Whenever anyone asks what is special about Iran, just why it is so disastrous for them to have a nuclear weapon that we must wage war against them if they try to make one, when we didn't do that with China, India, or Pakistan, invariably the answer is that they pose a dire threat to Israel. So yes, this whole thing does come down to a war for Israel. Since I'm not keen of seeing Americans die fighting a war for a foreign country, particularly a nuclear armed country full capable of defending itself, I get called an anti-Semite.
I don't want to see Iran develop a nuclear weapon either. Where we differ is on the issue of whether this is so important that we must start a war against them. Wars have unintended consequences. Remember how 10 years ago we just had to go after Saddam Hussein because he was developing nukes? (He was the "Next Hitler" at the time.) Well, it turns out that Iraq wasn't making nukes after all. Ten years later we see that we have replaced a nasty dictator with bloody anarchy. And in the process greatly increased the influence of Iran within Iraq. Nothing good has come from the war with Iraq.
I don't like the current government in Iran, and neither do many of the Iranian people. What happens if we bomb Iran? You don't need a doctorate in human psychology to realize that such an action would cause the Iranians to rally behind the mullahs and their government in order to defeat the Great Satan dropping depleted uranium on their country. Actually occupying the country would be a disaster -- it would make Iraq look like a Sunday picnic. If we bomb the country but don't occupy it we'll just have a lot of angry people more determined than ever to make a bomb. We will also have created a new generation of jihadists.
If we just leave Iran alone and tone down the Axis of Evil rhetoric eventually more moderate people will come into power. After all, this happened in both the Soviet Union and China. But this approach requires patience, a virtue that tends to be lacking among the advocates of war.
