Iran to Israel: We will huff and we will puff from Planck's Constant

President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, backed by Arab states (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq l-r), kicking Israel into the Gulf of Aqaba. Pre-1967 Six-day war cartoon. Al-Jarida newspaper, Lebanon. Source: book Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Michael Oren, 2002.

A tip of the turban Hat Tip to Sweet Spirits of Ammonia for alerting us to, "A leading member of America’s Jewish community has told Newsmax that a military strike against Iran is not only on the table, but likely."

If you are old enough perhaps the following will sound familiar:

Infidels are Cool,
Iran Commander: "If attacked we will eliminate Israel"
Iran would "eliminate Israel from the global arena" if it was attacked by the Jewish state, the deputy commander of the army Mohammad Reza Ashtiani warned on Tuesday, the Mehr news agency reported.
...
His comments come a week after Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned that any Iranian attack against Israel "would lead to the destruction of the Iranian nation."

If you're too young for the reference "If attacked we will eliminate Israel," Gamal Abdel Nasser expressed those very sentiments toward Israel shortly before the 6 Day War in 1967.

I was in Jerusalem during those 6 days and I vividly recall seeing on the front pages of Israeli papers thousands upon thousands of Egyptian boots sans their owners littering the desert from the Sinai to the Nile. After Nasser's grand bluster, Egypt was handed the most devastating defeat in history, so shameful, so humiliating that Nasser resigned a few days after the war started.

The only reason that Israel did not utterly destroy Egypt altogether is because of pressure by the rest of the world for Israel to stop at the border just as the US pressured Israel to leave the Suez Canal in 1956.

So Iran may bluster, posture and huff and puff, but I doubt Israel would fight against Iran as politely as she did in Lebanon. The War in Lebanon was, for Israel, just a police action. In a war against Iran, the gloves will come off. They have to.

It should be noted that the Iranians went crying to the UN about Israel's threat of a counter-attack. What nerve of Israel to even contemplate retaliating!

Jerusalem Post,
11 Apr 2008,
Iran complains to UN about Ben-Eliezer
Iran has lodged a complaint with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's remarks this week that Israel would destroy Iran if it were attacked first. ... In a letter to Ban, Iran's UN envoy, Muhammad Khazei wrote that "The Israel regime continues to make impudent threats against Iran...[Ben-Eliezer], in his April 7 remarks, which blatantly violated international law and the UN Charter, threatened the Iranian nation with destruction." Khazei's letter did not mention Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's statement that Israel should be "wiped off the map," or any other Iranian threats against Israel.