No matter what happens in the Middle East in the near future, Tali Stadler has trouble sounding optimistic.

“Even if the U.S. would attack, we’re going to be the first targets,” worries the native Israeli who has lived in St. Louis for the past 18 years. “I don’t see any way out here.”

“Wherever you turn, it’s going to be horrible,” she added.

If the experts are to be believed, Stadler’s grim outlook may be justified. As tensions in the troubled region ratchet up over the nature and intent of Iran’s nuclear program, a military strike appears increasingly imminent. Iran and Israel have been engaged in an escalating war of words in recent weeks with the U.S. State Department caught in the middle trying to both warn the heavily Shiite nation against its present course while discouraging an attack from the Jewish State.

Locally, reaction from native Israelis and those who have lived in the region tends to indicate confidence in Israel’s leadership to make the right choices and support for the nation’s right to defend itself, including the use of military force.

But it’s a backing tempered with the general worry that the mission may be a difficult one for Israel to accomplish alone and any attack may trigger a backlash regardless.

Stadler is concerned that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will carry through on his bellicose rhetoric. The president has often been quoted in Western media as expressing a desire to wipe Israel from the map.

“He is crazy. He’s not scared of anybody,” she said. “He’s announced anywhere on any stage that Israel should be destroyed and he’s doing anything in his power to do that.”

Stadler said retaliation seems a certainty but she said Israeli homes are equipped with bomb shelters.

“If we are talking about conventional missiles, we have the capability to protect ourselves,” she said.

Much like Stadler, Shlomi Gilboa, a Russian-born Israeli who has resided in the U.S. for 17 years, hopes Israel won’t have to act by itself. It’s a common refrain among local Jewish voices, who feel that the U.S. and Europe should also play a role in reining in a belligerent Iran.

“The reality is that the entire Western world including the U.S. is under the threat of the Iranian bomb,” he said, “so I don’t think Israel has to take the entire responsibility. It should work on building a coalition with the U.S. in order to find a solution, militarily, economically or any other creative solution that can prevent Iran from having atomic capabilities.”

Gilboa opposes a unilateral attack but for him, the issue isn’t one of morality but of practicality. He believes Israel has a right to prevent a “second Holocaust” but he said the nuclear sites are scattered around Iran making an assault by air difficult to pull off successfully without partners.

“I am not completely sure that this attack would leave Israel in a better position than not attacking,” he said.

Galit Lev-Harir isn’t from Israel originally but lived there for nine years. She’s confident the Jewish State will act if it has to.

“I think Israel is primarily concerned with the safety of its citizens,” said the Ballwin resident, who has been back in the United States since 1999. “If the citizens are under a material threat from Iran then they will attack.”

She feels a strike could be quick and decisive as in Iraq during the early 1980s or Syria in 2007. Hopefully, response would be minimal.

“I think Israel would only act if they felt the possibility of retaliation was low enough or could be contained,” she said.

Lev-Harir is concerned that relations between the U.S. and Israel have frayed under the Obama administration. She also thinks Americans do not take the threat of radical Islam seriously enough.

“It does not appear that there is as close a collaboration as there used to be,” she said. “That’s a concern because I believe Iran not only threatens Israel but also threatens the U.S. and other democratic countries in the West.”

Ziv Rotman, a native Israeli living in St. Louis County, said he thinks an Israeli airstrike may be further away than it would seem.

“It depends on the timeframe how it will play out,” he said. “I don’t think it is very likely in the near future.”

Rotman, who has been here less than a year and a half, said the situation was comparable in some respects to the Cuban missile crisis. He favors an attack only as a last resort. He views retaliation, either by Iran or its terrorist surrogate Hezbollah, as likely.

“I would like to believe that the people who decided to take that action made the right choice in the sense that they had the intelligence saying there is no other way of solving this conflict,” he said of Israeli leaders.

Rachel Persellin-Armoza was born in the U.S. but has lived about half her life in Israel where both her mother and husband are from.

She thinks at this stage the conflict is still all rhetoric but it could flare up into something more. Unlike Lev-Harir, Persellin-Armoza doesn’t see much possibility of a quick and easy strike similar to earlier incidents.

“It’s not like it was with Iraq,” said the Chesterfield resident. “It’s a different situation because in Iraq there were clearer targets. Here everything is so murky and you don’t know where anything is.”

She believes any strike will be carefully considered and has confidence that the Israelis will attack only if necessary.

“Israel places such a high value on human life, Jewish and otherwise, that any action will have to be well-thought out before they make any kind of initiative,” she said.

Still, Persellin-Armoza sees the complexity of the problem they face.

“The repercussions could be catastrophic but if they sit and wait, that could also be catastrophic,” she said.

She called Ahmadinejad a man “with no conscience.”

“They are not looking toward tomorrow for their own people and that’s where it gets scary,” she said of the Iranian leadership.

Ronan Lev of Creve Coeur thinks Israel would exhaust all other options before resorting to force.

“We definitely have the ability. We have the equipment,” said Lev who was born here but married an Israeli and lived in the Jewish State for two decades. “My concern is that with a job like this where things are going to be underground you may not get a good assessment of what damage you have. I’d be concerned that you’d actually have to put men on the ground.”

He thinks Iranian retaliation is certain, both in the form of missiles and political blowback from other quarters.

He also worries that the Muslim Brotherhood could use the incident to abrogate the increasingly tenuous Egypt-Israeli peace accord.

Still, on that score, he sounds a note of pessimism no matter what happens.

“The situation is so dire there anyway from an Israeli standpoint it’s probably not going to make much of a difference,” he said.

In the end, however, he said he trusts Israel to do what it must.

“What a lot of people don’t think about and don’t consider is that this is an issue of life and death for Israel,” he said.