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Former Presidential advisor Bruce Riedel, also a former National Security Council staffer and CIA analyst, told the Israeli daily {Yedioth Ahronoth} that an Israeli attack on Iran would be a disaster for the U.S. and Israel. 

"An Israeli attack on Iran could ignite a regional conflict from Afghanistan to the Gaza strip," warned Riedel, adding that "for the Americans and the Obama Administration it will be a disaster." Riedel, currently a senior fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution, further warned that such an attack would provoke Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack Israel. 

"Hezbollah will see an attack on Iran as a threat to their patron and there is a very good chance that they will initiate [another] Lebanon war only this time [with] even more rockets and missiles than in 2006," said Riedel, adding that an Israeli strike in Iran would have to include a preemptive strike on Hezbollah. 

 He said that Brookings had run a war game simulating an Israeli attack on Iran, which concluded that a perfect strike is impossible, and would place Israel in a vulnerable position -- and the United States in an even tougher spot. "We have every reason to believe that the Iranians will see an Israeli attack on their nuclear facilities as a joint American-Israeli attack, and they will retaliate not only on Israeli targets but on American targets. 

 "The Iranians [have the] capacity to retaliate against America not only in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf ... [but even more so] in Afghanistan, where we have 90,000 troops and where the Iranians [have] well-established links to the Taliban," he said. Commenting to Israeli media on a possible Iran attack, he said, "It's crazy. I don't really understand why now. It almost feeds the flames. 

Either the Netanyahu government has something new that the rest of us don't know about, or they are misreading the events in the region." Says Riedel, "Perhaps the spoiled assassination against the Saudi ambassador would make the Obama government more sympathetic to an attack on Iran. If that's the case, they are making a very big mistake." 

Riedel added that "the Obama administration made it clear from day one that they don't support an Israeli military strike on Iran."