Following his May 9 Kremlin meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters he had explained to his host that “it is the right of every state, certainly it is Israel's right, to take such steps as are necessary to defend itself against this aggression.” At almost the same time, Transportation and Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz was explaining, “Only offensives now, today, can prevent violence and war tomorrow.” Education Minister and defense Cabinet member Naftali Bennett bolstered their remarks, telling a gathering of young Israelis, “If I had to summarize the policies of the Israeli government and the security establishment in this era, I would say, 'If one rises up to kill you, kill him first.'”

Obviously, Iran did not deploy missile launchers throughout Syria out of any peaceful goals. However, where is the famous “red line’’ — those hostile military actions unacceptable by Israel? What turns a series of (allegedly Israeli) strikes in the sovereign territory of a neighboring state into “self-defense”? If, as Katz argued, offensives today can avert war tomorrow, a responsible (Israeli) government must also bomb the missiles deployed by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. And what about the long-range missiles Iran can launch from the outskirts of Tehran at Israel’s nuclear facility near the town of Dimona?

If the name of the game is “self-defense,” then Iran, too, might have good reasons to attack Israel. It is no secret that had it not been for the strenuous objections by the heads of Israel’s defense agencies and late President Shimon Peres, Netanyahu and his former Minister of Defense Ehud Barak would have probably bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities. At this point, we should also remember that the government of Israel — not of Iran — was the one that thwarted a conference planned in Helsinki for 2012 on a nuclear-free Middle East, supported by former US President Barack Obama. Not only that, according to foreign media reports, Israel is the only country in the Middle East equipped with dozens of nuclear bombs, and the only one consistently refusing to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is also a leading weapons exporter to murderous regimes in Africa and elsewhere. All, of course, for the sake of self-defense.

However, one can discern a different motivation for Israel’s actions against Iran between the lines of the boastful chatter by members of the defense Cabinet. Katz said the government’s strategy was to “act to remove Iran from Syria.” Bennett went a step further, suggesting the Iranian people emulate the grassroots Israeli protest movement called Four Mothers, whose pressure is credited with Israel’s decision to pull its forces out of Lebanon 18 years ago. “If you do a Four Mothers and get out of Syria, you might somehow survive as a regime,” the minister promised. On the other hand, “If you keep wasting billions and impose sanctions on yourselves because of a country located dozens of kilometers from you, the regime will be replaced.”