If Israel is likely to decide to attack Iran next summer, as argued in an Atlantic Monthly story by Jeffrey Goldberg out this week, the big question is, what happens in the aftermath?

The Christian Science Monitor reports that a common view among strategists and political analysts is that the US will be held responsible by Iran and much of the Muslim world. Tehran is expected to use the relationships it has carefully cultivated with militants in Iraq and Afghanistan to lash out at US troops, and some say it could provide fighters in Afghanistan with the surface-to-air missiles they crave.

"There are segments of the [Iranian] regime, parts of the military apparatus especially, that will welcome an attack, the heightening of tensions and even confrontation," says Kaveh Ehsani, a political scientist who studies Iran at DePaul University in Chicago. "Their strategy to react to this is to export conflict – to Afghanistan and Iraq and Lebanon and Gaza… they’ll raise hell anywhere they can, like in Saudi Arabia."

But how big the Iranian reaction would be remains an open question. More US soldiers would die, that much is almost certain. But how many is unclear. And while Iran can bottle up tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and drive up world oil prices, or encourage Hezbollah in southern Lebanon to rain missiles on Israel, analysts are divided on whether the country will take the plunge.

Read the entire story at csmonitor.com