At a gathering last May 26, Jimmy Carter said Israel possesses 150 nuclear weapons. Carter’s revelation is the first credible public acknowledgment by a former U.S. president that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal. Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, nor has any U.S. official ever deviated from that Israeli line. But while the possession of nuclear weapons by Israel is a threat to its enemies, it is also a threat to its friends and allies.

Carter has been roundly berated for his revelation, and for his insistence that the United States begin serious discussions with Iran, rather than military action, in an effort to forestall Iran’s nuclear development program.

Carter has simply made plain a quite troubling and unanticipated consequence of the invasion of Iraq. Richard Armitage in an interview with PBS Frontline earlier this year, revealed that the George W. Bush administration had anticipated that Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraq dissident, would be put in place by the United States as head of a provisional government to rule Iraq following the success of the U.S. invasion.

One of the principal reasons Chalabi was chosen, according to Armitage, was that his government would recognize Israel.

The provisional Chalabi government was not accepted by the Iraqi people. The administration proceeded then with general elections to install a popularly elected government in Iraq. A government they wrongly assumed would be pliable to their wishes. The government that was elected however was neither what had been expected, nor was it welcomed. The boycott by the Sunni electorate ensured an elected government would be dominated by the Shi’a. The majority of those elected to the Iraqi parliament demonstrated a decided loyalty to Iran.

While the administration expended great resources, and public commitment, to ensure the elections proceeded so as to demonstrate the coming of democracy to Iraq, the Iranians quietly expended equal energy and resources to ensure that the candidates would be their hand- picked representatives. The Iranians succeeded, and the administration failed in preventing this virtual coup of the government through the electoral process.

The elected Iraq government, led by Nouri al-Malaki, who has twice visited Iran to confer with the country’s leaders, would not recognize Israel as the administration demanded. The elected government dominated by Iranian supporters shows an antipathy toward Israel greater than what had been experienced under Saddam.

Israel did not fail to understand that the Bush administration’s plan to bring democracy to Iraq would fail. According to an article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker in 2004, in July 2003 Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, warned U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney that the United States would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq. Barak told Cheney that America had lost in Iraq, and the only issue was “choosing the size of your humiliation.”

Israel in anticipation of the failure had made a series of alliances with the northern Kurd government to secretly construct military facilities in the Kurdish controlled area. They have also engaged the Kurds in gathering intelligence for Israel, and engaging, along with Mossad agents, and Israeli special operations forces, in cross-border covert operations in Iran and Syria.

The administration’s failure in Iraq has manifested, by some unknown exponential, the real probability of a general conflagration in the Middle East. Israel has also anticipated that this might occur. Carter’s revelations of Israel’s nuclear capacity were as much a benefit to Israel as it was to punctuate the real possibility of a Middle East becoming a nuclear wasteland.

Israel is no longer the dominant military power in the Middle East as it has been for the last 60 years. In July 2006, Israel tried, and failed, to defeat the Iranian and Syrian supported Hizbullah in south Lebanon. The Hizbullah militia engaged surprisingly effective tactics, and employed sophisticated weaponry against the Israelis to great effect.

They also demonstrated tenacity in battle not previously experienced in Israeli/Arab conflicts. Israel though had previously fought Arab conscript armies whose soldiers were unwilling to die for the oppressive regimes that forced them into battle.

But Hizbullah militiamen are religious fanatics, quite willing to face martyrdom for their cause. This peculiarly singular antipathy makes them all, Hamas, al-Qaeda, and their ilk, far more formidable. There is no simple way to defeat them militarily, as we have now discovered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Israel resorted to bombing the civilian population and the infrastructure of Lebanon indiscriminately during the war. The purpose of the bombing was to terrorize the entire country, not just Hizbullah, and force action by Lebanon’s government to intercede on Israel’s behalf with its army. The tactic was successful to a point. A ceasefire was arranged, but the Hizbullah militia remained intact, well armed, and threatening.

The display of frustration and of desperation by Israel in resorting to such a brutal response in Lebanon clearly demonstrates the extent to which the country must go to survive. This includes the use of the nuclear weapons in the event the country is invaded and faces destruction.

Israel possesses nuclear missiles that can reach the Arab countries, and well beyond. If Israel was faced with a perilous situation where the integrity, the survival, of the nation was compromised, Israel would not hesitate to use these weapons against Iran or Syria. Israel would suffer the consequences as well with the use of these weapons. Nuclear contamination from fallout would make Israel uninhabitable for decades.

The Samson defense, as it were. The effect these weapons would have on the world would be cataclysmic. The supply of oil from Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia would stop completely. That particular unpleasant vision need not be remarked upon further.

The potential that Israel might use this weaponry is a form of coercion, not only against its enemies, but its allies as well. The Olmert government has said that a military strike against Iran is all but unavoidable. There is no question that Israel will do whatever it must to survive as a nation; the alternative is quite bleak.

John McCain and Barack Obama, in their respective addresses before the AIPAC, each took a hard line. McCain disdained negotiation with Iran, and insisted on a more aggressive level of confrontation with Iran. Obama, while not as belligerent as McCain, suggested a more hardline approach than he has previously.

The increased level of belligerency is not lost on the ultimate point of reality, the market place. Oil prices are at an all time high simply because the apocalypse appears, if not imminent, now quite plausible.

The invasion of Iraq was clearly to have been in Israel’s interests, perhaps more so than those of the United States. There would be peripheral benefit certainly to the United States, but less so than would incur to Israel.

There is some tacit understanding that the genesis of this war was Israel in the early 1990s, during the administration of Binyamin Netanyahu. There was a grand design, first advanced in a proposal to Netanyahu, by Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith. (It is worth remembering that Richard Perle was George Bush’s campaign adviser on the Middle East in the 2000 campaign).

The plan called for the invasion of Iraq by Israel, and implicitly the United States, to replace Saddam’s regime and occupy the country. Once that was done and over, the plan was to overthrow the regimes in Iran and Syria and replace them with democratically elected governments. Once this was accomplished Israel, and the United States, would be safe. There would be Pax America in the Middle East.

The plan, however, was wholly dependent on a continued military presence in the countries that were to be conquered and suppressed. The potential of imposing democracy on a country defies the very nature of democracy. That is, a philosophy of government that is the product of the will of the people of a country gestated from the chaos of their unique experiences and desires. To instill democracy in a country there must be a long evolution of thought on the matter by the people.

The people of the Middle East have embraced Islam, which codifies in its essence both a religion and a political philosophy. Governance in a broad sense is left to individual fealty and collective subservience. There has never been a history of democracy in the Middle East; there is nothing to evolve from. Democracy is an entirely European conceit, and imperfect in its application.

Perhaps on the surface the grand design had merit, but such a plan relies more on an illusion than substance. The grand design met reality and it failed. And we are far the worse for this.

Morgan Strong is a former professor of Middle Eastern History and was an advisor to CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”