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Article: The elephant and the hawk. (Saddam Hussein's verbal war with Israel)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- April 21, 1990
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1990 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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NE thing history got right in the Middle
East was to put 250 miles of desert, called Jordan, between Israel and Iraq. For that reason, and perhaps for that reason only, Israel and Iraq are probably not on the threshold of a nuclear-versus-chemicals Armageddon. Israel has nuclear and chemical weapons (though does not admit it) and Iraq has chemical ones. But President Saddam Hussein, while obviously proud of his new "binary" chemicals, promises not to use them against Israel unless the Israelis launch a nuclear strike against Iraq.
They were anyway unlikely to do so. By most accounts, Israel went nuclear in the late 1960s or early 1970s. The Arab states ...