Target: Iran?

What is beyond dispute, however, is that the longer the Israelis wait, the more resistant the Iranians become to a military solution, particularly if they install those Russian antiaircraft systems. Iran's new generation of IR-2 centrifuges are harder to detect as well. "Nobody has yet pointed out that these centrifuges are much easier to put into dispersed, small facilities," Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said at a briefing in Washington on Wednesday.

And for many Israeli hardliners, there is little choice. Their view is that they have been left, once again, isolated on the world stage. The likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran has virtually vanished. (On Tehran's nuclear program, that is. A U.S. military action against Iranian targets just across the border from Iraq remains a possibility.) Bush, still bogged down in Iraq, is looking more each day like a lame duck. While Bush made serious efforts during his last Mideast trip in January—he's off on another next week—to disown last fall's National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program, Washington has not officially revised that estimate. According to Bruce Riedel, a former official with the National Security Council, even Hillary Clinton's recent threat to "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel was seen by some Israelis as a tacit embrace of the new U.S. fallback position: we can't stop an Iranian bomb, so we'll assert our deterrent against the use of one.

The bottom line is that the longer Israel waits to strike, the more difficult it will become to take out Iran's nuclear program militarily and to endure the fallout diplomatically. At the same time the promised benefits of waiting—the hoped-for diplomatic solution based on economic pressure—seem to be receding. Much depends now on the political survival of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is engulfed in yet another scandal, this time involving a bribery investigation. But if you're looking for the launch pad of the next global crisis, keep your eyes on Jerusalem.

© 2008