Are Israel’s leaders insane? Jeffrey Goldberg thinks so.

Larry Kummer, Editor

15 years ago

Summary: The award for the most accurate title of the year: “The Point of No Return“, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, September 2010. Yes, attacking Iran would the point of no return for Israel. I doubt they’ll do it. The leaders of neither Iran nor Israel are psychos.

Godlberg’s research finds a “a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50% chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.” He presents almost no substantial evidence to support it. If so, then:

… one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon {and} … tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years.

And what price might Israel pay for this temporary gain?

… sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

And best of all:

{An} Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, successful or not, may cause Iran to redouble its efforts—this time with a measure of international sympathy—to create a nuclear arsenal.

That’s an acceptable risk-reward ratio … for psychos. As described in Will Israel commit suicide? More rumors of a strike at Iran (22 December 2007). Obama is a fool if he does not tell Israel that such an attack will end US support for Israel.

Articles describing fabrications and errors in Goldberg’s article

“Jeffrey Goldberg Probes Israel’s Iran Strike Option: Is Netanyahu a ‘Bomber Boy’?“, Steve Clemons, Washington Note, 10 August 2010
“Jeffrey Goldberg Still America’s Preeminent Propagandist“, Jonathan Schwarz, A Tiny Revolution, 11 August 2010
Recommended: “Mainstreaming war with Iran“, Stephen M. Walt, blog of Foreign Policy, 11 August 2010
“The Weak Case for War with Iran“, Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, blog of Foreign Policy, 11 August 2010
“How propagandists function: Exhibit A“, Glenn Greenwald, Salon, 12 August 2010
“Since when is it rational to bet on history being made by rational men?“, David Rothkopf, blog of Foreign Policy, 12 August 2010 — Speculates about present or future irrational Iranian leaders; but no mention of irrational leaders in Israel