The I guess we're saying the same thing from different directions. There's nothing that Israel can do, it's power is too local and the objective too distant.

Israel will not do anything until after the US elections. If Romney wins they will probably get the green light in days and will attack when ready. If Obama wins they may still go ahead but the US assistance will be more subtle, such as up to the minute intelligence on defences etc.

And precisely what kind of attack are you expecting them to launch? Given their very limited capabilities, what effect do you think they expect to achieve?

Probably an airstrike against the known plants any more than that I have no idea.

I take it all 'the good sh1t' is beyond a bunker buster's penetration? Er, madam?

Indeed, the good sh1t is buried so deep even the yanks don't have suitable ordnance. Getting at it with what Israel has, given that their planes would be at the limit of their range and so would have to carry more fuel and smaller weapons is absurdly unrealistic.

And what would be the point? The Iranians are all mouth, and the containment strategy already in place is working. Iran can't build new oil refineries because they can't finance them. Without them they are both one of the world's largest exporters of oil, and also a net importer of petrol. That's disastrous for a country that subsidises petrol as they do.

Their economy is too weak to support a prolonged investment in nuclear research, especially one that is highly compromised (those viruses must have siphoned off a lot of data), has to be hidden in expensive tunnels, brings crippling sanctions down on their only export industry and their sources of international financing etc. Add on top of that an authoritarian government with little popular support - which entails that the economy must be further undermined by handing large portions of it to the corrupt security services that keep the whole thing standing - and you have a recipe for imminent meltdown.

Weighed against that they have a nuclear program that's years away from developing a deliverable weapon: they are still making the raw materials, they will need a lot more investment to come up with a warhead that can fit on a missile, and they don't even have a suitable missile yet anyway. So the whole enterprise is pathetically quixotic and we would be best advised to sit and wait for it to go pear shaped on them. Which is something everyone knows.

That may have a suitable missile if they can make a small enough warhead, though that is not going to be easy. As for the deep plants as long as they obliterate the access is that really a problem. If everything is stuck underground it is next to useless, but as you said the sanctions are weakening the regime so it may all be moot anyway.

You are assuming Iran just doesn't build a load of dirty warheads. If and its a big if they go from posturing and rhetoric to something more tangible. They can attempt or threaten to irradiate areas of Israel.

Dirty warheads are a lot easier to produce. Though the implications for retaliation would outweigh the benefits.

Easier to produce, yes, but much less predictable in their outcome.
Also, if it happens to rain their effectiveness is vastly reduced.

Even the Daily Mail knows that dirty bombs are a myth
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -bomb.html

What we are discussing here are a series of desperate last chance gambits. Iran launching any serious kind of weapon at Israel is a long shot (literally) with little chance of successfully doing much. Israel attacking Iran's nuke facilities likewise (even supposing that they are so phenomenally stupid as to build an underground lair that can be [LIFTED] up by the military equivalent of supergluing their locks).

In either case, the result is a first strike that initiates a wider conflagration. Whoever is fool enough to shoulder the blame for that will suffer repercussions. In either case the result is chaotic war across much of the Islamic middle east (as Iran stirs up trouble in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan). Plus Iran would try to attack the US fleet with an armada of rubber dinghies (that's their real plan), and they would mine the straits and so on. Most of the world's oil would still flow, but there would still be a terrible price spike derailing economies globally. And in retaliation for the above, Iran would have its economy and its military flattened by American air strikes.

The suffering would be felt most keenly in Iran itself, where food would quickly become too expensive for much of the population to purchase. The rest of the world would get by, not enough of the overall oil supply is within Ian's reach for things to get as bad for the rest of us as it does for them. They would have precious few military achievements to boast of at the end of the process, and huge human misery to explain away. Not a sensible choice.

If Israel were seen as the aggressor who launched the conflict, the cost would be ruinous also to them. Trade embargoes would be applied, and they would enter a true diplomatic wilderness. Everyone except America would be backing the Palestinian cause and they would lose land, sympathy and prestige as a result.

If America were seen globally as the agent of this disaster, Israel would still suffer the above. On top of that, American prestige would be hit, its allies globally would come to see it as a desperate and declining power, and nobody would be anxious to hide beneath its skirt for protection against China anymore because nobody could trust them not to make things worse for them.

The politicians who order military strikes worry about two things: economics and power relationships. Both sides lose economically if they launch their attacks first. One side risks losing power altogether, the other relationships. So none of the strikes make any sense.

You are assuming that those in charge will act rationally

+ Lots

I don't need them to act rationally, I simply require of them that they follow a predictable rationale. I don't think that's unreasonable seeing as it's the one they have followed thus far to gain and retain power.