Obamas New Challenge: Iran and Israel

The World section of LA Times Blog had an interesting tid bit on the Iran and Israel Issue:

“It’s a very serious question, and not just for Israel and Iran. “Rarely if ever have the stakes been higher,” Harvard fellow Chuck Freilich recently opined for the Los Angeles Times:

 … on the one hand, a threat to Israel’s very existence, and the Jewish people have already undergone one Holocaust in recent history. Israel was established so that the Jewish people would never again face the threat of extermination. Never again.

Conversely, the consequences of acting are also potentially dire, even assuming a successful attack. Iran already has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb, and an attack could set the program back by no more than a few years — of value in itself but not a solution.

But it’s worth remembering that the same question has been all over the media before. At Foreign Policy magazine, Blake Hounshell dubs it “Washington’s favorite parlor game.”…..”

More here.

And Politico…

“The possibility of an Israeli military strikeaimed at Iran’s nuclear program could turn into the most complex foreign policy challenge of Obama’s presidency, overshadowing a string of national security successes: the winding down of the Iraq War, the killing of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and the pursuit of an aggressive armed drone campaign that killed terrorism promoter Anwar al-Awlaki.”….