Don't Do It, Oh Israel!
A lonely voice in the wilderness cries out against hasty decisions.
As the hawkish John Bolton, a former Bush administration official, said this week, Israel may think the best time to attack would be during America's presidential transition—too late to be accused of influencing the election and before needing a new president's green light.
Such an attack would be a mistake. Even if it did not turn the region into a «fireball», as Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the world's nuclear watchdog, has predicted, it would certainly provoke retaliation. Given Iran's size and sophistication, it would at best delay rather than end whatever plans the Iranians have to become a nuclear military power. Even if Iran did get the bomb, it would probably not use it for fear of Israel's bigger, existing stockpile. And in the (admittedly improbable) event that Iran is telling the truth when it denies having any such ambition, nothing would change its mind faster than an Israeli strike.
The trouble is, this logic looks different from Tel Aviv. Given their history, a lot of Israelis will run almost any risk to prevent a state that calls repeatedly for their own state's destruction from acquiring the wherewithal to bring that end about. Till now, the world has talked a lot and applied some modest sanctions to stop Iran's dash to enrich uranium. It is time to apply much tougher ones, in the hope that it is not already too late.
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