War is in the air, said The Jerusalem Post in an editorial. We’ve heard speculation in years past that Israel was considering a military strike on Iranian nuclear weapons programs, and it has always come to nothing. But over the past week, “the pitch and fervor” of such speculation in the press has “reached unprecedented heights.” Yedioth Ahronoth claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were gunning for an imminent attack and were trying to persuade the rest of the Cabinet to back them. The London Guardian said Britain was planning to assist a U.S. strike, while AP reported that Gulf states quietly backed the idea. Far from hurting Israeli interests or betraying the element of surprise, this media flurry “clarifies that eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat is not solely an Israeli concern.”
That’s why it shouldn’t lead to a solely Israeli operation, said Daniel Friedmann in the Tel Aviv Yedioth Ahronoth. And it certainly shouldn’t be a military one. Iran could rain missiles down on Israeli cities and summon its Lebanese puppet, Hezbollah, to attack Israel. And that’s just the local fallout: Iran could also mine the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off the global oil supply and causing a global crisis for which “Israel would be blamed.” And after all that, the strikes might not even set back Iran’s nuclear programs significantly, given that many of its facilities are underground or in unknown locations. No less an expert than former Mossad head Meir Dagan—hardly a dove—has explicitly called an Israeli attack on Iran “a stupid idea.”
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