Is an Israeli attack on Iran imminent?

In response to a recent flurry of media reports suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is gearing up to strike Iran (some of which have been rounded up here by Laura Rozen), Harvard University’s Stephen Walt explains why he remains skeptical that the attack will happen:

Although I believe war with Iran would be folly, one cannot rule it out. All countries commit blunders, and neither the United States nor Israel is immune to this sort of miscalculation (see under: Iraq, Lebanon, etc.). But I am remain skeptical that Israel will attack, for the simple reason that it does not have the military capability to inflict strategically significant damage on Iran’s nuclear facilities. As the Congressional Research Service reported earlier this year, “Israeli officials and analysts generally agree that a strike would not completely destroy the [Iranian nuclear] program.” The CRS report also suggested that an Israeli strike could not delay the program for long, and that long-term success would depend either on repeated follow-up strikes or on subsequent diplomatic activity (e.g., more sanctions).

All of which suggests that all this talk of Israeli “red lines” and some sort of imminent attack (including the possibility of an “October surprise”) is just talk. Indeed, those prophesying war are starting to sound like those wacky cult leaders who keep predicting the End of the World, and then keep moving the date when the world doesn’t end on schedule. At what point are we going to stop paying attention?

Like I said, I can’t be completely sure that reason will prevail and that a war won’t happen, although there do seem to be a lot of sensible voices inside the Israeli security establishment who are counseling against it. What worries me most is that the people who have been sounding all these alarmist warnings will start to worry that their credibility is evaporating, and they will feel compelled to go to war because they’ve talked about it for so long. That’s just about the dumbest reason I can think of, but sometimes even pretty smart people do dumb things.

Jasmin Ramsey

Jasmin Ramsey is a journalist based in Washington, DC.

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