Slainte

From what I've heard in the media over the past few years plenty of top people within the Bush admin and the Pentagon are themselves sceptical about the ability of the US to land a proper "knock out" blow to the Iranian nuclear project from the air. When you consider just how much larger and more advanced the US airforce is when compared to the IAF particularly in regards to the huge strategic bombers the US would undoubtedly use in such a mission, I start to think if the US isn't very confident of its ability how can the Israelis be?

The absolute worse thing that could happen from an Israeli persepctive is a botched raid that kills hundreds, maybe thouands of Iranian civillians but fails to damage the key parts of the Iranian nuclear installations buried deep underground. Then you'd have all the short term chaos an unprovoked attack would generate, plus a much increased chance of Iran becoming extremely aggressive once it completes it's nuclear project and the playing field gets leveled. For an Israeli strike to be considered a "success" it would have to set the Iranian project back at least 10 years, now I don't know the in's and outs of the entire project but I'm not sure an attack on just a few of the facilities would do that, might put them back 1, 2 maybe 3 years, but not long enough to seriously alter the changing balance of power in the Middle East.

FWIW, I don't think there will be any such attack, this stuff is mainly for domestic Israeli consumption. Iran is more concerned about being isolated economically and diplomatically by the US and her allies and battling for influence in Iraq, I don't think they treat these Israeli threats very seriously at all.

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