On August 27, the Israeli prime minister met with the American president in the White House, in what the former hoped was an opportunity to move away from the tensions between Washington and Jerusalem—and specifically between Jerusalem and the Democrats—of the past twelve years. Eran Lerman is sanguine about the meeting, but notes there are serious threats to the Jewish state’s most important alliance.

If sanctions, diplomacy, and covert sabotage fail to prevent the Islamic Republic from obtaining nuclear weapons, it will be up to the IDF to do the job—as America will be unlikely to attack Iran, and the Gulf states lack the ability to do so. But it is not clear that the Jewish state has the necessary armaments. John Hannah writes: