Jeffrey Goldberg, a correspondent for the Atlantic and a Bloomberg News columnist, today criticized the Obama administration for publicly discussing the consequences of war with Iran.

Goldberg emailed Mitt Romney wondering if his Iran policy had changed given his relatively moderate tone during last week’s foreign policy debate and published Romney’s response in a Bloomberg piece published today. Romney replied with some of his standard boilerplate answers on Iran but criticized “the president’s top advisers and cabinet secretaries broadcasting the risks of the military option, therefore conveying to Iran’s leadership that the threat is simply not real.”

Goldberg agreed with this latter assessment, writing, “it doesn’t help the American negotiating position to publicly telegraph to the Iranians these sorts of doubts” (although he didn’t say how exactly discussing the consequences of war with Iran would undermine the U.S. negotiating position). But in a follow-up article for the Atlantic, Goldberg went a bit further, saying that having a public discussion of the repercussions of attacking Iran is a “relief” for Iran’s leaders:

President Obama has been undermined from time to time by his own team on the Iran question — whenever a senior official of his administration analyzes publicly the dangers of a military confrontation to the U.S., we should assume the Iranian leaders breathe a sigh of relief, and make the calculations that Obama is bluffing on military action.

Again, Goldberg doesn’t explain how having an open and public discussion about the consequences of war with Iran harms the U.S. negotiating position or how exactly it means President Obama is not sincere that “no options are off the table” when dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. We asked Goldberg on Twitter but he has yet to respond.

Joel Rubin, Director of Policy and Government Affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, pushed back on Goldberg’s assertion. “Does this mean that the administration, if it disagrees with Congress or other critics, has to be silent?” Rubin asked. “Are we not a democracy? Is the only voice that’s allowed the one that calls for military action?” Rubin said, adding, “This implies that there’s only one correct policy towards Iran, and that any debate about it is counterproductive.”

And in a twist to Goldberg’s comments, Iran’s leaders might actually “breathe a sigh of relief” if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities. From the Green Movement protests in 2009 to the strains on Iranians caused by tough international sanctions, Iranian society is currently deeply divided. An attack could end all that and cause ordinary Iranians to rally around the regime. We know this precisely because this administration has fostered a public discussion of the consequences of war with Iran. But it’s not just the Obama administration saying this. Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said an attack “would galvanize Iranian society behind the leadership and create unity around the nuclear issue.”

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In a column titled “How to Beat Obama on Foreign Policy,” Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg rips into Vice President Biden’s comments on the Iranian nuclear issue during the recent vice presidential debate, claiming Biden handed Mitt Romney a “gift” by allegedly “downplay[ing] the importance of confronting Iran” and that Biden’s remarks on Iran during the debate were “technically inaccurate.” Goldberg often writes insightfully on the issue, but his critique of Biden misses the mark: the Vice President’s remarks were an accurate summation of the state of affairs with respect to Iran’s nuclear program.

Goldberg is skeptical of Biden’s claim that “we’ll know if [Iran] start[s] the process of building a weapon.” Goldberg’s central complaint is with Biden’s claim that “[b]oth the Israelis and we know — we’ll know if they start the process of building a weapon. So all this bluster I keep hearing, all this loose talk — what are they talking about?” Biden’s point is a basic one: Iran is currently enriching uranium up to 19.75 percent U-235, but a nuclear weapon requires 90 percent levels. Moving from 20 to 90 percent takes work and, moreover, would then require warheads and delivery systems Iran currently lacks to make full nuclear missiles.

Goldberg worries the United States, Israel, and other allies would not be able to track Iran’s progress in enriching uranium to the purity needed for a nuclear weapon and quotes non proliferation expert David Albright saying, “You only need a very small facility [to make weapons]. It poses a greater challenge for intelligence gathering.” But a recent report, which Albright coauthored, highlights the difficulty for Iran to “breakout” and enrich to 90 percent levels for weapons without getting caught, and so it wouldn’t in the near term:

Although Iran’s breakout times are shortening, an Iranian breakout in the next year could not escape detection by the IAEA or the United States. Furthermore, the United States and its allies maintain the ability to respond forcefully to any Iranian decision to break out. During the next year or so, breakout times at Natanz and Fordow appear long enough to make an Iranian decision to break out risky. Therefore, ISIS assesses that Iran is unlikely to break out at Natanz or at Fordow in the near term, barring unforeseen developments such as a pre-emptive military strike.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors also routinely inspect Iran’s nuclear facilities, which would make it very hard for Iran to leap towards a bomb without getting caught red-handed — a key point which was highlighted at a recent CAP event on U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iran.

Though Goldberg suggests Biden’s comment was a “dramatic…deviation from the administration’s line on Iran,” the Vice President was merely reiterating what Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has said on multiple occasions. Speaking in March, Panetta said it would take Iran between two and three years to attach a bomb to a missile: “the consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.” Panetta went further in September saying the U.S. would know if Iran moved to weaponization. “It’s roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year. And so, we think we will have the opportunity once we know that they’ve made that decision, take the action necessary to stop (the program),” he said.

