If President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not exist, the Israeli government would have had to invent him.
He has got almost everything one could wish for in an enemy. He has a big mouth. He is a braggart. He enjoys causing scandals. He is a Holocaust denier. He prophesies that Israel will "vanish from the map" (though he did not say, as falsely reported, that he would wipe Israel off the map).
This week, the pro-Israel lobby organized big demonstrations against his visit to New York. They were a huge success-for Ahmadinejad. He has realized his dream of becoming the center of world attention. He has been given the opportunity to voice his arguments against Israel-some outrageous, some valid-before a worldwide audience.
But Ahmadinejad is not Iran. True, he has won popular elections, but Iran is like the orthodox parties in Israel: it is not their politicians who count, but their rabbis. The Shi'ite religious leadership makes the decisions and commands the armed forces, and this body is neither boastful nor vociferous not scandal-mongering. It exercises a lot of caution.
If Iran was really so eager to obtain a nuclear bomb, it would have acted in utmost silence and kept as low a profile as possible (as Israel did). The swaggering of Ahmadinejad would hurt this effort more than any enemy of Iran could.
It is highly unpleasant to think about a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands (and, indeed, in any hands). I hope it can be avoided by offering inducements and/or imposing sanctions. But even if this does not succeed, it would not be the end of the world, nor the end of Israel. In this area, more than in any other, Israel's deterrent power is immense. Even Ahmadinejad will not risk an exchange of queens-the destruction of Iran for the destruction of Israel.
Napoleon said that to understand a country's policy, one has only to look at the map.
If we do this, we shall see that there is no objective reason for war between Israel and Iran. On the contrary, for a long time it was believed in Jerusalem that the two countries were natural allies.
David Ben-Gurion advocated an "alliance of the periphery." He was convinced that the entire Arab world is the natural enemy of Israel, and that, therefore, allies should be sought on the fringes of the Arab world-in countries such as Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, Chad. (He also looked for allies inside the Arab world-communities that are not Sunni-Arab, such as the Maronites, the Copts, the Kurds, the Shi'ites and others.)
At the time of the Shah, very close connections existed between Iran