Netanyahu states that if the US doesn’t deal with Iran’s “nuclear program”, Israel will.
Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.
This is like saying “if Russia doesn’t stop its program to create apocalyptic fairies, we will attack them”. That is to say, while Iran certainly has a nuclear program, there is no credible evidence that it is trying to get nuclear weapons, only civilian nuclear technology.
And while Iranian defenses may be “permeable”, who, exactly, is going to give Israel overflight rights to get its planes to Iran? Add to that the fact that Israel will need multiple sorties, unless it wants to use nuclear weapons itself (which would be somewhat ironic) and there’s a fair chunk of bluster going on here.
And then there is Netanyahu’s apocalyptic hysteria:
In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”
This is just propaganda, or if not that, self-delusion. There is no credible evidence that Iran is willing to accept certain nuclear annihilation in order to use nuclear weapons on Israel. Nukes come with return addresses, even nukes given to terrorists. Iran having nukes just means it can’t itself be nuked without retaliation, what Israel is concerned about is not the possibility of pre-emptive nuclear war started by Iran, but the fact that if Iran was to get nukes (again, there is no evidence they are trying, but Israeli decision makers don’t appear to care about evidence) then Israel would loose its Middle Eastern nuclear monopoly.
If the US greenlights an Israeli attack on Iran it risks having both Iraq and Afghanistan go up in flames, and having Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, which would send the price of oil through the roof and put intolerable pressure on the world economy.
In no way is an Israeli attack on Iran in America’s interests. In no way is it in Israel’s interests. However, like the Israeli attack on Gaza, it may serve domestic Israeli political needs, by making Israelis feel tough and as if they are doing something for their security. Like the attack on Gaza, however, all it will accomplish is to make the rest of the world trust and like Israel even less. And it may make Iran decide that it does actually need nuclear weapons.
Israeli decision makers are abominably bad. After failing to achieve their goals in Lebanon (destroy Hezbollah) or Gaza (end smuggling and missile attacks) they now claim they want to attack another country for doing something there is no evidence it is doing.
George Bush would approve, I suppose.