Jeffrey Goldberg’s cover article in the Atlantic about the prospect of an Israeli strike on Iran has provoked fierce debate. One key issue is the likely timing of Israeli action, if it is to occur at all. Goldberg reports a consensus among the officials he interviewed that “there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.” That is not exactly a firm timetable, but it hinges on an assessment that Iran’s nuclear program is fast approaching “the point of no return”—which is the title of Goldberg’s piece. 

Some observers, like James Fallows, also of the Atlantic, come to a very different conclusion. “My instinct,” he writes, is “to view time as an asset for our side, not theirs.” If we keep a close watch, time “keeps giving us one more day—and month, and year—for pressures and incentives to work, for the regime to weaken, and for our government to think through in a calm and Ike-like way exactly what we will do if time runs out.”