Report: Israel gearing to bomb Iran's nuclear sites

The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government, the London Times reported Saturday.

Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid, requiring pinpoint aerial strikes, are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

Two nationwide civil defense drills, scheduled to be held in the next few weeks, are said to help prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3702703,00.html

American gains inside Iraq would likely be lost indefinitely if the raid were to go through and pro-Iranian Shiite militias attack US troops on encouragement from Iran.

The US would automatically be blamed because to get to Iran would require flying through Iraqi airspace, a piece of sky controlled by the US Air Force currently. The Iranians would conclude the US gave Israel permission to attack by letting them through.

Then the Iranian leadership could order their mobile missile launchers to drop scuds on both Baghdad's Green Zone and Tel Aviv and could order Iranian sleeper agents scattered across the region to sabotage/bomb American interests in the region in retaliation. Worse yet, they could target Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure and blow up the pipelines. They could probably convince Hezbollah to begin rocketing Israel's northern cities and convince Hamas to do the same thing with southern cities. Lebanon could be dragged into war once again.

Such a widespread war would make it difficult to transport out crude oil from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. Oil price shocks would hit the US economy at a time when it is in one of the worst recessions since the Second World War.

Yet another boy crying wolf. Israel isn't attacking anything without American approval and the President isn't giving that approval.

But with Netanyahu in charge, who knows!

Netanyahu and Lieberman don't exactly strike me as the most reasonable or patient types.

...that he's not completely in their pocket--so they're having a temper tantrum and
showing Obama that they can go it alone.

There's nothing like a bunch of warmongering whiners puffing their chests out and screaming, "Ok! We'll
just blow everyone up by ourselves then!"... is there?

1. Israel doesn't have enough refueling or Electronic Warfare assets
in order to strike all the targets, scattered as they are geographicaly.
(Back in the Bush years Israelis were counting on the US to covertly
provide them)

2. Even if they did, they would have to put them orbiting near iranian
territory. If Obama doesn't authorize it, the IAF will not have refueling
capability, period (just look at a map of the region).

3. Without refueling capability F-15Is and F-16Is will be at the limits
of their range to reach Iran. This means a) that some of the targets will
be out of reach b) that their abillity to make defensive evasive manouvers
will be restricted (By the way, the AWACS mentioned in the article would
have the function of detecting incoming iranian interceptors and not
much else) c) they can not get there flying low (burning much more fuel)
like they´ve done to strike Osirak lighting up air defence warnings all over
the countries they need to fly over.

4. Israel can only make one strike sortie (Hostile countries, that would have
to be flown over, would be alerted) without losing the element of surprise.
So no second guessing on target hit accuracy.

5. Anyone willing to strike Iran without flying SEAD missions or strike
missions aimed at iranian retaliation assets, i.e. ballistic missiles
(Back in the Bush years Israelis were counting on the US to covertly
provide them), is taking huge risks. Together with the absence of
refueling is downright suicidal (you either have fuel to make evasive
manouvers or to get back home, not both).

6. To counter that, IAF has to devote a significant fraction of its
100 odd "Iran strike capable" fighters to SEAD and retaliation
capability suppression, which a) increases the target list
far beyond the dozen targets mentioned in the article
b) Decreases the number of weapons available to strike the
primary targets (which gets us back to the issue of the
demands on targeting accuracy).


From all of the above one can conclude that for Israel to successfuly strike Iran:

- IAF would always need US aquiescence to station its refueling and EW assets.

- IAF would need the USAF and USN to covertly provide additional EW (and maybe refueling)
assets.

- IAF would need the USAF and USN to covertly execute the bulk of anti-aircraft, SEAD and
and retaliation capability suppression missions.

Well, Obama's now in charge and Israel can forget about that.

So, either the Israel is fine with risking the loss of a signifficant fraction
of their best combat aircraft and pilots, or...
This is just the likudniks trying to appease their voter base with
chest thumping rethoric to keep them from realizing that their leaders
are taking their country into a dead end.

I'm inclined to believe it is the latter.

What if Turkey granted Israel access to its airspace, possibly its airfields to refuel, reload? From there Israel could easily strike most of Iran, have a friendly place to land, ec.

possibility

Turkey like the Arab world has no more love for the Iranian regime than Israel does - but sure geography forces those in the region to think about what will happen, what the consequences of an attack would actually mean.

