Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
You're assuming that they're capable of of neutralizing that threat. That's far from clear, in several ways:

1) Do they actually know enough about the Iranian programme to effectively target it?

2) If they do know enough, can they actually destroy the targets?

3) At the moment, Iran's nuclear programme consumes a very small portion of Iran's national resources, and it is not at all clear that Tehran plans to build a weapon (as opposed to develop the capacity to build a weapon). It certainly isn't an Iranian "Manhattan project" by a long shot. What happens if bombing Iran convinces them they actually should build a weapon for deterrent purposes, and they increase 10-fold or more the national resources devoted to this?

Given all of those questions, it is not surprising that the Israelis are hoping that sanctions will do the job for them.
Thanks for putting what is probably the standard western approach. Its that sort of cowardice allows such matters to be escalated in the first place.

Go back to the time when India and Pakistan were competing to build a bomb. Had the (leading nations of the) world had the balls to say that there were enough nations with the bomb and there would be no more we would have been in a better position now, yes?

Now we have the potential problem of renegade Pakistan scientists helping North Korea and Iran build a bomb of their own.

This cowardice is making the world a more unstable and dangerous place.