The Israeli Government's Continuing Ineptitude

From comments by the Israeli foreign minister:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said on Sunday that the world may have as little as “A few months” to avoid a nuclear Iran and called for sanctions.

I don't understand this. Iran is a few months away from being able to produce enough fissionable material to build nuclear bombs, with which it has threatened to attack Israel, and the Israeli response is to call for multilateral sanctions that everybody knows will not work? This is Israel's strongest diplomatic response to a straightforward threat of annihilation? It would have been much better if Livni had said nothing. Whatever military action Israel or the USA may (let us hope) be planning behind the scenes, this kind of public kabuki dance by western governments, and particularly by Israel, can only encourage the mullahs. Livni should say that Israel will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran and leave it at that.

UPDATE: Here's a finer-grained discussion of some of the diplomatic issues.

(Cross posted at Chicago Boyz.)