New Delhi, July 23 -- a nuclear Middle East is an existential threat to Israel. For three decades, he invoked that argument to justify military threats against Iran, to lobby Washington, to define his own indispensability. When the United States signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia on Wednesday - one that permits Riyadh to enrich uranium on its own soil - Netanyahu said nothing.

The silence has become a story of its own. While the prime minister stays quiet, the political class around him is not. The 123 agreement, named for the section of the US Atomic Energy Act that governs such deals, has cracked open a fault line inside Israel's security establishment between those who see the deal as a manageable trade-off...