And the story about Ben Zion Netanyahu is clearly designed by the Israelis - like stories of how crazy Reagan was - to prompt real American concern that Israel will indeed bomb Iran if the US doesn't. Jeffrey injects enough skepticism into his piece to avoid being used by this; and the essay is balanced enough to allow shrewd readers not to fall for it entirely; but the Israelis still get their point across.

So it seems to me that Israel wants to bomb Iran not because it fears it will be annihilated, but because it likes its total nuclear monopoly in the region, because this monopoly gives it both a sense of invulnerability and the security umbrella to continue to occupy and settle the West Bank indefinitely, if they decide it's in their interests, and police its wider borders with impunity. Worse, Israel fears both that giving up the West Bank will leave it vulnerable to Iran's proxies and that if it gives up the West Bank in return for a guarantee that the US will stop Iran's nuclear facilities, the US, under Obama, may never come through. Lose-lose, in other words. Hence delay-delay.

Under those circumstances, it seems pretty clear to me that Israel is for the foreseeable future both incapable of letting go of the West Bank and incapable of being restrained if Iran goes nuclear. The question for the US therefore becomes: what then?

Well, you cannot stop an independent country attacking another one - especially after America's own pre-emptive war on the basis of alleged WMDs - and you cannot imagine US troops shooting down Israeli planes flying across Iraq or Saudi Arabia. And the Israelis clearly have no interest in giving the US an actual veto over such an adventure:

I spoke with several Israeli officials who are grappling with this question, among others: what if American intelligence learns about Israeli intentions hours before the scheduled launch of an attack? “It is a nightmare for us,” one of these officials told me. “What if President Obama calls up Bibi and says, We know what you’re doing. Stop immediately.’ Do we stop? We might have to. A decision has been made that we can’t lie to the Americans about our plans. We don’t want to inform them beforehand. This is for their sake and for ours. So what do we do? These are the hard questions.” (Two officials suggested that Israel may go on pre-attack alert a number of times before actually striking: “After the fifth or sixth time, maybe no one would believe that we’re really going,” one official said.)

So this ally would either try to fool the US or present it with a fait accompli, a military assault that could wreak havoc on US troops, global interests and the entire West, and ignite World War III for good measure.

My own view is that, under these circumstances, if Israel continues to refuse to budge on the West Bank, US interests are affected enough to lay out its own preferred final status boundaries and conditions for a Palestinian state, and press forward on those lines at the UN, regardless of the position of the Israeli government. At some point, the U.S. has to stand up for itself and its own interests if an ally refuses to be reasonable in lending a hand.