With the Feb. 13 car bombing in India that injured the wife of an Israeli diplomat, following by one day the thwarted attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, Iran apparently has moved beyond saber rattling to committing acts of terror against Israeli targets.
And thus, it seems, the battle between Iran and Israel is joined, if on a small scale.
Both sides have been trading assassinations: apparent Israeli hits on Iranian nuclear scientists prompting Iranian death squads targeting Israelis and Jews around the world. No doubt, there will be more bloodshed.
The escalation comes as Tehran announced this week it has loaded nuclear fuel rods into a reactor, one more crucial step in its drive to acquire nuclear weapons.
Will all this lead to an Israeli military strike, followed by a devastating Iranian missile attack on Israel? Despite increasingly bellicose statements from both sides, we have to hope that all-out war is not yet in the offing.
Israel, the United States and most nations have warned Iran against its reckless course of action. Sanctions have weakened the Iranian economy, and President Obama announced even tougher sanctions this week.
So far, these measures appear not to have dissuaded Iran from its path. With every passing day, the regime inches closer to a nuke of its own.
In our page 8 story this week, one Israeli expert on his nation’s nuclear arsenal feels both sides are posturing and do not really have the appetite for war. We hope this is so, but as the president affirmed in his State of the Union address last month, the United States will take “no options off the table” to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Israel surely shares this sentiment.
Thus this country and Israel may eventually let slip the dogs of war. We shudder at the nightmare to follow: disruption of world oil supplies; terror attacks on Jewish, American and European targets; rockets raining down on Israel on a scale it has never known.
But short of annihilating Iran and its proxies, any conventional attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will only delay, not deny, the bomb.
No one doubts the malevolence of the Iranian regime. No one questions the effort to strike at that regime using every diplomatic, nonviolent measure available.
If it truly becomes the only option left, military action may be necessary. But let us not fool ourselves: a war with Iran will make Iraq look like the battle for the Falkland Islands.
Is the world ready for that?