WarSclerotic

WASHINGTON, D.C. – An eve-of-war atmosphere is presently far more pervasive in Washington than in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. The United States is just starting to emerge from the so-called Great Recession – its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The Americans are concerned that an attack on Iran will immediately send the already high price of oil skyrocketing, and plunge their economy into a downward spiral.

The contestants for the Republican Party’s nomination as presidential candidate, who are looking for the Jewish vote, have made Iran a central issue in the primary campaign, which was supposed to have focused wholly on the economy and domestic affairs. President Barack Obama has been dragged into the debate in their wake.

	Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. President Barack Obama this week. An Israeli attack on Iran remained on the agenda.
	Photo by: GPO

Meanwhile, the Atlantic magazine this month inaugurated a new project, a kind of “doomsday clock”: Each week, a team of international experts will be asked to determine how close Israel or the United States is to attacking Iran in the year ahead.

In any event, it’s possible that not much has actually changed with regard to an attack. True, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who went through a difficult rehab period in the effort to shake his addiction to Holocaust imagery, reverted to a comparison between Auschwitz and the Iranian threat in his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference this week. But rhetoric aside, Netanyahu has not yet shackled himself to a commitment to attack.

It’s more probable that the basic logic remains valid: Anyone who talks so much (after once again asking his cabinet ministers to seal their lips ) is not yet ready to attack. Nor has there been a substantive change in the approach of the Obama administration. The essential element here is the two-part message being sent by the administration: a powerful embrace of Israel combined with more sharply worded threats to attack Iran in the future, but with an equally sharp message that an attack at this time will not serve the interests of the two countries.

The topic of a possible Israeli attack stayed on the agenda this week. There is also the possibility of an American strike after the presidential election in November – which is undoubtedly something Netanyahu desires. The question is whether the way to achieve this goal is by means of provocative bear hugs with the president’s Republican rivals, when the polls are indicating that Obama is likely to be reelected. As the Republican hopefuls floated empty threats against Iran, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell raised the bar in his AIPAC conference speech, by calling for bipartisan legislation that would obligate the United States to bomb Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Overall, the Senate and the House are more hawkish than the White House on the Iran issue.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta responded to the Republicans the next day with a tough speech that seemed to come straight out of a Western. “In this town it’s easy to talk tough. Acting tough is a hell of a lot more important,” he said, promising U.S. military action in Iran if needed.

Most fascinating of all was the U.S. president’s speech to the pro-Israel lobby. After an unusual attack on television commentator Liz Cheney (daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney ), who also spoke at AIPAC, and in the face of demonstrative hostility from part of the audience – Obama asserted that he should be judged by his actions, not by his declarations. He then rattled off a long list of sanctions against Iran, imposed after the inaction of the Bush administration.

According to leaks from senior sources in the administration, the president will consider seriously Israel’s request to supply it with two crucial elements for an attack on Iran: more refueling tankers and GBU-28 bunker-busting bombs. If Israel is still in need of these munitions, one may say, how are we to construe its tough talk about being ready and able to mount an attack on its own? David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, says the U.S. military establishment has reservations about an Israeli attack, with many doubting that the Israeli armed forces have the capability to execute such a complicated mission.

In a meeting with White House correspondents on Tuesday, Obama explained at length why Israel should not launch an attack at this time. Israel has the right to decide how to defend itself, he said, but a premature attack would have serious consequences, both for Israel and the United States. A window of opportunity still exists for making decisions – an assessment that is shared by the Israeli intelligence community.

Obama noted that negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, are about to resume. Their aim is to come up with a diplomatic arrangement for suspension of the nuclear project. The tough conditions that Netanyahu laid down for the Iranians (closure of the subterranean site at Fordo, stopping uranium enrichment and transferring high-grade enriched uranium abroad ) will not be adopted by the international community as so-called threshold demands.

Obama’s administration will now pull out all the stops in an effort to prevent an Israeli attack in the months ahead. If awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to President Shimon Peres this week will not be enough to restrain Israel for a time (some Washington wags said it would have been smarter to bestow the honor on Sara Netanyahu ), Obama might also consider making his first presidential visit to Israel early this summer.

