The holocaust was a relatively unknown subject untill the US soldiers found those camps.
False, for the record. The camps were know by at least 1944 as people who had escaped from them made it to England.
The holocaust was directed against a minority of people and did not threaten the security of a country with nukes.
Ah, to be young and naive and not consider the implications. (And a minority? Come now, huge cross-sections of Germany and Eastern Europe ended up in the camps, just most of them didn't die because they hadn't run out of Jews yet.)
Whole sections of Poland and the Ukraine were depopulated by the Germans. That's an attack on a nation state. (And then the Soviets depopulated others.) But really, drawing an artificial distinction between killing six million random people and killing six million people by nuking several cities is a bizarre, irrational one.
The will to do it is there. And the Holocaust, directing it and creating it and carrying it out, actually took a lot more people (though a lot less industrial capacity) than building an atomic bomb would. Killing six million people is practically an industry all its own, a significant commitment of state resources equivalent easily to small war.
How does not nuking Israel mean that Iran is abandoning its ideology? It has not nuked Israel for a while now, and nobody complained. Things like the sharia law still are in effect, i'd say that has more to do with their ideology...
Iran has never had the capability to destroy Israel before. But destroying Israel is one of the key tenants of their internal propaganda and their ideology. If they have the means and do not act, it signals they do not intend to carry through.
Iran is in much the same position the Soviet Union was. It had a revolution that promised people new and better things, a new and better government and a better life, if only they would unite. It didn't happen. They have now turned to the external enemy strategy, and say that these external forces bar the way and if you will back us we will destroy them.
But this only buys you time. You have to eventually do it, or at least appear to be making progress in that direction or to be serious about it, or your populace will get feed up with your bull****. Why do you suppose Iran was so eager to tout the US carrier leaving the Gulf and claimed their warships chased it in a grand sham? They need buy-in that they're making progress. They're not getting enough of it.
So what you are saying is that because we don't really know what the other side might do, we should employ worst-case-scenario thinking? Why isn't the US then taking steps against Israel?
Why should the US take steps against Israel? We know how they think. We've got plenty of people who can tell us. They are
predictable, and behaving in a predictable fashion is the basis on which someone can be reasoned with and thus the fuel on which diplomacy runs. We don't like how they act, but that does not make them threatening in this fashion.
And more seriously are you suggesting that nobody should ever prepare for the worst case?
I'd also note that the government of Iran, the actual power part, is still composed of mullahs who participated in the revolution. The idea that a revolutionary is always one seeking power is...unlikely. Such men must often believe simply to convince and rally others to their cause.