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.

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Another vital question is whether Netanyahu’s plan for success in the war he’s started is predicated on drawing in the US. I don’t have access to classified information, or a direct line to the Israeli prime minister’s calculations. But the consensus among military analysts has long been that Israel can do only limited damage on its own; to succeed, it needs the 15-ton bunker-buster bombs that only America has.

These weapons are thought essential because Iran’s most advanced centrifuge cascades for enriching uranium are buried 60 to 90 meters (197 to 295 feet) under a mountain at Fordow, about an hour’s drive south of Qom, home to the Islamic Republic’s most important seminaries. Iran has been building an even deeper facility to replace the surface one at Natanz, an hour further south.

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The risk to Netanyahu is that Khamenei can walk this tightrope between hitting back hard enough that he isn’t damaged at home by appearing weak, but not so hard as to draw in the US and its bunker-busting bombs. If he can pull that off, then Israel’s attack could backfire spectacularly, even while showing its continued technological and military superiority. Rather than destroy or even delay Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power, there’s a danger that this war of choice brings it closer.

Vir: Marc Champion, Bloomberg