One possible doomsday scenario regarding Iran

John Miller. Photo by Jeffery R. Staab/CBS © 2011

John Miller, the onetime LAPD officer-turned-Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the FBI-turned-CBS news correspondent recently appeared on Charlie Rose to discuss covert intelligence operations in Iran. The discussion emerged out of yet another assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who was killed by a car bomb last week.

During the nearly hour-long conversation about the Iranian nuclear program and whether or not, at this point, it is even possible to stop it, Miller illustrated one possible “doomsday” scenario that both Israel and the United States are trying to avoid. At a time in history when Jews are more fortunate than they’ve ever been (at least, if we’re counting, since Biblical times in the days of the Temple), the following scenario is genuinely terrifying and represents a threat to the stability of world Jewry:

I think the thing we’re kind of talking around here is the doomsday scenario. Which is: it goes a step too far and at some point, a country, be it the United States or just as likely Israel, says ‘I’m gonna identify those facilities; I’m gonna take them out with airstrikes.’ And then you watch how quickly the world can change in ten days. Then there is counter-attacks; let’s say, that if we’re projecting, that would not necessarily mean Iranian military action but Hezbollah launching hundreds of missiles from Beirut into Israel, then the Israeli counter-strike in Lebanon, and then whatever the U.S. does, and then you’re deep into, ‘Well they’re not going to go to war with the United States at that point, but what terrorist attacks will Iranian surrogates—Al Quds, Hezbollah—carry out in places like Bahrain or even South America at U.S., Israeli and Jewish targets? And all that could happen in a couple of weeks.