Writing in the Wall Street Journal, former UN Ambassador and unrepentant neoconservative John Bolton finds that while Israel's military option against Iran's nuclear program is "unattractive", but failing to act is even worse. In his piece, Ambassador Bolton argues that time is not on Israel's side and that one "major new element in Israel's calculus is the Obama administration's growing distance." Ambassador Bolton seems to believe that Israel should attack Iran and the sooner the better.

He outlines six possible Iranian responses to Israeli attack and dismisses each scenario as unlikely to occur. Ambassador Bolton's fantasies extend to the realm of the absurd. For example he argues that even if Iran close the Straits of Hormuz, that might be offset by prudent hedging to prevent any spike in oil prices. By process of elimination but also because of strategic logic, Bolton concludes Iran's most likely option is retaliating through Hamas and Hezbollah. But here this too can be minimized by "simultaneous, pre-emptive attacks on Hezbollah and Hamas in conjunction with a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities." Why is it that John Bolton's answer to every question more war?

Most incredibly and despite the bitter experience of Iraq, Bolton trots out the greeted as liberators argument.

Many argue that Israeli military action will cause Iranians to rally in support of the mullahs' regime and plunge the region into political chaos. To the contrary, a strike accompanied by effective public diplomacy could well turn Iran's diverse population against an oppressive regime.

What Ambassador Bolton fails to realize is that this is not 1981. Israel likely can not destroy Iran's nuclear capacity as it destroyed Iraq's Osirak reactor with just a few planes and missiles. Attacking Iran would involve flying dozen of sorties and perhaps using tactical nuclear weapons to destroy the heavily fortified underground Natanz facility. Furthermore, the world is much more connected that it was in 1981. An Israeli attack on Iran would not only inflame the Arab Street but the globe. Indeed, it might forever turn world public opinion against the Jewish state.

Still I find Ambassador Bolton's whole argument to be flawed for it is premised on the assumption that Iran is determined to achieve deliverable nuclear weapons at any cost. That is not necessarily the consensus of many Iran watchers. For example, Israel's military intelligence chief asserted in March that Iran will have the capacity to build a nuclear bomb within a year, but was not rushing to produce one. The objective seems more to have the capability just in case. A credible deterrent but not a nuclear weapon.

Furthermore, negotiations with Tehran may yet convince the regime that a nuclear arms race in the region is not anyone's interests. The Iranians have been rational actors so far in this drama, there is no reason to suppose that they have cease to be rational. Indeed, it is John Bolton who with his incessant and irrational war-mongering makes the world a more dangerous place.