Faced with these twin developments, Saudi Arabia, the nominal leader of Sunni Arabs, has been putting in place — and funding — a broad policy to roll back Iran’s gains and contain some of the more dangerous (from the Saudi perspective) aspects of the Arab Spring.

Three counter-Iranian Saudi initiatives are already in place:

— Saudi Arabia sent its own troops — and those of several fellow Sunni regimes — to Bahrain to help the Royal family contain the Iran-inspired Shi’a uprising.

— In Syria, Saudi Arabia has been funding and arming elements of the anti-Assad insurgency. In addition to arming Sunni Syrians, the Saudis have also sent into Syria small contingents of Sunni fundamentalists from Lebanon and Iraq, two countries where the Saudis, for years, have been funding and arming Sunni militias (in Lebanon, to balance the Shi’a Hezbollah; in Iraq, to balance the growing Shi’a power).

— In the last year, the Saudis have been buying small arms on the world markets and moving them into Iraq. The Saudis, in anticipation of the U.S. withdrawal, want to  make sure that the minority Sunnis will be not only strong enough to protect themselves but strong enough the influence the future direction of the Shi’a-led Iraqi government.

The ultimate goal of the Saudis is regime change in Iran and, short of regime change, the defanging of that regime. Saudi and Israeli military officials have been talking for a while about an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In case of an attack, the Saudis will allow Israel to use not only Saudi airspace, but Saudi airfields as well. Several Gulf sheikdoms have agreed to have Israel search-and-rescue units positioned on their territory so they will be closer to Iran in case there is a need to rescue downed pilots or wounded commandos.

Some analysts in Israel believe that in a year leading to a presidential elections, in which President Obama faces a tough campaign for reelection, Israel has more freedom to operate, politically and militarily. It is true that if a Republican candidate were to be elected in November 2012, Israel would likely find a more sympathetic ear to its Iranian concerns in the White House — but it is also true that if Obama were reelected, he will have more freedom to pressure Israel since he would no longer face the need to get reelected.

Since it is not likely that Israel would strike Iran without informing the United States and getting its tacit blessing, Israeli leaders may reckon that it would be safer to attack Iran before the November 2012 elections.

In short, these four developments — the intensifying Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons and the exposure of this effort in the forthcoming IAEA report; the changes at the top of the Israeli national security establishment, changes which have weakened the faction which opposed a military strike against Iran; the increasingly assertive Saudi campaign to curb Iran’s growing influence in the region; and the coming elections in the United States — all appear to have convinced Netanyahu and Barak that there is now a more auspicious climate for an Israeli military action.

The fundamentals of the debate have not changed: how close is Iran to a nuclear weapon? Can that Iranian program be stopped by a military attack from the air? What would be the Iranian reaction to such an attack — and the consequences for the region and U.S. interests in it? There are other questions, but the key is this: the fundamentals in the discussion may not have changed, but the climate in which this discussion takes place certainly has.