Sir Michael Quinlan, the former top official at Britain's Ministry of Defense, was spelling out the terms and procedures that would almost certainly be required -- short of military action -- to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. And as he went through the list, which included the kinds of economic damage the world might have to face if economic sanctions were to be credible, a gloom settled over the conference.

China, Russia and India would probably have to be persuaded to risk significant financial loss, he began.

Then the United States, NATO and Israel would probably be required to give security guarantees to Iran that there would be no attempt at regime change, along with pledges of no support for any Iranian opposition group that was not prepared to work through democratic and peaceful means.

There would probably have to be further security guarantees to Iran's neighbors and other Middle Eastern powers, if a grand bargain to keep Iran nuclear-free were to work. And then there would also be the very big but unavoidable question of Israel's own nuclear capability.

Israel has long cultivated a policy of deliberate ambiguity on its nuclear status, pledging only that it would never "be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East." But it is an open secret that Israel possesses an arsenal of well over a hundred nuclear weapons that can be delivered by the flexible and highly survivable triad of Jericho missiles, strike aircraft, and cruise missiles fired from Israel's Dolphin class submarines.

It is hard to conceive of any circumstances in which Israel would surrender its nuclear capability, its ultimate deterrent against a sea of potentially hostile neighbors, many of whom -- like the new Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- openly call for Israel's obliteration from the map.

Even to discuss the matter would require the most cast-iron international guarantees of Israel's borders and its security, along with the clearest and most open commitment from the United States. And given Israel's history, such as the way the Lyndon Johnson Administration in the weeks before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war ducked its promise to keep open the Gulf of Aqaba, any such American promises would be viewed with great and understandable skepticism.

But in his precise and methodical way, Quinlan explained just how difficult a negotiated international solution to the Iran crisis would be. And he went on to question whether the United States would be able to assemble against Iran the kind of international diplomatic and military coalition it crafted for the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq. But without such a threat of international solidarity against it, backed up by a United Nations mandate, diplomacy would not be credible and Iran would not be easy to convince.

"Efficacy and legitimacy are inseparable," Quinlan stressed.

This was not what the Israeli policy-makers and officials and members of the Knesset (Israel's parliament) in the audience wanted to hear.

"The time for talking is over," said Ephraim Sneh, who chairs the Knesset's committee on strategic doctrine. "We should start focused and effective sanctions, beginning with refined oil products. Iran is dependent on imports for 40 percent of its gasoline."

"The only way that the United States and Europe will act against Iran is if they know, if they are absolutely convinced, that Israel itself will act -- even if it means a full-scale war in the Middle East," said Arieh Eldad, another member of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense committee.

Israelis, already deeply alarmed by the prospect of the terrorist-backing Hamas being elected into power in this week's Palestinian elections, can hardly bring themselves to believe that the rest of the world might not see Iran as quite the evident nuclear menace that Israel perceives. For Israel, so small a state that one nuclear weapon could spell annihilation, the threats of Iran's new President to "wipe Israel off the map" are a clear, imminent and mortal threat to its existence.

Indeed, Quinlan went on, the rest of the world might agree that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. But the word "unacceptable" had two meanings in international life. There was Saddam Hussein's 1991 invasion of Kuwait, which was "unacceptable" and it was reversed. But there was also the "unacceptable" way the Soviet Union had imposed its sway over Eastern Europe after 1945, and however appalling, that had to be accepted.

"I regretfully believe that ultimately Iran's nuclear weapon would be

'unacceptable' in the second sense," Quinlan said quietly, and a dreadful hush fell over the Herzliya conference room, a place that all present knew would be within the destruction zone of a nuclear weapon exploded over Tel Aviv.

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