You know, if some nation wanted to end this conflict and end a lot of the conflict in the middle east, there’d be an easy way to do it.

Just give Iran a couple of nukes.

Hear me out. Do you remember back when every week there was troubling news coming out of North Korea? A new threat, a new declaration that the US was evil, a new set of sanctions against NK, a new ballistic missile tested by launching towards the US, tensions steadily rising. Everyone wondered if they were going to start a world war.

Then they successfully tested a nuke. People shuddered and talked about that for a month or so, and then forgot about it. Since then, to my knowledge, there have not been new declarations that the west is evil and there have not been new sanctions institute against them. People just leave them alone. The only news I hear about from NK is about poverty, small border incidents, or Kim Jong Un’s steam account.

Basically I attribute this to people being scared, now that they have the bomb, just don’t poke the snake and it won’t bite you. And honestly, that’s fine.

So what would this mean for Iran/Israel? If Iran had the bomb, how would that change things? Well, I would expect the same behavioral change from Israel, fear. They might stop poking the snake, really, they’d have to stop poking the snake. Israel would find themselves in a precarious (but not impossible) position. They would need to switch their tactics to diplomacy before military force. The US may even decide to stop encouraging Israel to be provocative. In short, Israel will have to play ball, they’ll have to try to get along with their neighbors, and to do that, they’re going to have to change their policies with Palestine. A lot will have to change.