Israel President Bibi Netanyahu has been pressing his American counterparts to attack Iran for more than a decade, always warning that the mullahs are an inch from building a bomb. Finally, he found a president who agreed.

This wasn’t one of President Donald Trump’s crazy moves, like threatening to invade Canada. A nuclear Iran could spark a global Armageddon, and allow the mullahs to be even more aggressive across the Mideast, knowing the homeland would be immune from attack. Leon Panetta, who was CIA director under President Barack Obama, supports Trump on this, saying he “had no choice.” And after Israel destroyed Iran’s air defenses, and crushed its proxy armies, the timing was good.

But the attack, impressive as it was, could backfire on us in 100 ways. And the national security team around Trump is a gang of sycophants who passed the loyalty test, but are dangerously thin on actual experience. I, for one, do not feel safe being a passenger in their clown car during a crisis like this.

Let’s take a sober look at the risks and ask whether it might have been wiser to give Iran a few more weeks to surrender its nuclear program at the bargaining table, as Trump had suggested only a few days before the attack.

HOW THIS COULD BACKFIRE

The first risk: Iran moved more than 800 pounds of enriched uranium from the nuclear complex at Isfahan a week before the Israeli airstrikes began, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told The New York Times, adding that his team saw the material packed into casks, enough to make 9 or 10 bombs.

In an interview on CNN on Sunday, Grossi added that “Iran has made no secret that they have protected this material.”

Two Israeli intelligence sources told the Times that they have evidence Iran moved some equipment into hiding as well, so it’s at least possible Iran could further enrich the uranium to weapons grade level.

“This was signaled many days in advance,” Rep. Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee said Sunday. “It’s not inconceivable that the Iranians, not being dumb people, might have put this stuff on a truck and taken it elsewhere. In which case, we just closed a bunch of tunnels in a mountain. . . The bottom line is the president has taken a massive, massive gamble here.”

The bombings could even backfire by provoking Iran to rush the production of at least a handful of nukes, warns Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at Carnegie Endowment for Peace.

“Will we look back and say this prevented a bomb or insured one?” he asks.

DO AMERICAN, ISRAELI GOALS ALIGN?

Another risk: We don’t get to decide when this is over. Iran and Israel have a say. We got a reminder of that Monday afternoon when Iran fired missiles at the U.S. Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. (Iran, though, issued an advance warning and the U.S. reported no casualties.)

Trump has warned that if Iran attacks U.S. troops in the region, or tries to spark a global recession by closing the Strait of Hormuz, we will widen this war and hit them much harder. What then?

And what if Israel’s war aims don’t align with ours? What if Netanyahu decides to seek regime change, or sends ground troops to find that hidden bomb material? What if he expands the bombing campaign to include hospitals, schools, and apartments, as he did in Gaza? What will America’s role be in that fight?

WAR POWERS — AT HOME

There also is a risk on the home front, outlined by Robert Kagan in the Atlantic under the headline: “American Democracy Might Not Survive a War with Iran.”

We have a president who sent Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles over the objections of the mayor and governor; who has neutered Congress by taking control of the national purse; who has defied judges, jailed legal immigrants for expressing political opinion, and who has tried his best to block the peaceful transfer of power.

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson jailed more than 1,000 people for over a year because of their speech, mostly opposing his decision to join the fight. He shut down 75 newspapers and magazines, while his Justice Department chartered a vigilante group with 250,000 members who violently broke up protests, and beat and detained draft dodgers.

“Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war,” Kagan asks.

Imagine, for example, if Trump answered war protests by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807, which allows him to use the military to make arrests and keep order in response to “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy”?

WHY I WORRY

Finally, look at Trump’s team. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is known for drinking heavily and spewing details about his plan to bomb the Houthis in a Signal chat group that included a reporter. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard barely won confirmation in the Senate, thanks to her praise of Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and her lack of experience.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is qualified, but does he have the nerve to stand up to Trump in a strategy meeting? He once called Trump a “con artist” but he swallowed all that to get this job, and has reduced himself to being a bobblehead these days.

We should all be hoping this turns out well. But I worry.

Trump’s claim that Iran’s nuclear program was “completely and totally obliterated” was nonsense, we know now. It seems destined to take its place in history alongside President George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.

And that’s not a good sign.

Moran is a national political columnist for Advance Local and the former editorial page editor/columnist for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be emailed at [email protected].