Is Iran Asking For It?

With Israel blaming Iran for terrorists' murder of six Jews in Bulgaria today, Barack Obama will have a harder time managing the looming Israel-Iran crisis, Jeffrey Goldberg argues:

Prime Minister Netanyahu will be under extraordinary political pressure to retaliate in some serious way, and he will be under more pressure from himself than ever to deal with a regime he believes seeks the annihilation of six million Jews. As Amos Harel put it in Haaretz yesterday, the nuclear clock seems to be ticking more quickly than ever, and the "the key question will be whether...Netanyahu can fulfill his ideological and historical commitment to prevent what he describes as a potential second Holocaust."

I doubt Netanyahu will retaliate for the Bulgaria bombing by launching an immediate attack on Iran's nuclear sites. But there is a good chance he will launch attacks on Hezbollah targets and individuals, and possibly certain Iranian targets as well, and this sort of back-and-forth can only escalate tensions further, which could only bring us closer to an Israelii preemptive strike on Iran.