The World in 2010, the 24th edition of The Economist's annual collection of predictions for the upcoming year,pictures Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu as "a prime minister with Iran on his mind." What he reads about Iran in the news today will not ease his anxieties.

The Wall Street Journal reports that "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled . . . plans to build 10 more nuclear facilities for enriching uranium" (Farnaz Fassihi and Jay Solomon, "Defiant Iran Beefs Up Nuclear Plans," Nov. 30, 2009). A London Times front-page headline put it this way: "Iran stokes tensions with huge nuclear expansion" (Nov. 30, 2009). This was Tehran's rebellious reaction to the recent UN censure.

Author Jerome Corsi recently wrote a book titled Why Israel Can't Wait, referring to its need to respond to Iranian words and actions. The book begins: "'For us, a nuclear-armed Iran is an existential threat,' Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon told the author in a private, audio-recorded interview in his Jerusalem office on June 14, 2009. 'We have to be ready to defend ourselves'" (2009, p. 1).

According to Corsi, most of the Israeli officials he interviewed in the Netanyahu government confirmed Mr. Yaalon's views. Summing up their assessment, Corsi writes: "Iran's nuclear weapons program is an existential threat to the survival of Israel, to the extent that Israel is reluctantly prepared to launch a preemptive military strike on Iran, with or without the approval of the United States, as early as the end of 2009 or the beginning of 2010, if the United States and the world community fail to stop Iran" (p. 1). He quotes Moshe Yaalon as stating: "The appeasement road is not going to work with Iran" (p. 3).

The Israeli state is so small that just one or two well-placed nuclear weapons could essentially destroy the entire country. Unless we understand the geography, geopolitics and history of Iran, we may fail to appreciate the depths of its threat to the West, especially to Israel. This nation is not just another Iraq.

American journalist Robert Kaplan writes in Foreign Policy: "Virtually all of the greater Middle East's oil and natural gas lies in this region [the Persian core, stretching from the Caspian Sea in the north to the Persian Gulf on Iran's south]. Just as shipping lanes radiate from the Persian Gulf, pipelines are increasingly radiating from the Caspian region to the Mediterranean, the Black Sea, China and the Indian Ocean.

"The only country that straddles both energy-producing areas is Iran...The Persian Gulf possesses 55 percent of the world's crude-oil reserves and Iran dominates the whole gulf . . . a coastline of 1,317 nautical miles, thanks to the many bays, inlets, coves, and islands that offer plenty of excellent places for hiding tanker-ramming speedboats" ("The Revenge of Geography," May-June, 2009, p. 105).

Kaplan also notes that "Iran runs an unconventional, postmodern empire of substate entities in the greater Middle East: Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Sadrist movement in southern Iraq" (ibid.).

A number of well-known statesmen have publicly warned Israel not to attack Iraq, including Israel's own president, Shimon Peres—plus officials in the Obama administration. But Israel may have no choice. (To understand the historic background, request or download our free booklet The Middle East in Bible Prophecy.)