Panetta’s point about Iran’s “decision” is a crucial one — American and Israeli intelligence agree that Iran has not yet decided to go down these definitive steps towards a bomb. Though Goldberg suggests our intelligence is sketchy, citing the failure to anticipate 9/11 or the Benghazi attack, the comparison is a facile one. Iran is “the most watched country on earth,” with multiple international intelligence agencies keeping a close eye on its nuclear progress. Contrast that with anticipating attacks by amorphous terrorist organizations scattered around the world.

President Obama has routinely said that preventing a nuclear-armed Iran, not containing one, is the policy of his administration and that “all options are on the table” to achieve this end, including military force. The Administration does, however, think diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way to resolve the crisis,” a point worth emphasizing given the consequences of a strike.

Jeffrey Goldberg’s report on a meeting of National Security Council Principals Committee (NSC/PC), in which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intransigence on the peace process and the fact that “the U.S. has received nothing in return” for its security guarantees, might raise more questions than it answers.

What Goldberg didn’t mention is the historical and conceptual context for Gates’ remarks. Indeed, Gates is not the first senior American official to express concern that the protraction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — and the perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel on this issue — was offering few, if any, dividends for U.S. security or its own regional interests.

Back in March, 2010, Gen. David Petraeus made waves when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had immediate implications for the U.S.’s ability to pursue its interests in the Middle East. He named some of these problems:

Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.

Israel hawks quickly denounced Petraeus’ comments and have continued to attack a straw man argument that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wouldn’t solve all challenges facing the U.S. in the Middle East.

But Petraeus wasn’t the only senior U.S. official to endorse the concept of “linkage” between resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the longer-term strategic interests of the U.S. in the Middle East. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CENTCOM commander Gen. James Mattis, and Adm. Michael Mullen — via a WikiLeaks cable — have voiced endorsements of this concept.

While Jeffrey Goldberg — who has a history of rejecting linkage — carefully reports on Gates’ anger with Netanyahu for delivering “nothing in return” for security guarantees, access to weapons, and intelligence sharing, he is careful to sidestep the obvious next question. Why does Gates feel strongly about Netanyahu refusing to “grapple with Israel’s growing isolation and with the demographic challenges it faces if it keeps control of the West Bank”?

Goldberg doesn’t engage that topic. It might be because Gates shares the emerging consensus of the U.S.’s top military and political leadership that Israel’s continued settlement expansion and intransigence at the negotiating table is doing real damage to the Obama administration’s attempts to pursue a wide range of military and political interests in the Middle East.

It’s been nearly two months since former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan declared an Israeli strike on Iran as “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” but backlash against both the content of his remarks and his decision to speak publicly continues to reverberate in both Israel and the U.S. as journalist Jeffrey Goldberg and Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor launched new attacks on the former intelligence chief.

Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for Bloomberg on July 4, describes Dagan as a “bungling strategist” and, through some impressive logical jujitsu, concludes:

If Israel does attack the Iranian nuclear program, it will in part be because Dagan undermined his country’s deterrent credibility.

While Israel’s deterrent credibility is a matter for debate — though deterrence theory suggests that Israel’s presumed second strike nuclear capability should be enough to deter any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel — Dagan’s remarks should undermine Goldberg’s previous reporting on Israel and Iran. Last year, Goldberg, after speaking with 40 current and past Israeli decision makers, observed, “there is a better than 50-percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.” Neither his characterization of a consensus nor his prediction of a military strike have turned out to be accurate.

But Goldberg isn’t the only one hitting back at Dagan. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor has been making the rounds discussing the Iranian threat and calling for tougher sanctions. ThinkProgress asked Meridor about Dagan’s comments in an Israel Policy Forum conference call today. He responded:

I know Dagan well. I dont’ think he’s against Israeli policy and [he] has a lot we need to thank him for. Whether he should have spoken out after leaving office is a good question of taste. I don’t want to get into that.

And in a France 24 interview from last week, Meridor hinted at the possibility of a military strike while implicity criticizing those who have spoken out against the “military option.”

He said:

I don’t think that in good families one speaks of military action. [It's] something that we don’t speak of. But I think that Americans usually say that “all options are on the table.” Leave it at that.

Watch his remarks here:

Goldberg and Meridor are clearly invested in maintaining the possibility of an Israeli military strike against Iran. But while they prefer to portray Dagan as the only outlier within Israel’s decision making elite, the reality is that a majority of living ex-Mossad chiefs are taking sides against the Netanyahu government’s position on Iran and/or the government’s intransigence on settlements and land swaps required for a two state solution. Goldberg and Meridor continue to cling to their hawkish positions even while an Israeli “consensus” favoring Netanyahu’s hawkish policies seems increasingly in doubt.