"Israeli threats were bluffs all along"

"... every time a new dire warning was issued, a new rationale was presented to convince the world that the latest Israeli warning was more serious than the previous one. The Israeli threats, however, were bluffs all along. Israel did not have the capacity to take out Iran's nuclear facilities. But the huffing and puffing ensured that the American military option remained on the table; that Washington would not deviate from the Israeli red line of rejecting uranium enrichment on Iranian soil; and that the Iranian nuclear program was kept at the top of the international community's agenda. 

But the persistent bluffing also carried a price. The Israeli narrative on Iran has grown increasingly alarmist, desperate, and existential over the past 15 years. Inflating the Iranian threat served several purposes domestically. It provided Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres a rationale to push for peace with the Palestinians in the 1990s, while more recently Benjamin Netanyahu has used it to resist pressure from Washington to do just that. But the domestic benefits came at the price of limiting Israel's options and flexibility vis-à-vis Iran. As Israeli politicians built up the Iranian threat and established a near-consensus that Tehran constituted an existential threat, it became increasingly difficult for any Israeli politician to walk back the threat depiction without losing critical political capital at home. As a result, there was a steady escalation of the threat depiction from Iran and no clear ways to de-escalate... ...

Against this backdrop, statements by both Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan in the past few days have stirred the political pot in Israel and made headlines worldwide. Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem, Dagan said that bombing Iran's nuclear installations would be "a stupid idea," adding that military action might not achieve all of its goals and could lead to a long war. Numerous Israeli officials have derided him for undercutting the pressure on Iran...  One of the few Israeli leaders who has consistently cautioned against Israel's alarmist line on Iran is current Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Earlier this week, he warned against hysteria on the Iranian threat ... ...  He warned against making Israel a target of Iran by inflating the Iranian threat as far back as 1993. "We should, therefore, not create a climate of hysteria by setting ourselves up as Iran's main target," Barak said according to Agence France Presse. Dagan's challenge to the official Israeli line may have been calculated to do exactly what no sitting Israeli Prime Minister seems capable of doing -- breaking the strategic paralysis, and to stop painting Israel in a corner where pressure on the U.S. to attack Iran chips away from Israel's credibility due to its repeated inability to fulfill its threats..."