When you are a tiny country surrounded by enemies that would destroy you, what do you do when you find out one of your closest neighbors is building a nuclear weapon?

Do you wait for them to use it on you or do you go after it before it’s completed in order to save your country and citizens?

I’d opt to go after them in a preemtive strike.

Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.

The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature.

Regardless of how the New York Times tries to make the nuclear site look like a small affair by saying nuclear material can be used for weapons or for peaceful purposes, and regardless of their expert saying it would take three to six years to develop the bomb from the technology, the Israelis did the right thing.