Only one nation has called for a military strike against Iran and that, we learned from Wikileaks, is Saudi Arabia. Still, the main focus of media attention has been on the prospect that Israel will attack Iran because it is the one country the Iranians have threatened with destruction and Israel’s leaders have declared a nuclear Iran an existential threat.

Many analysts argue that Israel lacks the military capability to stop the Iranian nuclear program for more than a few years and assert that the cost of any attack will exceed the benefit. This is the conventional wisdom, but it is just that, conventional, and Israel has repeatedly proved that it has the daring and creativity to disprove the skeptics.

Consider Israel’s history. American officials have been consistently wrong about Israel’s capabilities. They did not expect Israel to survive the Arab invasion of 1948. In the early 1950s, the Arabs were seen as strategic allies, but, by the end of the decade, Israel was acknowledged as the only pro-Western power in the region