What would an Israeli attack on Iran make better?

By this point, I imagine many of you have read Jeffrey Goldberg's article considering the rationale for, and the consequences of, an Israeli attack on Iran. As it happens, I'm not an intelligence analyst: I don't know if such an attack is feasible, and if it is, how much it will do to delay Iran's nuclear-weapons program. I don't even know if there actually is an Iranian nuclear-weapons program.

But as I understand the underlying structure of the situation, it looks something like this: Israel is a dense concentration of Jews in the Middle East. The Middle East is mainly composed of Arab nations, most of which don't like Israel. It is also home to a large collection of terrorist organizations, most of which really hate Israel. The danger is that a nation that doesn't like Israel or a terrorist organization that really hates Israel could attain a weapon of mass destruction and decide to disregard the consequences and use it to wipe out much of the world's Jewry.

An Israeli attack on Iran's suspected nuclear program would, at best, do at least two things: First, delay Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons by some undetermined amount (though it might do the opposite!). Second, make the Arab world in general, and Iran and various terrorist organizations, hate Israel even more. It would also hurt Israel's standing in the world, spark terrorist reprisals of unknown effectiveness and ferocity, and generate more anti-Israeli -- and possibly pro-nuclear weapon -- pressure on various Arab governments.

Is that worth it? I'm skeptical, to say the least. But even if you think it is, it's certainly not an actual answer to the problem described in paragraph two. Israel's plan for the future can't be to hope that either it or America will succeed in bombing or invading every unfriendly Arab nation that attempts to upgrade its military capabilities. And in making the short-term problem of Iran's weapon ambition a bit better, it may make the longer-term problems of regional hatred and angry terrorists even worse.

Deep in Goldberg's article, a "senior Israeli official" worries that President Obama "thinks like the liberal American Jews who say, ‘If we remove some settlements, then the extremist problem and the Iran problem go away.’” The problem is obviously more complicated than that. But as the Israeli government swings far to the right, elevates anti-Arab extremists live Avigdor Lieberman to positions of power, and focuses intently on bombing Iran while essentially mocking those who focus on the peace process, it becomes clearer and clearer that they have no solutions, and may not even be interested in solutions, to their underlying problems.

To put this another way, the Israeli government is currently willing to do dangerous things when they involve firepower -- like attacking Iran or bombing Gaza -- but not hard things when they involve fighting domestic battles to restart to the peace process and reverse the settlements. That's a world in which their central problem keeps getting worse, and there is no hope of it getting better. I'd be a lot more likely to support "dangerous things Israel thinks to be necessary" if Israel seemed more interested in doing the hard things everyone knows to be necessary.

Photo credit: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post Photo.