Over the past few years, when discussion turned to Iran and whether they would or would not use a nuclear weapon if they had one, we often heard a constant refrain. Basically, people said that the leadership there may be tyrannical but they are not stupid. That they would never use a nuclear weapon because it would ultimately hurt their own people and they would not want to do that.

In that vein, Marc Daalder, a senior political report at NewsroomNZ, in a piece in the on-line publication “InTheseTimes” wrote on September 18, 2015: “Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, isn’t stupid. He knows that, were he to order any sort of attack against Israel, the tiny Jewish country would respond with magnified force. While Israel has never admitted to having any nuclear weapons, NGOs and foreign governments estimate it has built as many as 300. And a hawk like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not hesitate to respond to Iranian aggression with overwhelming nuclear force. Khamenei knows any nuclear strike would be suicidal. And besides, such a scenario presumes that Iran even wants to attack Israel. But all historical evidence shows that it does not.”  Not a very accurate prediction to be sure.

However, history has given us plenty of evidence that the intelligence assigned to the Iranian leadership has been sorely........

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