Jeffrey Goldberg: Will Israel bomb Iran?

In his cover story for the new issue of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg explores whether Israel will launch military air strikes against Iranian nuclear sites. 

It is possible that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons, Goldberg says.

“I have interviewed roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike, as well as many American and Arab officials. In most of these interviews, I have asked a simple question: what is the percentage chance that Israel will attack the Iranian nuclear program in the near future? Not everyone would answer this question, but a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July,” said Goldberg. He pointed that Barack Obama, for whom initiating new wars in the Middle East is not a foreign-policy goal, will hardly order the American military into action against Iran soon.

A nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people, according to Goldberg.

Citing the sources from the United States Central Command, Goldberg pointed that in case of Israeli invention of Middle East airspace, the US command whose area of responsibility is there, was ordered not to shoot them down.

Goldberg also quoted an unnamed Israeli politician as saying that if there appears a challenge whether to let Israel become a nuclear state or to act independently and do what Obama doesn’t take a chance to do, then [Israel] will likely try to.

It’s worth mentioning that Iran has been denying that it is developing its nuclear program for military means; Iran repeatedly stresses that its nuclear program is aimed at peaceful goals.