Thanks Tina. In fact, it’s my second article with them.

Frankly, I wouldn’t worry too much about Israel going it alone. That was the wild card during the Bush administration, I believe Cheney kept working on till his last days in office: that an Israeli unilateral aerial strike on Natanz will provoke an Iranian reaction, which again will draw the US into the conflict. A perfect scheme for getting what you want without having to fire the first shot.

That’s fine as long as the US tacitly approves such a move. For Israel to attack Iran it has to cross Turkish or Iraqi air space (in fact, Israeli bombers even would have to get refueled over one of these countries as the IAF doesn’t operate strategic bombers that could cover that range and return). Cheney could have given Israel green lights, but in public would have claimed that the US were surprised by or got aware too late of the Israeli bombers, whatever. But this scenario only works with US tacit approval. If the US opposes any Israeli unilateral action and clearly tells Tel Aviv that this won’t be tolerated, there’s little Israel can do as long as the US controls Iraqi and – via Ankara - Turkish air space.

Now, you can argue Israel may employ Jericho III-class ballistic missiles to do the job. But does anybody really believe Israel would dare a nuclear attack to stop an Iranian nuclear program in its embryo-stages. The fallout would be dramatic and would isolate the country for years. No, that’s no option either.

At the end of the day, militarily there’s nothing Israel can do against Iran as long as the US doesn’t want her to do it. And that’s the good thing about Obama. I can’t see him green-lighting such an attack.

...try a conventional warhead strike based on the Jericho-2/3 missile (more likely the -2 I would guess - higher throw weight and I strongly suspect the range is better than open sources indicate [i.e., sufficient to hold Natanz at threat]; additionally, they could always tune the payload weight and they'd be launching east). I'd be somewhat surprised if they haven't been read in on the program and IAI has to be capable of producing the required materials for indigenous production. Question in my mind is what sort of energy a conventional kill vehicle would carry coming off a IRBM. I would guess that it's somewhat less than an ICBM trajectory would impart.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

with my usual humility, I think the overwhelming, if unstated, response now is probably "You broke it. You fix it."

Aside from that, a number of nations were dragged into the recent US frays with lies that their own governments ended up having to repeat. The credibility gap is lightly scabbed over but the wound is deep.

_{Tolerating prostitution is tolerating abuse and torture of women and children.}