Three - Maybe Four - Options

 

From most likely to least likely, IMHO:

Option One

As discussed previously, Israel lets Iran's next attack automagically destroy the Dome Of The Rock, then sits back and watches Iran take on the rest of the Islamic world for their stupidity, while they rebuild the third iteration of the Temple on its historical site.

This has been how Israel traditionally rolls. They sow chaos among their enemies, let their enemies' own internal conflicts serve Israeli interests, and reap the benefits, with carefully placed action. 

This is the David Option, putting one stone in Goliath's forehead. Which sends the Philistines (from whence narrow coastal strip tribe's name the modern word "Palestine" comes) fleeing for cover. History doesn't repeat, but it often rhymes.

Option Two

Israel and the Western powers continue to soak up and largely fend off Iranian attacks until someone comes up with a better plan, at a disparate and profligate waste of money and ordnance on all sides but Iran's. Which emboldens Hamas, Hezbollah, and every other whackjob jihadi group on the planet, multiplying attacks and provocations endlessly, and destabilizing the world to the benefit of countries like Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea. IOW, the exact pain-in-the-ass countries perpetually since 1950, and the current status quo since about 1974. This is the "Nothing Ever Changes" Option.

Option Three (maybe)

Israel expends another $1B on the next attack, which costs Iran less than $100M. The West decides the lemon isn't worth the squeeze, and Israel, going broke slowly or quickly, gets wiped off the face of the land there "from the river to the sea", fulfilling the most fervent expectation of generations of impotent Arab Muslims since 1948. This is the "Sh'yeah, when monkeys fly outta my butt!" Option.

Option Four

Israel gets tired of Iran's shit, and recognizing Iran has moved from largely impotent threatener to a nation actually capable of carrying out its endless calls and threats to destroy Israel, rolls up all Iranian provocations, incitements, and actions against Israel since 1978 into a ball and decides to present Iran with a bill. 

It comes in the form of a general nuclear strike on Teheran, and any number of lesser cities and all identifiable nuclear facilities in Iran, to the public outrage and quiet delight of every non-Persian country bordering/adjacent to Iran, not least of all Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Russia, and to a large extent, about 90% of the United States (The vocal minority loses their collective shit, which isn't Israel's problem anyway.) 

Israel decides if they're going to be treated as a pariah by most of the world for decades, they might as well act like one, and ends their troubles with a near-nuclear state before it becomes a nuclear peer-to-peer contest. 

Iran, as a result, dissolves into a Yugoslavian polyglot of competing (surviving) groups, and large hunks of it are nibbled off by competing states and groups, ceasing to be anything of interest for a century. The Kurds carve out a homeland (pissing off Persian, Russian, and Turkish counter interests, which is a geo-political hat-trick), Iraqi Shi'a are largely turned into the Sunni's bitches, the Yemeni conflict is mopped up, Hamas surrenders or dies in Gaza, Hezbollah is strategically weakend in Lebanon, and the House of Saud takes the opportunity to do a large-scale roundup and execution dump of troublemakers of all factions within the kingdom. All of which heralds a decline of terrorism worldwide for 10-20 years, at least from the plethora of Iranian-sponsored @$$holes, who are generally 80-90% of all the world's incidents. This is the "Wouldn't It Be Nice" Option. 

{We could have made this last Option Five, substituting an identical strike, but with conventional weapons, as Option Four. But:

a) Israel couldn't accomplish that mission without multiple conventional strikes, a scenario unlikely and probably increasingly impossible after any initial strike, with dwindling and probably insufficient IAF resources in the first place. (Pay attention: Even Japan wasn't stupid enough to make Pearl Harbor a three-day raid.)

b) You don't take geo-political half-assed half-steps, and Israel prefers lightning strikes, not rolling thunder.

c) Nukes get the job done all at once, which is the entire point of the exercise.

Thus, a conventional strike, or strikes, are even - in fact far - less likely than a general nuclear reckoning, and frankly Iran has been begging for a Hiroshima enema from anybody since about 1978, on general principles.}

Nota bene: None of these are The Samson Option.

For Common Core grads, biblically/historically Samson, mighty judge of Israel, shorn, blinded, and a prisoner of the Philistines, asked to be taken to the pillars of the palace where the feast celebrating his enslavement was occurring, whereupon he summoned one last burst of his former strength to push the pillars aside, collapsing the place on himself and his tormenters simultaneously.

The modern equivalent would be Israel launching nuclear strikes at every capitol and major city of the surrounding Arab nations while on the verge of destruction by them, which is nowhere evident to any degree at the current time. Lebanon and Saudi Arabia tapped out after 1948; Jordan after 1967, and Egypt after the 1973 war. Syria continues, mainly because it signed no peace accords, and gets no hush money as a result, and they control Lebanese territory since 1976, and the dissolution of Lebanon as a coherent state. Iran has been too far removed to touch Israel directly (until this week), relying solely on third-party terrorism by surrogates, and thus avoided Israeli direct wrath for the same reason.

Until Obozo broke a decades-long policy on the part of the U.S., and sold Israel air-to-air refueling aircraft and capabilities, which now makes Iran no longer a one-way suicide mission, and instead makes it a nation well within the strike capabilities of the IAF, and the 50-100 nuclear weapons Israel "doesn't have".

Bummer for the Iranians, who have now entered the chatroom.

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"Interesting times".

A Chinese veiled curse for good reason.

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