TEL AVIV — Ehud Barak is playing with fire, and we may all get burned. Based on the Israeli defense minister’s declarations in recent weeks, on and off the record, it seems that he stands solidly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. They are clearly preparing the groundwork for a fateful vote by the Israeli cabinet on whether to bomb Iran.

Their target date seems to be sometime in October, after the Jewish high holidays next month — in part before bad weather may make the skies over Iran impenetrable to Israel’s air force, but also because they feel less certain of support by the United States after America’s election day on November 6.

They both are ready to gamble on a decision that could light a fire throughout the Middle East — unless Israel is extraordinarily lucky, and everything goes as well as it did when the nation’s air force destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and a reactor that was under construction in Syria in 2007. 

Netanyahu and Barak seem to differ only in style. The prime minister tries to touch the hearts and fears of his countrymen by speaking of a second Holocaust. He likens Islamic Iran to Nazi Germany, a menace to the very existence of the Jewish people, yet most of the world ignores the threats.