LONDON — Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has been perhaps the most vigorous, influential and informed voice relaying the view that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel sees the Iranian leadership as a “messianic apocalyptic cult” and will bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program.

In an Atlantic cover story of September 2010, he predicted Israel would attack Iran with one hundred fighter aircraft in the spring of 2011. This month, after Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama, he wrote for Bloomberg that Obama’s words — “I have Israel’s back” — meant something but not “enough to stop Netanyahu.”

Then came the shift. Goldberg wrote a follow-up Bloomberg piece arguing that “Netanyahu could be bluffing.” All the Israel prime minister was really deploying was “huge gusts of words infused with drama and portents of catastrophe.”

The Goldberg variations, coming from a journalist who has interviewed both Netanyahu and Obama on Iran, are worthy of serious note.