Subject: Re: WHY does Israel have to wait for
Exactly. You don't threaten, you don't draw lines, you don't trail the Navy's coat along the Red Sea with a big SHOOT ME sign dangling from the fantail. You...do. As in, you find something they value and you eliminate it. Quietly and without much fanfare until it's done.

The phrase “stumbling into war” comes to mind.

Remember that Iran and Iraq fought each other for 10 years to a rough stalemate, which indicates to me that Iran has some relatively decent conventional forces. Perhaps not overwhelming, but enough to make trouble if they want. Then recall that to go into Iraq the second time we had to marshall another coalition, keep the other Arab countries out of it, calm down Israel when things started falling out of the sky on them, and pre-position assets and troops there for weeks, perhaps months before we were ready to go. And even with that it took us a fairly long time to achieve our objective.

Now recall that Iran is three times the geographic size of Iraq, with double the population. If you stumble into a war with them because of the macho breast beating you advocate, you better be ready for some serious troubles at home perhaps not sooner but definitely later.

The biggest, toughest, badass on the block doesn’t always win. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Agincourt. The Revolutionary War in the US. Be careful before you lock and load. You might find yourself on the bitter end of an always unpredictable adventure.

None of this means you shouldn’t respond to provocations either, just that caution is probably an important step before you make any unhalterable decisions.