Earlier this week there was sustained interaction with an Israeli team of former militarymen, policy persons, and researchers including a fighter pilot from the July 1981 sortie that preemptively took out the Iraqi reactor — Osiraq, that was about to go critical. The Israeli concern this time around was, of course, Iran. [Chatham House rules were the norm, so cannot identify the Israeli or the Indian dramatis personnae.]The point the former fighter pilot made very convincingly was not that aerial strikes to destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities would prevent Tehran from pursuing a weapons capability, but rather that such a strike would, at a minimum, delay Iran’s securing nuclear weapons and could also deter that country from pursuing the weapons option owing to the well-founded fear that the capabilities would again be hit once they reached a certain dangerous threshold, reducing their nuclear weapons project to a hopeless, Sisphyean task that will eventually be so frustrating, the Iranians will give up the effort. Had we this kind of Israeli mentality, we would have joined the Israelis to repeatedly attack Pakistani nuclear weapons complex every time it approached certain level, until Islamabad got the nessage. This option is not practicable any more. But it was readily available during the 1970s and early 1980s when Pakistan was cobbling the N-weapons capability tohgether centrally with Chinese design and material  assistance, and America, helpfully, looking the other way. Washington needed Pakistan as base to mount the jihad against the Soviet occupation troops in Afghanistan, remember? [In Greek mythology, Sisyphus tried to steal fire from the Gods and was punished by having repeatedly to roll a large boulder up a mountain only to see it roll down once he had managed to get it almost to the top.] What an exhilerating change this is from hearing our diplomats and official types constantly bellyache about Washington not doing this, not doing that, not doing nearly enough to rein in Pakistan, its terrorist activities, etc. Well, how about the Indian government doing something about it, such as ordering  covert ops to remove Hafeez Saeed from the scene, instead of relying on the $10 million US bounty to reel him in, which won’t catch this fish. Then again, Indians are talkers, and Israelis are doers — the great difference that cannot be bridged.