“Such assessments are important, former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro told me. Israeli officials believe that if those advanced centrifuges were ever installed and operated at full capacity, it ‘might allow Iran to break out not with just one bomb, but with an arsenal’ of nuclear weapons, he said. Delaying that possibility, then, is certainly a clear and vital Israeli goal…
“As Shapiro, the former American ambassador to Israel, explained it to me, the concept ‘reflects the Israeli philosophical approach to buy time and maybe indefinitely push off future wars — and if they occur, to make them as short as possible.’ Following this strategy allows Israel to increase its own capabilities, gather intelligence, and gain a greater military advantage against Iran over time…
“That plan seems to be working for the moment. ‘At end of the war in 2006, if you had told most Israeli officials that there wouldn’t be another war on that border [with Lebanon] after 14 years, they wouldn’t have believed you,’ Shapiro said…”