Analysis: What is the ‘real’ Israeli stance on Iran?

Succession of defensive and offensive exercises appears to be unmistakable signal Israel has not removed military option from the table.

By YAAKOV LAPPIN
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 311 (R) (photo credit: REUTERS)
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 311 (R)
(photo credit: REUTERS)
A number of observers are firmly convinced that the wave of recent Hebrew media reports on a possible Israeli strike on Iran are the product of a dangerous and potentially illegal collaboration between insiders opposed to such an attack and pro-opposition media outlets dedicated to damaging Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
According to this view, what began as a trickle of isolated but unmissable front-page reports suggesting that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak may have made up their minds to go ahead with an attack quickly turned into an avalanche of reports that has hijacked the national agenda and endangered national security in an unprecedented manner.
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Subscribers to this view believe such reports have politicized fateful issues that lie at the heart of the nation’s well-being in the Middle East.
Whether or not such claims are accurate, Israel has also apparently joined the “message-sending” club this week, days before the UN’s IAEA is due to release its most severe report on Iran’s nuclear program to date.
The succession of defensive and offensive exercises held in Israel and Sardinia appears to be an unmistakable signal that Jerusalem has not removed the military option, along with its repercussions, from the table.
Two Israeli voices, one signaling Israel’s seriousness over the threat, and another expressing its opposition to an attack, may be behind the flurry of headlines in recent days. Either way, the urgency of the Iranian question is now firmly at the top of the national agenda.