Stephens: inching toward realism on Iran's nukes

Bret Stephens in the WSJ asking, why hasn’t Israel bombed Iran yet?

First, he asks, why didn’t Israel strike in the spring of 2008, when such speculation was far hotter than even today?

He answers that Olmert saw it as too big a gamble, and why not let all the diplomatic angles be exhausted first?

After that, the blame shifts to Obama’s election, because of his offer to talk with Tehran.

Now, says Stephens, all such hopes were clearly misplaced.

So why hasn’t Netanyahu struck, as Stephens was certain he would do earlier this year?

Four reasons offered: 

1. Israeli military had low confidence of success;
2. Israel bides its time for defensive measures like Iron Dome to be perfected;
3. Min of Def Ehud Barak opposes Netanyahu and instead believes deterrence is reasonably achieved; and
4. as far as relevant history is concerned, forget about the Osirak strike in 1982 and instead think of 1956 and how the US opposed Israel’s efforts with France and the UK to humiliate Nasser, whom Stephens compares to Ahmadinejad today.

Stephen now places his faint hopes in an Obama Administration reconsidering the utility of military strikes—two plus years later, which makes no sense at all.  If it was a gamble for Israel in the spring of 2008, how can it be any better of a gamble after Iran has had two and a half years to improve its countering preparations?

When even Stephens is reduced to such hope-mongering, you begin to get the sense that the world is learning to accept what was always inevitable.