Reuel Marc Gerecht says yes, reprising the 2002-era "what me worry" neoconservative approach toward initiating a war with another country that served us so well in the recent past. That said, I do think Gerecht makes a fair point, and one I've not heard often, about the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon:
'Itâ??s entirely possible that even with Khamenei in control, an Iranian atomic stockpile could lose nukes to dissenting voices within the Guards who have their own ideological agendas. Now imagine the ailing Khamenei is dead, the Guard Corps has several dozen nuclear devices in its â??possession,â? and the country is in some political chaos as power centers, within the clergy and the Corps, start competing against each other. The Green Movement, too, will probably rise in force. The whole political structure could collapse or the most radical could fight their way to the topâ??all parties trying to get their hands on the nukes. Since there is no longer a politburo in Iran to keep control (Khamenei gutted it when he downed his peers and competitors), this could get messy quickly.
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We face a similar, and vastly more dire, risk of this occurring in Pakistan but nevertheless, adding a second somewhat unstable country to the nuclear club is clearly dangerous. And unlike Pakistan, where the U.S. has reportedly worked with the government on nuclear chain of custody technology, we could have no such guarantee that a new and chaotic Iranian revolution wouldn't see some forces make a grab at a nuke.
One other point that Gerecht makes is less tenable - that the Khamenei regime would collapse after a strike. Matt Duss dissects:
'Youâ??ll also notice that in dismissing the conventional wisdom that a strike on Iran would Iranâ??s democracy movement, he doesnâ??t bother to include any quotes from actual Iranian democrats to this effect. Thatâ??s probably because he hasnâ??t been able to find any. At a recent conference on Iran in Europe, I had a chance to talk to a number of Iranian democracy activists, many of them who very recently exited Iran, and I thought it was notable that, even though there were a range of views on how best to deal with the current Iranian government, there was complete agreement among them that a strike by either the U.S. or Israel would be a death blow to their movement, and that those who support war with Iran not be allowed to pose as friends of Iranian democracy. '
Israel is much more threatened by a nuclear Iran than the United States is, so they have to weigh the costs and benefits differently than we do. I don't think the Israelis care much about dashing the Green Movement's hopes if they could score a serious blow against Iran's nuclear program. The larger worry, I would guess, would be that they could not destroy enough of the program to fundamentally derail it or set it back a decade. Then, they'll have the prospect of sustained terrorist reprisals and a redoubled Iranian commitment to acquiring a nuclear weapon without the benefit of a lot of extra breathing room.