When it comes to Iran, Obama has both time and responsibility. The diplomatic door to Iran is still open, he told reporters. He also reminded them that he, as commander-in-chief, knows the terrible cost of war, from corresponding with families who lost loved ones in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Knockout victory

The drums of war from Washington partially drowned out the noise from the major story at the beginning of the week: the state comptroller’s draft report on the so-called Harpaz affair, in which a forged document attempted to discredit the campaign of potential IDF chief of staff Yoav Galant. An in-depth gathering of details from the draft – which was not made public in full – turns up a far sharper picture than the one initially painted in the media.

A few weeks ago, we wrote in these pages that Defense Minister Ehud Barak was likely to emerge from the report as the victor in his battle against former chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, but that it would be a victory on points. That was also the impression readers got from the headlines on Monday morning.

The media reported – based on leaks from both sides – that, according to the report, Ashkenazi’s bureau collected material to besmirch Barak and his aides. Some media outlets balanced this picture by noting Barak’s insensitive and abusive attitude toward Ashkenazi. Others deliberately wrapped the report in a thick fog, so that it was hard to understand who was being singled out as bearing principal blame in the scandal.

But conversations with a number of people who are well-informed about the report, some of them not connected to one side or the other, reveals a very different bottom line: They say that, according to State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss, Barak wins not on points but by a knockout. Lindenstrauss attacks Barak on issues of courtesy and procedure, but reserves the great bulk of his criticism for Ashkenazi and his close aide Col. Erez Weiner.

The draft report attributes numerous failures, of both an ethical character and in the realm of military authority, to the chief of staff’s bureau. Ashkenazi and his aide were wrong to develop ties with Lt. Col. (res. ) Boaz Harpaz, who admitted to forging the document; did not break off the relationship when they should have; mishandled the document from the moment they came into possession of it; and took a bizarrely long time to provide a full and reliable account of events after the document was publicized by Channel 2 News.

According to the draft, Weiner suffered an “eclipse of values,” and by his actions undermined the spirit of the IDF and the Basic Law on the Army, which stipulates subordination and loyalty to the political branch. As the state comptroller does not draw a distinction between the steps taken by the chief of staff and by his aide, but emphasizes that Ashkenazi was aware of at least some of Weiner’s actions – the implication is that many of the allegations are aimed also at the former chief of staff.

It is hard to understand how Ashkenazi, who was one of Israel’s best chiefs of staff in recent decades, stumbled in this way.

The first leak of the draft report, which came exactly an hour after the report was made available to those involved, claimed that a “war atmosphere” existed between the offices of Barak and Ashkenazi. However, in his report, Lindenstrauss quotes Weiner, who uses the war atmosphere as an excuse for what he and Harpaz did. The quote is meant to describe Weiner’s mental state, not the objective situation. The chief of staff’s aide feels that his bureau is at war with the minister’s bureau. And a la guerre comme a la guerre – all is fair in love and war.

What comes through clearly from the report is the obsessive behavior of Ashkenazi and his aides toward the defense minister. For example, the report cites an emotional exchange between the chief of staff and the minister’s advisers, after Barak’s office released a photograph in which Ashkenazi looks tired and drawn during a visit to Northern Command headquarters. By contrast, Barak is seen conversing with the then-GOC Northern Command, Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot. The chief of staff’s bureau presented the incident as incontrovertible proof of malicious behavior by Barak. The state comptroller found that a very similar photograph was posted on the website of the IDF Spokesman’s Office.

The draft report also indicates that Weiner, with his superior’s knowledge, utilized Harpaz as an agent in Barak’s bureau. This went on intensively for half a year. Harpaz, a former intelligence officer, provides the chief of staff’s aide with amazing access to information, worldwide ties and complex intrigues. Neither Weiner nor Ashkenazi put a stop to the flow of ideas and proposals from Harpaz’s fertile mind, though the state comptroller found no evidence that Harpaz even knew Barak’s aides.

One of the questions that the Weiner and Harpaz tried to probe was whether a request for defense aid from the U.S. administration was meant to further Barak’s alleged economic interests. They also tried, in vain, to find connections between the minister’s chief of staff, Yoni Koren, and the New Israel Fund. They even tried to find out about the number of miles Barak’s wife had accumulated in the Frequent Flyer program.

No less serious are the state comptroller’s comments about the partial information that the former chief of staff and his aide provided about the extent of their connections with Harpaz. Lying was apparently the preferred option, even in petty matters. The tape recordings in the state comptroller’s possession document a consultation by Ashkenazi’s aides, who are looking for a way to have their boss evade a female journalist who is trying to meet with him. The solution: They will refer the matter to Barak’s office, on the assumption that Barak will refuse to authorize the interview. However, Barak surprises them by authorizing it and the aides have to come up with another excuse.

