Opinion Don’t do it,Bibi

Israeli newspapers are full of reports that home-front preparedness is inadequate. Only 53 per cent of Israelis,they say,have gas masks. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just appointed Avi Dichter,a former head of Shin Bet — the Israeli equivalent of the FBI — as the new home-front minister to address these concerns. Dichter,by the way,has joined a host of former security and intelligence chiefs in saying that for Israel to lead an offensive against Iran would be a “total mistake.” Wise words; but they have done nothing to dampen the attack-looming chatter of these summer doldrums,with the US election less than 100 days away. One theory in Jerusalem is that the run-up to November 6 is a good moment to attack because President Obama,despite his misgivings,would have no choice but to get behind the Jewish state or lose votes.

Netanyahu is doing nothing to dispel the rumours. Why should he? They provide leverage for tougher Iran sanctions and have no downside for Israel other than creating an impression that,on Iran,it has cried wolf.

The Netanyahu government is happy enough with this state of fear: It seeks uncertainty. It takes a rightly sceptical view of the talks on Iran’s nuclear programme between Iran and the United States,Russia,China,Britain,France and Germany. These have gone over familiar ground — Iranian offers to stop enrichment to 20 per cent and eliminate its stockpile of such uranium against a lifting of sanctions and recognition of its right to enrich to a much lower level — without moving the ball. Let’s get real: A deal in a US election year is out of the question. Obama will not do it. He is not going to hand the Republicans ammunition on a plate.

Moreover,the Iran led by the Brezhnevian Ayatollah Khamenei is incapable of clear decision-making. It is a nation in the image of its noisy president,Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (remember him?): a lot of bluster over not much. It is given to what James Buchan has called “lachrymose intransigence.” Khamenei is a septuagenarian supposedly standing in for the Prophet. The average age of his wired population is 27. Try getting that system to function.

So what should Israel do? Israeli security is incompatible with an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon that says it is bent on the destruction of the Jewish state.

But a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran today would be disastrous. It unites Iran in fury; locks in the Islamic Republic for a generation; gives a substantial boost to the wobbling Assad regime in Syria; radicalises the Arab world at a moment of delicate transition; ignites Hezbollah on the Lebanese border; boosts Hamas; endangers US troops in the region; sparks terrorism; propels oil skyward; rocks a vulnerable global economy; triggers a possible regional war; offers a lifeline to Iran just as sanctions are biting; adds a never-to-be-forgotten Persian vendetta to the Arab vendetta against Israel; and may at best set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions a couple of years or at worst accelerate its programme by prompting it to rush for a bomb and throw out International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.

Such damage may not amount to an existential threat to Israel — the phrase is overused. It would be a devastating strategic error.

Don’t do it,Bibi.