An Israeli strike won’t delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It will start it.

Last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told reporters that an Israeli attack on Iran would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program.” This is true enough, but it is important to note that the general did not say Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

While Iran’s ongoing nuclear enrichment program could be used to gather the material needed for a bomb, there is no definitive evidence that Iran has kicked off such a weaponization effort. The one thing that would almost surely launch an Iranian drive to weaponize, however, would be an Israeli strike.

While there is no clear indication Iran is currently working on a nuclear weapon, there is considerable evidence to the contrary. In fact, following the release of the 2011 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed in the spring of 2011 that he had a “high confidence” that Iran had not restarted their nuclear weapons program.

And International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors continue to meticulously monitor Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium to make sure none is being diverted to any military related activities. Mohamed El-Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent more than a decade as the director of the IAEA, said that he had not “seen a shred of evidence” that Iran was pursuing the bomb during his time at the agency (1997 – 2009), adding “All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran.”

Even Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged this fact: “Are [the Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear [weapons] capability. And that’s what concerns us.”

Of course, a nuclear weapons capability comes with the territory: Any nation with a fully developed nuclear fuel cycle has such a weapons capability. In fact, this could be considered a major flaw in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. For instance, Japan, Argentina, and Brazil also have a latent nuclear weapons capability. Just like you can't get a speeding ticket for a car that is capable of going 110 miles per hour, it is not illicit to have a latent nuclear weapons capability.

An Israeli strike on Iran could change this latent capability into an active weaponization program. Iran’s response would likely include the expulsion of IAEA inspectors and a break-neck race to the bomb – not to mention the possibility of a region-wide conflagration and sky-high gas prices.

An Israeli strike would also have a “rally-around-the-flag” effect on the Iranian populace, allowing the regime to crack down further on political opponents and silence critics, cementing the regime’s authority.

Recent analysis shows that a previous Israeli strike – in 1981, on Iraq’s civilian Osirak nuclear reactor complex – led Saddam Hussein to demand a nuclear deterrent and was actually the trigger for Iraq launching a full-scale effort to weaponize. A decade later, by the time of the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq was on the verge of a nuclear weapons capability.

As researcher Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer explains in a recent International Security article, such ostensibly “preventive attacks can increase the long-term proliferation risk posed by the targeted state.”

Her research suggests that the conventional wisdom that Israel’s 1981 attack on Osirak denied Iraq a nuclear weapons capability no longer holds up: The strike actually created unprecedented pressure inside the Iraqi national security apparatus to pursue the bomb more vigorously than ever.

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