Target: Iran?

Generally speaking, six decades after the founding of your nation, you shouldn't still be fighting for your right to exist. You should have achieved at least that much. And after the wars of 1948, '67 and '73, and other conflicts—including two intifadas—many Israelis would like to think they've honorably battled their way to the right to existence. But they haven't made it yet. Today, on its 60th birthday, Israel remains as much in existential peril as it was in those early months after the U.N. General Assembly approved the partition of Palestine and Arab armies attacked the infant state.

Arguably, it is at even greater risk now than it was then. Very soon now Israel could be engaged in the biggest battle for existence it has ever faced in its not-so-short-any-longer history. And the next U.S. president—whether it is Barack Obama or John McCain—may have a bigger crisis on his hands than anything since 9/11. While Israeli officials insist they are sticking to diplomacy, a number of circumstances are aligning to make an Israeli strike on Iran more likely before the end of 2008:

• A new, much more dire Israeli assessment that Iran will have the ability to build an atomic bomb by 2009 (earlier reports had drifted toward 2010 or later).
• The flagging of U.S.-European efforts to pressure Iran economically and isolate it. The Bush administration's Iran point man, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, has just retired from the State Department—leaving a huge vacuum—and many Israelis have a growing sense that Washington is figuring out how to live with an Iranian nuclear capability. Meanwhile, European companies are making new multibillion-dollar investments in Iran's energy sector, including Austria's OMV and Switzerland's EGL.
• The ongoing rebuilding of Hizbullah's missile armada in nearby Lebanon, which gives Iran an ever greater retaliatory capability the longer the Israelis wait.
• Iran's Scheherazade-like efforts to endlessly prolong an investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into the history and intent of its nuclear program. A new IAEA report is due by the third week of May, and Iran has agreed to deliver comments on the agency's ongoing investigation, but the issue is not expected to be resolved by then.
• Russia's willingness to supply Tehran with close-range surface-to-air defense missiles, even as it declares it is willing to join sanctions against Iran. Rumors continue to circulate, though Moscow denies it, that Russia is negotiating to sell Iran longer-range S-300 antiaircraft systems. These very sophisticated defenses, once installed, would dramatically alter the odds against Israeli air strikes.

And last but certainly not least, the imminent end of the Bush administration, which is arguably the friendliest—certainly the most compliant—U.S. government the Israelis have ever seen. When Israel attacked Hizbullah in Lebanon in the summer of '06, the Bush administration gave a green light to the Jewish state and deliberately delayed diplomatic discussions to end the war. Just a few weeks ago Bush approvingly described the Israeli raid on a Syrian reactor last September as a "warning" to Iran and North Korea. An Obama administration is far less likely to cheerlead for Israel, while McCain's approach remains uncertain.

Many Iran experts argue that, despite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regular calls for Israel's destruction, it is far from certain that Tehran intends to fully develop a nuclear weapon or, if it did, would actually entertain using it against Israel or any other state. Ahmadinejad is up for re-election in 2009 and remains unpopular among Iranian governmental elites. Certainly one option for Israel—which possesses a substantial nuclear arsenal of its own—is to apply the time-honored logic of deterrence against Iran, especially if Ahmadinejad is ousted and cooler heads prevail in Tehran. And even Israeli hardliners know that the repercussions of an attack on Iran would be vicious and long-lasting, heightening the likelihood that Ahmadinejad and other hardliners would remain in power and perhaps embroiling Israel in a regional war.

Some U.S. technical and defense experts also argue that even now Israel does not have the ability to be more than a nuisance to Iran's program. Iran's enrichment program is far more dispersed, secret and well protected than the Osirak reactor in Iraq, which Israeli planes destroyed in 1981. "They could destroy all of the facilities at [Iran's] Natanz and it wouldn't seriously set them back," says David Albright, one of Washington's most respected trackers of Iran's nuclear program.