A recent report from the IAEA on Iran’s alleged efforts to develop nuclear weapons heightened speculation of over Israel making a preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities (action that may seem even more real given speculation about a recent explosion at an Iranian missile site over the weekend).

However, the recency effect can sometimes be blinding in a conflict as perpetual as this one. The most current threat always seems riskier than the last one. And anyone that even casually follows this issue knows that Israel has threatened Iran before, and even allegedly sabotaged its rivals’ nuclear development through assassinations and cyber warfare.

So, in evaluating the prospects of any near term action, it’s at least worth putting the most recent media coverage of a preemptive Israeli attack in perspective. The image below shows a timeline of references from the last three years related to Israel striking Iran over nuclear weapons concerns.

Threats from the last two weeks are clearly not the first of their kind, but one of several flare ups in the ongoing security conflict for both countries. And while emotionally charged rhetoric drives media coverage today, it often fails to provide the supplemental information that similar threats from Israel took place almost exactly a year prior.

Outside of evaluating the density of media coverage during recent years, there are other ways to contextualize the significance of this most recent threat of military conflict between Israel and Iran. For example, who are the figures out there talking about this issue?

Using the same timeframe, 2009-2011, we can identify individuals discussing the combination of Iran, Israel and nuclear weapons capabilities.

Using the time slider under the network view, we can go back to May 2009 to find Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, saying that his country would not allow a nuclear Iran while months later Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said “there was no guarentee Israel would not launch a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities…” Separately, clear throughout are the retaliatory consequences that would accompany Israeli military action. In addition to the state military response from Iran, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal made it clear that any attack would generate support for Iran from militant groups in Gaza.

It’s also clear from the network above that the Turkish government is active in the political maneuvering with Recep Erdogen saying that any preemptive attack would be “disastrous for the entire region”. Separately, the Russian government figures prominently as do connections to the country through alleged support from scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko.

Now we have a clear indication that the issue of Israel preemptively acting against Iran is one that’s been prominent in geopolitical discussion for years, let’s shift back to evolution of the recent news. When did this issue really heat up? Well, we can see from an analysis of sources that there was the typical, scattered discussion about Israeli concerns over a nuclear Iran, at least up until October 30.

However, on October 31, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a parliamentary speech warning that Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, and suggested that “a military option should not be ruled out.” This spurred mainstream news (shown in pink) coverage on the potential for a preemptive strike even ahead of an IAEA report that came out days later suggesting Iran’s program may in fact be one designed for weaponization.

Now about two weeks past the hottest media coverage of the issue, we look out for any predictions about the days ahead. What we find is London’s Daily Mail reporting, by way of an unidentified source, that Israel would take action against Iran by the end of the year.

The Daily Mail report, so far, does no seem corroborated by other notable sources, and this issues is one of those that is notoriously difficult to dissect. How do we know what is political posturing versus concrete evidence of action? Without inside sources, we may not know, but the open source is useful in garnering perspective around inflammatory issues.

Without getting into conspiracy theory territory, what further angles would be interesting to view here? Maybe we want to examine US media sentiment about Iran leading up to Netanyahu’s speech at the end of October, or try to identify abnormalities (whether it’s unique individuals or sources) calling for a preemptive strike. We’ll return to the issue in a few weeks to see how the scenario changes.

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