Long before he met with his overdue death last week, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, offered a theological explanation for why Israel had come into existence. “The Jews will gather from all parts of the world into occupied Palestine,” he said in a 2002 speech, of which there is an audio recording. “Not in order to bring about the Antichrist and the end of the world but rather that Allah the glorified and most high wants to save you from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place – they have gathered in one place – and there the final and decisive battle will take place.”

In other words, Israel was one-stop shopping for killing all Jews.

I thought of Nasrallah’s words on Tuesday while watching images of Iranian ballistic missiles raining down on Israel, fortunately causing only slight damage, thanks mainly to Israeli and American air defences. What if one of those missiles had been tipped with a nuclear warhead — a warhead whose construction Western intelligence agencies, even Mossad, had somehow missed? If nothing else, it would have fulfilled Nasrallah’s prophecy and his fondest hopes.

That possibility is no longer far off. This year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that Iran was within a week or two of being able to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a nuclear bomb. Even with the requisite fissile material, it takes time and expertise to fashion a nuclear weapon, particularly one small enough to be delivered by a missile. But a prime goal for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is plainly in sight, especially if it receives technical help from its new best friends in Russia, China and North Korea.

Now’s the time for someone to do something about it.

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That someone will probably be Israel, which has spent two decades successfully delaying, but not stopping, Iran’s nuclear program through sabotage, assassinations of leading scientists, cyberattacks, document heists and other covert acts. As I write, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising consequences for Iran’s attacks, though it isn’t yet clear what they might be. The last time Iran tried to hit Israel with ballistic and cruise missiles, in April, US President Joe Biden put heavy pressure on Israel to rein in its response to a symbolic minimum.

It would be a mistake to give the same advice now. Iran presents an utterly intolerable threat not only to Israel but also to the United States and whatever remains of the liberal international order it’s supposed to lead.

Iran is waging a war on unarmed commercial ships through its Houthi proxies in Yemen. It has used other proxies to attack and kill American troops stationed in allied countries. It encouraged or ordered Hezbollah to fire nearly 9000 munitions into Israel, supposedly in solidarity with Hamas, before Israel finally began retaliating with full force last month.