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Anxious Nations Don't CompromiseWhat the Israeli reaction to the NIE report means for the peace process.

By Shmuel RosnerPosted Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2007, at 3:56 PM ET

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Olmert still believes that if he concludes that Israel is in danger of annihilation, President George W. Bush will permit him to launch an attack. But without such approval, it is doubtful Israel can act. With U.S. forces deployed all over the region, there are tens of thousands of American soldiers who would be at risk from an Iranian response, were Israel to attack the nuclear installations at Natanz and Arak. And anyway, the Israeli air force would need the U.S. codes that would open the flight path and prevent a collision between friendly forces.

Israel received early signals of the expected change in the U.S. position a few weeks ago, but nevertheless, the strong language of the NIE report came as a surprise. Senior sources in both the United States and Israel agree that the basis for the information in the new American assessment and that in Israeli hands is very similar. Professionally, Israelis were astonished by the way this information was presented to the public. They say no one can dispute the fact that Iran is closer to having the capability to produce nuclear weapons today than it was two years ago—when U.S. intelligence was still saying that Iran was developing nuclear weapons. Their conclusion is logical: This was an attempt to kill any remote possibility of the use of force by the Bush administration.

As I wrote last week in Ha'aretz, the freedom Israel enjoys now is mainly "the freedom to grumble." Its complaints came across "like a musty old tune from a different era, when the world still believed that Iran wants nuclear weapons." Israel suffered a public-opinion hit. The report provides a cast-iron excuse to those who never wanted to deal with Iran in the first place.

To Israel, it will be a trigger for second thoughts about the peace process. In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger believed that Israel would be more likely to make concessions if it felt secure and edgier in its responses to policy crises if it felt threatened. That's one of the reasons he supported U.S. military assistance to the Jewish state. Now it is going to be a lot harder for Americans to persuade the Israeli public—if not the government—to take security risks vis-à-vis the Palestinians or the Syrians.

In their talks back in 1963, as the different assessments of Egypt's capabilities came to light, Rabin warned Komer: If Nasser gains confidence, he might be tempted to attack. But Komer was not impressed. Intelligence agencies tend toward hyperbole, he argued. Komer then gave Rabin a lecture about the folly of America's overblown estimates of the "missile gap" with the Soviets. Komer argued that Israel's fears were unwarranted, that it was time for a calmer assessment of Egypt's capabilities.

To give Komer his due, he was right about the threat from Egyptian missiles, the topic under discussion at the time. But four years later, the Six-Day War erupted.