These stories are troubling for two reasons: because of the inability of the chief of staff’s bureau to distinguish the permissible from the impermissible in relations with the political echelon, and because of the vast energy that was devoted to all this by one of the busiest and most important bureaus in the country.

In case anyone was still wondering: according to the state comptroller, the fundamental debate between Barak and Ashkenazi over whether to attack Iran had nothing to do with the bad blood between them.

Gabi’s town

By an odd coincidence, on Monday the city of Or Yehuda named a street after Gabi Ashkenazi. A square in the city was already dedicated to him more than a year ago. In 2010, the IDF Spokesman’s Unit “adopted” Or Akiva. Even though the usual practice is for a city to adopt a unit (Ramat Gan has adopted the Paratroopers, Afula has adopted the Kfir Brigade ), when it comes to a “brand” like the IDF Spokesman, the opposite turns out to be the case.

The dedication ceremony provided Ashkenazi with an ideal platform from which to offer his measured public response to the report: a festive occasion, children playing in the background, no questions. The city spokesman sent invitations to the event not only to local reporters, but also to the military and legal correspondents.

As with Ashkenazi’s decision to visit Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market with the General Staff forum at the height of the confrontation with Defense Minister Barak, his political winks seem to lack a certain subtlety. It might have been expected that he would be ultra-cautious in the public arena. In the meantime, we have seen the opposite.

Let’s hope that Or Yehuda still has some ammo left for after the publication of the state comptroller’s final report. Maybe then it will be possible to name the whole city for Ashkenazi.

Syrian President Bashar Assad was advised by Iranian officials to divert attention toward Israel and the Palestinian cause in an effort to deflect criticism of his brutal crackdown, emails said to have been intercepted by Syrian opposition and released by the U.K.’s the Guardian indicated on Wednesday.

	Syria President Bashar Assad and Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
	Photo by: AP

According to the Guardian, the messages were said to have been intercepted by the opposition’s Supreme Council of the Revolution between June of 2011 and February 2012, and include missives from Assad’s private account as well as that belonging to his wife, Asma.

One email sent in December 31 indicated that Assad’s aides advised the Syrian president on the contents on an upcoming speech following “consultations with a good number of people in addition to the media and political adviser for the Iranian ambassador.”

In the composed memorandum, Assad was advised to stress the issue of Muslim identity through the use of Koran quotes, as well as centering on what the email called “Syria’s principles,” which included: “Resistance”; “Hostility to Israel, the first enemy of the Muslims”; and “Protection of Palestinian people’s rights (real prayers should be in the direction of Jerusalem).”

“Maybe here the president can reiterate his stance by condemning forcefully the recent Israeli practices and policies to Judaise Al-Quds (Jerusalem),” the email added, saying that Assad should use “powerful and violent” language in his opposition to Israel.

“Here the subject of Israel comes up and it becomes necessary to put stress on the particular merits of the president by linking the foreign pressures on Syria, which differs in its toughness and content to other countries in crisis, with the geographical proximity to Israel and the position of the people and the regime towards Israel,” the memo stated.

Culminating the email’s section on Israel, the adviser said Assad should make “a clear distinction between the west’s ambitions and people’s demands and that the west and Israel are exploiting part of the Syrian people without their knowledge to break Syria, but the president has a great confidence in the patriotism of the entire Syrian people.”

The emails released by the Guardian also indicated that the Syria leader received advice from noted Lebanese businessman Hussein Mortada, known for his links to the Iran. In one message, Mortada advised Assad to stop blaming al-Qaida for opposition attacks

“It is not out of our interest to say that al-Qaida organization is behind the operation because this claim will [indemnify] the U.S. administration and Syrian opposition,” Mortada was quoted as saying, adding “I have received contacts from Iran and Hezbollah in my role as director of many Iranian-Lebanese channels and they directed me to not mention that al-Qaida is behind the operation. It is a blatant tactical media mistake.”

Another correspondence of note was between Assad’s wife Asma and the daughter of the emir of Qatar, Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani, in which the Qatari noblewoman both advised Assad to step down as well as indicated that Qatar may be able to present the Syrian leader’s family with asylum.

