-generation nuclear warhead relatively easy, at least in theory. One rule of thumb among experts is that any missile capable of carrying a 500–1,000-kilogram warhead can be mounted with a nuclear device. Khoramshahr reportedly offers twice that capacity—a troubling figure given the fact that miniaturizing a warhead is arguably one of the most daunting tasks in nuclear-weapons design.

[T]he international community should not forget that the [ballistic-missile] program remains a central pillar of Iran’s strategy for dominating the region. Although Tehran became less public about its missile advancements following the [2015] nuclear deal, there has been no substantive halt in the program’s progress. Most troubling, the latest test indicates that [Tehran] is moving forward with the Khoramshahr, a ballistic-missile design that may already have the capability of lifting a heavy payload to targets anywhere in the Middle East or southern Europe.

Read more at Washington Institute for Near East Policy

More about: Iran, Iran nuclear program, Mike Pompeo, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society