Israel took out IraQ's nuclear facility (1985?)and everyone in the world thought it was a pretty good idea.
Syria, last year, had a mysterious nuclear something taken out by Israel, but that fell off the news so fast, clearly the entire world agreed that it was best not to talk about it. I could never figure out what happened.
If Israel did take out Iran's nuclear facilities, first, it would be hard to do simply due to distance, who they have to fly over, refueling, etc. But they could find a way, they always do.
I'm pretty sure that all the middle east countries don't want Iran to have nukes. If they are ever used in that neighborhood it pollutes them all, depending on the wind. And it's really hard to clean up contaminated soil in 10 countries at once.
So the remaining question is what would Iran do? Well, Iran has the same problem with distance from Israel, and Israel could not be attacked with airplanes due to defenses and their excellent Air Force, so that leaves missiles.
Iran's missiles could allegedly hit Israel but now they won't be nuclear. Do they have chemicals? Probably. Really sophisticated ones? I'm guessing no. Just ordinary nasty stuff. Israel dealt with the scuds from IraQ pretty well, they ARE prepared for gas.
So, Iran may be able to blow up stuff in Israel but they have to be careful not to hit Jerusalem or it will offend Muslims, which Iran is. So targeting would have to be precise. Can they do that? I don't know.
World opinion doesn't matter much to Israel because mostly it's already against them.
So what's the downside to their doing it? I say not a whole lot.
What I'm concerned about is USA. Bush and Rice have obviously been engaged in a persistent effort to destroy Israel in favor of a Palestinian State. I don't know why, makes no sense to me. But, Israel could hardly pull it off without our help, so if they do it I suppose they did so with our permission.
Bottom line, they could get away with it.
