The article's publication came less than a week after The New York Times revealed that the Obama administration had persuaded Israel that Iran was at least a year away from the point where it could make a "dash" to assemble a nuclear device before Israel or Washington could react. The object of the assurance was to keep an Israeli pre-emptive attack off the table for at least another year. The question of a pre-emptive attack against Iran is the most agonizing security dilemma Israel has faced since its foundation.
"If there will be thousands of dead, we will lick our wounds," writes Pridan. "Five-thousand would be a national trauma. At 20,000 we will use the doomsday weapon against Iran, and then there will really be a new Middle East."
Pridan's article, headlined "Wake Up", was not an argument against an Israeli attack but a call for the government to swiftly beef up the emergency and rescue services needed to deal with massive casualties and damage inflicted by Iran's response. "Israel will act against the Iranian nuclear program, with or without the Americans," he wrote.
Even short of this worst-case scenario in the event of an Israeli attack, Jerusalem anticipates an ongoing campaign of terror attacks against Israeli legations and citizens around the world as Iran and its supporters lash back. In addition, the likely global economic crisis that would follow Iran's closing of the Hormuz Straits to oil shipments would be laid by the international community at Israel's door.
