One of the more interesting things discussed in Jeffrey Goldberg’s piece on Israel and Iran is the way Israel views the threats of a nuclear Iran that are unrelated to the actual use of the weapons.

The challenges posed by a nuclear Iran are more subtle than a direct attack, Netanyahu told me. “Several bad results would emanate from this single development. First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.

“You’d create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area,” he went on. An Iran with nuclear weapons would also attempt to persuade Arab countries to avoid making peace with Israel, and it would spark a regional nuclear-arms race. “The Middle East is incendiary enough, but with a nuclear-arms race, it will become a tinderbox,” he said.

Other Israeli leaders believe that the mere threat of a nuclear attack by Iran—combined with the chronic menacing of Israel’s cities by the rocket forces of Hamas and Hezbollah—will progressively undermine the country’s ability to retain its most creative and productive citizens. Ehud Barak, the defense minister, told me that this is his great fear for Israel’s future.

“The real threat to Zionism is the dilution of quality,” he said. “Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world. The real test for us is to make Israel such an attractive place, such a cutting-edge place in human society, education, culture, science, quality of life, that even American Jewish young people want to come here.” This vision is threatened by Iran and its proxies, Barak said. “Our young people can consciously decide to go other places,” if they dislike living under the threat of nuclear attack. “Our best youngsters could stay out of here by choice.”

It makes me wonder. An Israel largely contained to its 1967 borders, which had generously given up land they could have kept by force, living aside a viable Palestinian state, would have little trouble maintaining civil and commercial ties to the Arab world, or in presenting a united front against Persian expansionism. Having shedded it’s pariah status on the international stage, it would be a place much more attractive to live for American Jews. If Israel was still menaced by rocket attacks from Lebanon or Gaza or the West Bank, everyone would see Israel as justified in fighting back. In fact, the Palestinian government would not allow these attacks to originate from their territory, because they would know that their state could be taken away as quickly as it was granted. Iran would become the pariah if they continued to send rockets for Hizbollah to fire into Israel. In any case, Iran’s influence in the Arab world would be diminished.

So, why doesn’t Israel choose this saner path? I believe it is because too many Israelis want to keep Palestinian land in perpetuity. If Goldberg is right that Israel will unilaterally, and without notice or American permission, attack Iran no later than July of next year, then we have to consider the consequences (which Goldberg decribes):

…they stand a good chance of changing the Middle East forever; of sparking lethal reprisals, and even a full-blown regional war that could lead to the deaths of thousands of Israelis and Iranians, and possibly Arabs and Americans as well; of creating a crisis for Barack Obama that will dwarf Afghanistan in significance and complexity; of rupturing relations between Jerusalem and Washington, which is Israel’s only meaningful ally; of inadvertently solidifying the somewhat tenuous rule of the mullahs in Tehran; of causing the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973; of placing communities across the Jewish diaspora in mortal danger, by making them targets of Iranian-sponsored terror attacks, as they have been in the past, in a limited though already lethal way; and of accelerating Israel’s conversion from a once-admired refuge for a persecuted people into a leper among nations.

I’m not convinced that Goldberg is correct in his assessment of Israeli intentions, but if he is right, what should America do now to preempt this looming catastrophe? It seems to me that the politics in Israel, America, and Iran are making it impossible to avoid a conflagration of some kind in the near future. None of these three nations appears capable of standing up to domestic opinion and coming to sane conclusions.