Israel will not bomb Iran this year

by Ahmed E. Souaiaia*

I recognize that it is injudicious to make emphatic predictions like this one and it is especially impolitic to do so without access to all information. In this case however, all critical information is publicly available. The only important piece of information that we don’t know is whether or not Iran has or is close to having a nuclear bomb. But all those who are supposed to know don’t really know. The most recent estimate suggests that Iran could have the capacity, the knowledge, and the material to produce several crude nuclear bombs within one year. Similar claims were made at least five other times in the past 25 years.

Increasingly, talking about Iran as a nuclear threat is becoming an exclusive hobby for politicians. Although some of the Arab regimes feel equally threatened by a nuclear Iran, only Israel seems to emerge as the subject of this threat. Israeli leaders have made it clear that a nuclear Iran is an existential threat and that they will do whatever is necessary to eliminate that threat, including a preemptive military attack. Unexpectedly, some U.S. officials, including Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta, went as far as setting a time for such an Israeli military strike: this spring. Nonetheless, here are several reasons why, in my opinion, Israel will not attack Iran this year.

ONE: If past behavior is a predictor of future actions, we know that Israel attacks other countries without announcing its intentions. Israel attacked its neighbors’ nuclear installations twice before but it never announced it beforehand. In 1981, Israel destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor without warning. In 2007, Israel was thought to have demolished a nuclear facility in the early stages of construction in an airstrike on Syria. Regarding the second attack, Israel is yet to officially take credit for the bombing. Israel has a habit of responding to any real or perceived threat by taking it out without warning as it did in 1986 when its airplanes bombed the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, again without...

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