A straightforward violation of MR's "no one knows anything about Israeli plans" policy. Except this time unsourced reports of an impending Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might actually be true...

The IDF is drawing up options for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities that do not include coordination with the United States, The Jerusalem Post has learned. While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said Israel is preparing a wide range of options for such an operation... a Defense News article on an early warning radar system the US recently sent to Israel quoted a US government source who said the X-band deployment and other bilateral alliance-bolstering activities send parallel message"

... for at least three reasons:

(1) Liberal US foreign policy experts - the ones who've gotten every major question wrong on Iran wrong for the last 20 years - are now about to add years to Iran's clock by insisting on negotiations:

Israeli officials expressed concern Wednesday about some of the recommendations in a report top American experts have prepared on Middle East policy for the Obama administration, including expanding engagement with Iran and possible responses should Teheran acquire nuclear capabilities. The report, drafted by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution, will be a major focus of the latter's Saban Center for Middle East Policy forum this weekend for top US and Israeli officials, as Washington heavy hitters try to play a role in shaping the policies of the next administration.

During the Bush administration, pro-engagement sophisticates justified de facto appeasement by appealing to opaque divination about Iranian political divisions. Now that they've got a sympathetic President they're insisting that we should engage Iran for exactly the opposite reasons: Obama should ignore Iranian political divisions, launch negotiations before the June 2008 elections, and hand Ahmadinejad a win that he desperately needs in the face of political and economic unrest. Israelis look at a teetering Iranian economy that liberal US experts would save, see that these experts are throwing completely contradictory arguments against the wall to see what sticks, and conclude that one way or another Obama will find an excuse to do what he's always intended to do. That's certainly what his choice in advisers indicates. So Israel might conclude that their window is closing since it's better to knock the knees out of a President-elect's diplomatic platform than to take on a sitting President.