President Obama is publicly confident that at least one-third of either the House or the Senate will sustain his removal of sanctions against Iran, as part of the deal to postpone Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. If he is right, sanctions will end in mid-September.

Sixteen months later, America will have a new president. Very soon thereafter, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to take military action against Iranian nuclear facilities. The United States will be drawn in to help support Israel.

Under President Obama, such support cannot be assumed to be forthcoming; under any likely successor president, it will be. Israel cannot destroy all of Iran’s nuclear capabilities in one blow. Assuming the U.S. is backing up Israel, Israel could return to the task several times. It is even conceivable that the U.S., under a new president, would assist Israel in destroying the most hardened, deeply buried Iranian nuclear enrichment site.

This prediction is based on what the leaders of Israel, Iran, and the U.S. have said and done. Netanyahu has told the United Nations and Congress that the proposed deal is a pathway to an Iranian nuclear weapon which, whether in two months (as had appeared possible) or 10 years (as is permitted, even anticipated, under the agreement), poses a grave threat to Israel’s existence. The Israeli opposition Labor party agrees.

As for Iran, they could have peaceful nuclear power without any uranium enrichment facilties. Their entire bargaining position has been premised on retaining the right, whether immediately or eventually, to enrich uranium to limits of their own choosing. This can’t be for medical isotopes.

Through his website and tweets, Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, insists that the state of Israel be abolished, with the possible result that Jewish immigrants “should return to their home countries.” He does reject exterminating Jews, but Israelis might not be much reassured.

Every candidate for U.S. president has said that Iran having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable. The candidate elected in 2016 would have to keep her or his word at least until the reelection campaign in 2020.

Before his re-election, Barack Obama also said America would not let Iran have a nuclear weapon. He has since admitted that, following the end of the 10 years in the proposed agreement, Iran would have “break-out” weapon potential. First-term presidents have constraints that second-termers don’t.

A consistent alignment of these public statements and actions leads to one conclusion: that the proposed deal will permit Iran to have a weapon in 10 years’ time, that Israel cannot allow this, and that whoever is in office after Obama will stand with Israel to prevent this.

What premise could Israel use for attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities? It is highly likely that, sometime over the next five years, Iran will have cheated on the agreement. Perhaps Iran will import some Russian missile technology. Perhaps international inspectors will not be allowed access to a suspected site (the agreement calls for mediation of such challenges, during which time, of course, material could be shifted from the suspected site, even assuming the mediation goes Israel’s way.)

The strong weight of probability is against Iran abiding 100 percent by the promises of the agreement, and the odds are even less that, confronted with evidence of noncompliance, the economic sanctions will “snap back” into place.

Europe will have grown used to making money by trading with Iran, China will have come to rely on buying Iranian petroleum, and Russia will have relied on the foreign currency exchange from selling Iran equipment capable of dual use (military and commercial), if not military weapons outright.

This combination of factors – Iran’s violation of the agreement and the failure to reimpose strong sanctions – will provide Israel the premise to take self-help measures. Though Iran’s retaliation can’t be predicted, Israel would not be initiating a land war. Israel does not border Iran, and Iran would have to cross Iraq and Syria to launch a land war against Israel.

Further, while the Israeli attack would certainly kill some innocent people, as all such supposedly “surgical strikes” do, previous attacks by Israel on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981 and Syria’s Al-Kibar nuclear facility in 2007 did limited collateral damage. Israel will, indeed, be condemned by the U.N., but there will be no photos of destroyed Iranian villages to outrage the world’s neutrals. Indeed, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and many other Arab and Sunni Muslim states will raise a prayer of thanks.

Tom Campbell is dean of the Fowler School of Law at Chapman University. He served on the House International Relations Committee during his five terms in Congress, and was chairman of the World Affairs Council of Northern California. These views are his own.