Veiled threats require calibration. Too explicit, and they risk spilling over into uncontrolled confrontation. Too elliptical, and their impact might be lost entirely. When it comes to Israel’s regular hints that it could attack Iranian nuclear facilities to prevent them producing a bomb, there’s another liability: boredom and incredulity at all the repetition. In what seems to have been an attempt to vary the message, outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made two sets of public remarks this month which held seeds of self-contradiction.
