Act II

I am a fan of the theater.  But theatrics is best left to the Opera house, a more appropriate setting than the world nuclear stage.  Dramatic plot lines within the arts are to be celebrated. Swan Lake or Romeo and Juliet are all the more poignant because of the sweet tragedy, but recall that Shakespeare's players tempted fate with sonnets sung from a moonlit balcony.  Today's players tempt fate with whispers not of romance but of military strike, incurring inevitably drastic retaliations.  While indeed theatric, these plot twists are not to be celebrated, but condemned for the recklessness in which they are conceived.  Literary scholars will tell you that characters are motivated by different, sometimes irrational factors.  Players on a stage have this luxury.  Players walking the line between existence and destruction, as they claim, need only be motivated by security and justice.  What happens when those occupying the leading roles forget their lines and deviate from their sole motivation?

It is true, eventually Israel, the United States and others will have to anticipate the scene in which a response to a nuclear, or potentially nuclear, Iran is necessary. This is a serious threat worthy of serious consideration.  Yet this imminent second act is threatened by what is a reckless and needlessly political intermission.  If Israel is seriously considering a preemptive attack on Iran, surely the audience should not know about it ahead of time.  To preemptively provoke Iran is a detriment to Israeli security, but the real threat lies with the leaders who believe that all the world is a stage, and the men and women they are sworn to protect, merely players.