“My father regards President Bashar as a friend, despite the current tensions – he always gave him genuine advice,” she was cited by the Guardian as writing, saying that the “opportunity for real change and development was lost a long time ago. Nevertheless, one opportunity closes, others open up – and I hope it’s not too late for reflection and coming out of the state of denial.”

A later email seemed more direct, saying that: “Just been following the latest developments in Syria … in all honesty – looking at the tide of history and the escalation of recent events – we’ve seen two results – leaders stepping down and getting political asylum or leaders being brutally attacked. I honestly think this is a good opportunity to leave and re-start a normal life.”

“I only pray that you will convince the president to take this an opportunity to exit without having to face charges. The region needs to stabilise, but not more than you need peace of mind. I am sure you have many places to turn to, including Doha.”

Moreover, Assad communicated with Khaled al-Ahmed, who is believed to have been tasked with providing advice on Homs and Idlib. According to the emails, Ahmed told Assad that “a trusted source who met with leaders of groups in Baba Amr today said that a big shipment of weapons is coming from Libya and will arrive at the shores of one of the neighbouring states within three days, to be smuggled to Syria.”

Ahmed further stated that he had been told that European journalists had entered Baba Amr “by crossing the Lebanese borders illegally.” According to Ahmed, one of the journalists was French and the other was German.

Our leaders declare that “We’ve taught them a lesson.” True. For many years now, the terrorist leaders are saying to themselves, we’ve disrupted life in southern Israel – and recently, on the outskirts of central Israel as well. Yet despite having one of the world’s best-equipped armies, Israel is incapable of stopping us. The Zionist army, which in the past was noted for its courage and originality, has lost both courage and originality. It is pinning its faith, and exhausting its budget, on expensive interceptor missiles to use against our primitive rockets.

The terrorist leaders watch television and conclude that the Zionist state’s southern residents are depressed and disappointed. What has been is what will be, the terrorists hear them saying.

After the latest round, too, the Israeli government will continue to accept the ongoing, almost daily launching of mortar shells and Qassam rockets. (“If the firing continues,” warned the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff after the latest truce was announced, “we’ll respond just as we responded previously.” ) And when the army spokesman once again declares, “There were no casualties and no damage,” he signals that Israel will continue to contain itself (after all, “containment” is their strategy, not seizing the offensive and winning ) in the face of the nonstop assaults on its sovereignty, the disruption of its citizens’ lives and the destruction of their sense of security.

The Israelis know quite well, say the terrorists, that only a ground operations could end our rockets. But ground operations entail soldier casualties, and for Israelis avoiding soldier casualties takes precedence over freeing mothers and fathers from having to fear for their young children, for their property and for their dignity. And so, in the long run we will wear them down.

Missile defense technology, however impressive it may be, is still defensive. The south will be saved by offense, not defense – by preemptive strikes, not by ex post facto interceptions. By the audacity of its statesmen, commanders and soldiers, not by awe at the accuracy of the Iron Dome antimissile batteries. As long as technology assists the fighters, it’s a blessing. But when it replaces them, the result is more than a dozen years of enduring injury to life, property, morale and deterrence.

Who needs tanks and planes, the terrorist leaders say to themselves, when every explosive-filled pipe sends hundreds of thousands of Zionists into bomb shelters and causes them to use up the stock of expensive Iron Dome missiles in which they place their faith?

Terrorist leaders in the south, like Hezbollah in the north, reached these conclusions – which they have tested over and over – many years ago. In every round, just as we did this week, we have opted for “containment” rather than victory. The prime minister, defense minister, chief of staff, generals, mayors and party leaders who declared that we won this last round are misled and misleading.

A significant blow to the terrorists’ infrastructure and leadership cannot be delivered using drones. The rockets must be detroyed before they are launched. Only ground operations can achieve victory – and even then, only on condition they aren’t stopped almost as soon as they begin, as Operation Cast Lead was in 2009.

The IDF, which has failed in recent years to grant residents of Israel true relief from the terror of rockets, must return to the sources of the spirit, daring, sense of mission and uniqueness that guided it in its first decades. Iron Dome won’t save us, and breathtaking surgical strikes won’t defeat terror. Only the daring and resourcefulness of the soldier who seizes the offensive (along with the daring of those who send him into battle ), the soldier who seeks engagement with the enemy and makes every effort to locate the rocket stores and destroy them, is capable – with sophisticated technology in the supporting role of providing protection and direction – of actually winning the battle.