First of all there simply is no military option even if ALL 16 U.S. Intelligence agencies are wrong and Iran does in spite of all the world's leading military-intelligence expertise does have some sort of active nuclear weapons program.

The Israeli military simply does not have enough long range bombers capable of flying approximately one thousand miles and successfully attacking Iran's massive array of North Korean style deep earth, heavily fortified bunkers .

Even if the Iranian military has defied the Fatwa of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and went ahead with a nuclear weapons program.

Short of a total nuclear war there simply is no way of significantly downgrading Iran's massive array of heavily fortified deep earth tunnels where any command structure or materials for any sort of nuclear program would certainly be located.

The United States would find itself trapped into intervening given that Iran would retaliate against the U.S. presence in the Gulf. For the U.S. to continue such an attack and to make the attack at least technically successful, this would require forcing the Gulf states into granting rights to air space and facilities. Thus making the Gulf states and their oil fields, refineries, infrastructure and transport network targets of devastating Iranian retaliation. Although Iran does not have particularly sophisticated weaponry, they do have a vast array of relatively unsophisticated medium range missiles positioned in hostile and unapproachable terrain and quite capable of causing enormous and crippling damage very rapidly and choking off the Straits of Hormuz.

With Iran's massive array of short and medium range missiles, heavily embedded into hostile terrain Iran could attack the desalinization plants in the Gulf states thus causing quite a catastrophe in the heart of the production center of the most essential ingredient in the world's industrial economy. This is something they are quite capable of if they chose to do so. And they would have nothing to lose. Their missiles may not be the latest high-tech variety. But they have lots and lots of them deeply embedded in unapproachable terrain. And its only a couple of hundred miles across the Gulf. There would be little ability to defend against such an attack.

Of course Iran could attack the oil refiners and oil tankers which I suspect they could do quite effectively. Obviously Iran both could and would completely choke off the movement of oil through the Straits of Hormuz, drawing 40% of the world's oil supply to a mere trickle. Although the Gulf states would prefer to stay out of it -- if the U.S. was to push the issue I suspect they would pressure the Gulf states into cooperation at least in terms of air space and at least some use of facilities. This would give Iran every reason to retaliate against the Eastern Arabian Peninsula Gulf states. This is a fight to the death for the survival of their state.

And make no mistake about it. As much as many Iranians may want change.
They are as astoundingly nationalistic as any people have ever been. This is a society where little 13-year-old boys volunteered excitedly to run through mind fields by the tens of thousands. The ones who didn't get to go cried.

The destruction of much of the core of the world's production center for oil and the breaking of the transport mechanism for oil would likely trigger a worldwide oil crisis and send oil prices into the stratosphere thus making the current global economic collapse insolvable for decades to come. The whole world would be in massive depression when an oil crisis is combined with an already existing economic collapse - triggering even more panic - causing poverty that the Western World has not seen since World War II and the great depression.

The American way of life as we have known it for the past 50 years would probably come to an end - at least for the foreseeable future

It would takes several years if not decades for things to return things to normal.

What would it mean for the political viability of Israel, if Israel is seen in America and around the world as the ones responsible for bringing this catastrophe?

"I keep pulling the lever, but nothing happens!"

It's common enough for any country, especially one that is in a negative relationship with certain others, to build up its defenses, carry out 'practice' exercises, and rattle its sabres. It doesn't normally mean imminent attack - or America and Russia would have blown the world up long ago during the Cold War.

There has been a great deal of sabre-rattling on both sides, and wolf-crying about both sides, of the Israel-Iran cold war for a very long time.

Of course one day there could be a real wolf; and Netanyahu is a bit more of a worry than some other Israeli leaders. But I tend to doubt that, if he was planning something, he or his aides would tell 'The Times' about it.

Under current events. About 5% chance of strike by June, but much higher (37%) by Dec 2010. It doesn't make any strategic sense for Israel to go it alone. It does make strategic sense of a sort for Israel to threaten to go it alone - they might see that as pressuring Obama to pressure Iran. I think Bibi is quite capable of brinksmanship but isn't so detached from reality that he'll intentionally charge over the edge.

That is from 2006. If Netanyahu really believes this, then perhaps he would charge over the edge, so to speak.

Here's the excerpt:

"It's 1938 and Iran is Germany. And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs," Netanyahu told delegates to the annual United Jewish Communities General Assembly, repeating the line several times, like a chorus, during his address. "Believe him and stop him," the opposition leader said of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "This is what we must do. Everything else pales before this."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/787766.html