Some Israelis feel an urgency to attack Iran
Officials say other nations quietly want Israel to act unilaterally against Tehran's nuclear ambitions. But an effective strike would be difficult and could stir up a wider conflict.
Reporting from Washington and Jerusalem — With international efforts to increase sanctions against Iran at a standstill, many Israelis believe their nation alone stands in the way of Tehran eventually building nuclear weapons.
But officials and analysts in Jerusalem also acknowledge that a unilateral attack is fraught with danger and might fail to cripple Iran's bomb-making abilities. Much of the international community quietly wants Israel to launch a strike, the officials say, but only if it can succeed.
"They will be very happy if we do their dirty work for them," said Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv. "The world is moving into 'What can we do about it?' mode. There is a strong instinct here to do it on our own."
To many in Israel, the situation is reminiscent of 1981, when the Jewish state acted on its own in bombing the Osirak reactor in Iraq, and last year, when it launched a unilateral strike on an alleged nuclear site in Syria.
A wild card in the equation is Israel's own political situation. With parliamentary elections on the horizon, no leader in Jerusalem is a dove on Iran.
Last month, the U.N. Security Council voted to extend sanctions on Iran, but failed to add new strictures. Immediately after, Israeli Cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer charged that "the world has resigned itself to the fact that Iran is going to be a nuclear power. . . . This means only one thing: that we have to look out for ourselves."
Patrick Clawson, a longtime Iran analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, believes an Israeli strike on Iran would be received with gratitude in some capitals, provided it works. "Success would have a thousand fathers," he said. "A lot of Arab countries would be pleased."
Several Sunni Arab governments, especially the Persian Gulf states, openly worry that a nuclear Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim nation, would extend its growing regional influence.
In Israel, the issue of whether to strike first against Iranian nuclear facilities remains a steady topic of debate.
"I don't know which direction this is going to go in Israel," said Emily Landau, director of arms control and regional security programs at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank.
- Tehran says it would answer Israeli attack Nov 13, 2006
- Israel sounds alarm on Iran's nuclear efforts Feb 07, 2007
- Iran May Hide Its Nuclear Ambitions From Some, but Not Israel Dec 10, 2003
