There are three immediate questions to answer about the war that Israel has started with Iran, all of which lead to the most important of all: Can this achieve Israel’s stated goal of ensuring, once and for all, that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon?

If it can, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to launch Israeli jets against a much larger nation of close to 90 million people would, depending on the nature of the targets struck and level of civilian casualties, be justified on both strategic and moral grounds.

The destruction of Israel is a declared policy of the regime in Tehran and one it’s been acting on for decades. There’s no doubt, despite denials, that Iran’s uranium enrichment program is designed to produce weapons-grade fuel; it’s practically there, with a growing stockpile concentrated to 60%, a level far beyond any conceivable civilian use. So, even though Israel has a nuclear deterrent of its own, as a tiny “one-bomb” country it can’t take the risk of allowing such a hostile power to also have one.

But whether the air strikes can indeed succeed is a very big “if.” It’s more likely that Israel can do no more than delay Iran’s nuclear program by a few years. And if that’s the case, it becomes impossible to justify the certain bloodshed and unknowable consequences of starting this war, because it would at best gain no more than the diplomacy it displaced. Both the abandoned 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran and any agreement that might realistically have come out of US-Iranian talks that were due to resume on Sunday would do as much — only without loss of life, or the risk to regional stability and global markets.

So, in trying to unpick what Israel’s military action can achieve, the first of my three questions is: Why........

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