(Un)lucky strike

Regarding “The question Israel’s leaders ask every day: Will tomorrow be too late?” (July 9), Eric Mandel acknowledges that a key argument against a preemptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities – that Israel cannot totally destroy the Iranian nuclear program – but he contends that the argument “misses the point,” because “[d]elaying the program five or 10 years, which would be the case with an Israeli strike, could be game-changing.”

He may be right, but his observation clashes with one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s key comments in his March 3, 2015 speech to Congress against the proposed nuclear deal with Iran. He warned, “Iran could get to the bomb by keeping the deal, because virtually all the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program will automatically expire in about a decade. Now, a decade may seem like a long time in political life, but it’s the blink of an eye in the life of a nation.”

Mandel, at least, raises the question whether delaying Iran’s nuclear program five or 10 years is “worth the price Israel will pay if tens of thousands of missiles are unleashed, capable of hitting everywhere in the country, while the negative diplomatic fallout will be enormous,” and he doesn’t pretend to have an easy answer. Netanyahu did not confront questions of this kind. He posed the choice as one between the proposed deal and a stronger deal, but, in so doing, portrayed the proposed deal as worse than no deal at all, dismissing a 10-year delay as inconsequential. He still does.

If it is even conceivable that such a delay might be worth the price Israel would pay for a preemptive strike, then perhaps such a delay is also worth the price of the deal with Iran: waiver of sanctions. Of course, if ending the deal leads to a stronger, better deal, and not to a need for a preemptive strike, all well and good. But the true risks involved shouldn’t be obscured by rhetoric.

SHALOM BRILLIANT Ra’anana