With the barrage of speeches and debates in Washington recently over who should or should not bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, I can’t stop wondering what Iranians themselves think about this thoughtful debate. For an Israeli journalist to quote friends in Iran is probably being a bad friend, but Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, an Iranian activist living in the United States, feels insulted that neither American nor Israeli leaders have bothered to talk to those who have a real stake in Iran’s future.

“No one in Iran wants to get bombed,” she says. “By going to war, the situation will not be solved. It’s addressing the symptoms, not the cause, and we must respond to this in a long-term fashion, not patchwork that will spring another asinine leak in 30 years. The regime can be brought down, and we have begged and begged and begged for some assistance for us to do it ourselves, and we sure can but seems like it’s the idiocy of the people who cannot think outside the box – starting with Obama, who is forcing Israel’s hand, so now the story has become asinine diplomacy or war. And we don’t need either,” Zand-Bonazzi says.

	Iran protests in 2009.
	Photo by: AP

Her suggestion? The one former Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan hinted at in his interview to the CBS news show “60 Minutes,” broadcast in the United States on Sunday – to assist the Iranian opposition. “I applaud Meir Dagan, though I wouldn’t quite call the Iranian regime ‘rational’, she says, referring to a comment he made in the interview.

Wouldn’t it hurt the Iranian opposition to receive any aid from the United States or Israel?

“Heck no”, she says. “How much more could we be hurt?! Whether we have funding or not, they’ll accuse of being puppets anyhow. So what the heck!”

I couldn’t resist reminding Zand-Bonazzi that the Iranian opposition in the United States is notorious for its infighting.

“Every opposition – the Russian, Jewish, Chinese, Cuban – in all countries, attack each other,” she shrugs. “Many serious people do not fight. If we disagree, we have learned to go to our corners, take time to rethink and come back at it from another angle. To paint an entire opposition with one judgmental brushstroke is not only unfair, it’s simply untrue. We have every connection inside Iran. We want to speak for ourselves. The time has come for Iranians to take a stand for the self-determination of our movement, which is the only way to get out of this peacefully. We know the absolute weaknesses of that regime. How they fight. Who fights among them. What is said. How they are sabotaging each other. How to quicken the sabotage between them. They are at each other’s throats inside that regime. And we have all the means at our disposal to see that all the way to the end.”

What did she think about the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recent speech to AIPAC in Washington (dubbed “the duck speech,” for his comment about Iran’s nuclear program: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” then it’s “a nuclear duck. And it’s time the world started calling a duck a duck.” )

“There’s nothing more to say to Mr. Netanyahu,” Zand-Bonazzi says. “He has made up his mind and a huge number of people who could have given him better advice did not. Though he’s a person who sees things for what they are, his solutions are not as blanket obvious. Sometimes things require a little more intricacy.”

Red lines

On the pessimists’ side, this week at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies Dr. Matthew Kroenig, Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he doubts a deal with Iran can be reached, because “Iran has crossed many red lines in the past 10 years – and we’ve watched them doing that.” He argued for taking action.

Dr. Colin Kahl, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, suggested looking for positive hints in remarks by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who recently said nuclear weapons are a “sin.” This could give the regime an opportunity to step back from its nuclear program without losing face, Kahl said.

And there was this question from someone in the audience – presumably, someone who did not attend last week’s AIPAC conference: “How exactly will Iran’s nuclear bomb directly threaten the United States?”

Well, according to a new poll conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes and the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, the question is very relevant to the U.S. public. Only one in four Americans favors an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear program. Seven in 10 (69 percent ) favor the United States and other major powers continuing to pursue negotiations with Iran – with rare bipartisan support (58 percent of the Republicans and 79 percent of the Democrats ). Furthermore, three in four say the United States should primarily act through the UN Security Council, rather than acting by itself.

Only 25 percent favor the United States providing military forces in the event Israel attacks Iran, Iran retaliates against Israel and Israel requests U.S. aid; even among Republicans, only 41 percent would support such aid.

More than half of respondents – 54 percent – said the United States would support Israel publicly if it attacked Iran. Only 14 percent said the United States should encourage an Israeli attack.

Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, summarized the results as saying Americans do not believe a preventive military strike will produce much benefit. (Only 18 percent believe that it would delay Iran’s abilities to develop a nuclear weapon by more than five years; 20 percent said a strike would delay the program by one to two years; 22 percent think it will actually accelerate the program development; 31 percent said a strike would strengthen Iran’s government and 42 percent believe it would weaken the regime in Tehran. )

Fair enough: These responses are quite consistent with what Israelis think about the potential effectiveness of a strike, with one slight difference: For Israelis, their lives might be at stake. For Americans, it’s more pain at the gas pump. Which, if you ask President Barack Obama as he faces reelection is not an issue to be taken lightly.

While we’re on the election: The press might scream about Rick Santorum’s electability problems, but he continues to defy the opinion polls and the skeptics. In some sense he already won, by forcing Americans to discuss issues that seemed well off the radar this season: faith, family, values, contraceptives, principles and the like. One doesn’t have to be Jewish to feel slightly uncomfortable about the “Jesus candidate” – plenty of words have been written about what he is not. And his success probably says more about the U.S. public than about the former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania himself. But the more serious Santorum’s promise to turn the Republican primary into a two-man race becomes, the more the Jewish community will have to abandon its attempts to treat him as a marginal figure.

Those who support an attack on Iran must honestly address 10 decisive questions.

Have all the avenues been exhausted, to the point that there is no chance that the international community could still stop Iran’s nuclear program through a diplomatic-economic siege? Is it absolutely clear that the Americans will not stop the Iranian nukes with an aerial bombardment in 2013? Will an Israeli attack indeed delay the Iranian nukes by at least five years? Won’t a military attack spark a bloody regional conflict and an endless religious conflict?

Won’t a counterattack by Iran and Hezbollah cause terrible mass killings that the Israeli home front won’t be able to tolerate? Won’t an attack that doesn’t have U.S. support shatter our strategic alliance with the United States? Won’t the global economic crisis that would result lead to a shock wave of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism that would threaten the Jewish state? Won’t an attack on Natanz ultimately end up harming Dimona? Won’t an attack dismantle the sanctions regime and thus give the Iranians both the justification and the ability to go nuclear even faster? Won’t an attack on Iran leave Israel totally isolated?

Those who oppose an attack on Iran must honestly address 10 critical questions.

Can 21st century Israelis continue to live their lives with the shadow of a Shi’ite mushroom cloud hovering above their heads? Will Israel be able to withstand the endless conventional wars that will break out on its borders once Iran goes nuclear? Will Israel be able to handle a nuclear, wild and radical Middle East? Will Israel survive when the United States starts ignoring it because it will be forced into appeasing the rising nuclear power, Iran? Will Israel be able to survive the diplomatic isolation that will be its lot when a nuclear Iran takes control of the Persian Gulf and dictates the price of oil to the world? Will Dimona be enough to stand up to the ensuing nuclearization of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt? Will Dimona address the risk of nuclear terror? Will Israel be able to withstand a situation in which the Iranian nukes put an end to peace or the hope of peace? Will Israel be able to withstand a situation in which a nuclear Iran forces it to live by the sword, day in and day out, with a cruelty it has never known before? Are we prepared to take the one-in-a-hundred chance that a nuclear bomb will explode over Tel Aviv?

The picture looks gloomy indeed. Israel’s policy of prevention has gained some time, but has failed. The international policy of appeasement created an illusion and collapsed. The sanctions imposed were too little, too late, and won’t likely stop Iran in time.

Nor did the recent meetings in Washington go well. There is no strategic cooperation between Israel and the United States. There is no trust between U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The U.S. president did not give the Israeli prime minister any guarantees that immediately after the November elections he will stop Iran at any price.

In short, the world that was meant to save the Jewish state from the terrible dilemma it faces, failed to do so. It’s true, there could still be a miracle. Maybe Iran will blink at the last minute. Maybe the United States will sober up at the edge of the abyss. But in March 2012 the feeling in Jerusalem is that Israel is utterly alone. And we are getting closer to the moment of truth.

We cannot err. We absolutely, positively cannot make a mistake. There are 10 questions on one side, and 10 questions on the other. The 21st question is: Attack, or don’t attack?

When confronting this existential question, there is no right or left, no bad guys or good guys, and no warmongers or pacifists. When facing this existential question, we cannot be critical or sloppy and we cannot think dogmatically. Standing at the last crossroad, the debate we conduct with ourselves has to be deep, wise, responsible, clear, and level-headed.

Because the 21st question is the toughest one we’ve faced since May 1948. And it’s a matter of life and death.