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[T]he conservative government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been rocked by a series of public comments from current and former Israeli military and intelligence officials questioning the wisdom of attacking Iran.

The latest comments came from Yuval Diskin, the former chief of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, who on Friday said Mr. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak should not be trusted to determine policy on Iran. He said the judgments of both men have been clouded by "messianic feelings." Mr. Diskin, who was chief of Shin Bet until last year, said an attack against Iran might cause it to speed up its nuclear program.

Just days before, Israel's army chief of staff suggested in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Iranian nuclear threat was not quite as imminent as Mr. Netanyahu has portrayed it. In his comments, Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz suggested that he agreed with the intelligence assessments of the United States that Iran has not yet decided whether to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran "is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided whether to go the extra mile," General Gantz told Haaretz. He suggested that the crisis may not come to a head this year. But he said, "Clearly, the more the Iranians progress, the worse the situation is."

Last month, Meir Dagan, the former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, said he did not advocate a pre-emptive Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear program anytime soon. In an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes," Mr. Dagan said the Iranian government was "a very rational one," and that Iranian officials were "considering all the implications of their actions."

Mr. Netanyahu is dealing with the criticisms at the same time as he faces, for domestic political reasons, the prospect of an election this year, rather than next.

The divide within the Israeli establishment is significant because Israel has been threatening to launch a unilateral strike against Iran's nuclear facilities if the United States is unwilling to do so. Washington has feared that if Israel were to do so, the United States could get dragged into the fight, which could result in a widening war in the region.

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