The International Atomic Energy Agency, fresh off of a failure to get Iran to live up to international agreements it is a signatory to, is now going to press Israel to come clean about its nuclear status.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, flew into Israel Tuesday for talks on ridding the Middle East of atomic weapons, whether the Jewish state admits to having them or not.

Under its policy of "strategic ambiguity," Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear arms. But international experts believe Israel has from 100 to 200 warheads, based on estimates of the amount of plutonium its reactors have produced.

ElBaradei had wanted to get the Israelis to abandon their policy of ambiguity, Western diplomats said. But Israel says this is impossible at present given the continued hostility of the neighboring Arab world and Iran.

Let's explain this to the dimwits at the U.N. and IAEA. Israel needs nuclear warheads because it is the policy of most of the Arab world that all Jews in the Middle East should be driven into the sea. Iran needs nuclear weapons because it would like to drive the Jews into the sea.

There's a noticeable difference in aims and the propensity to use nukes.

Israel has gotten along fine for several decades with nukes -- and it is apparent that their use is only for a deterrent effect or a worst-case scenario.

Iran, on the other hand, is likely to donate any nuke it creates to a worthy cause -- like Hezbollah. Tehran is what needs the attention, not Tel Aviv.