Bummer about the Whole “Resolve” Thing…
By It appears that years of breathless warnings of an impending Israeli attack on Iran have had effects beyond making Michael Oren look like a liar and Jeffrey Goldberg a credulous fool:
As the Washington Post’s editorial board noted after the IAEA report’s release, “What’s particularly striking about Iran’s behavior is that the nation’s leaders seem to ignore the possibility that it will provoke Israel into launching a military strike on the nuclear facilities in the coming weeks. Perhaps Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei doesn’t take the Israeli threat seriously.”
Who knew that (repeated) dire warnings about “zones of immunity” and the need for attack “within the next 18 months” would be read differently in Tehran than in Washington? Perhaps the Iranians noticed that Israel found an excuse not to attack during each “window of crisis,” and perhaps Tehran developed a level of skepticism about the quality of Israeli intelligence after listening to roughly 25 years of “Iran is 2-3 years from having a bomb.” It doesn’t help that the warnings have become increasingly shrill and silly, with advocates of a strike insisting that the entire Israeli security apparatus supports an attack (“quiet confidence” and “steely eyed determination”) and ignoring the growing chorus of Israeli experts who think that such a move would be disastrous.
To be sure, the Israelis may still attack Iran, and they may do so before the election. I think that an attack would fail on the political, strategic, and operational levels, but men can sometimes convince themselves that they need to take drastic action in order to demonstrate “resolve” and restore “credibility.” At this point, however, there can be little question that the Israeli policy of maximal public brinksmanship in order to leverage US support has played a critical role in undermining Jerusalem’s credibility.