Israel must respond harshly to Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack on its territory. The country’s government has to restore favourable deterrence following Iran’s very deliberate attempt to kill Israeli civilians and destroy civilian infrastructure. But how will Israel respond?
Some analysts believe Israel may attack Iran’s oil industry, or its nuclear programme. President Joe Biden says he opposes both options and wants Israel to look for alternative targets. Biden’s rationale on the oil industry concern is centred around US domestic politics: one month away from the US election, he doesn’t want his Vice President to have to deal with a sharp increase in oil prices that reverberates into the US economy. Still, strikes against Iran’s oil industry would make strategic sense for Israel. Such strikes would degrade the Iranian regime’s only significant economic lever and ultimately deter future Iranian attacks.
Biden is right to oppose an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear programme, however. To be sure, that nuclear programme is a big problem. It is designed to provide Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with two very concerning possibilities. The first is his ability to quickly rush towards employing a nuclear weapon should he decide to do so. Iran has stockpiled enough near-weapons grade purity nuclear material to allow it to facilitate a nuclear weapon within two weeks. The second is to credibly threaten the existence of both Israel and Iran’s Islamic nemesis, Saudi Arabia.
The problem is that Israel alone cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear programme. What’s more, destroying the programme isn’t nearly so simple as bombing a bunch of nuclear plants and research facilities. Iran learned the lesson from Israel’s attacks on Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981 and Syria’s Dair Alzour reactor in 2007. Tehran has distributed its nuclear programme widely across the country. It has also buried significant portions of it deep underground. To destroy Iran’s nuclear capability in its entirety, Israel would need to conduct a multi-day air campaign targeting a very large number of sites. It would also need to simultaneously destroy significant parts of Iran’s air defence network and air force.
Even then, Israel wouldn’t be able to secure success. It would also need to deploy ground forces to physically breach and destroy the underground nuclear facilities at Natanz and Fordow. US military sources I’ve spoken to have expressed doubt that even latest-generation US bunker buster munitions (which Israel does not possess) could destroy these facilities with certainty. But getting a commando force deep inside Iran, deep into varied facilities, blowing them up, then exfiltrating would require airlift and close air support capabilities that Israel lacks. It would also require airfield seizures through which to exfiltrate the commandos.
It’s one thing blowing up Hezbollah pagers and bunkers; it’s a very different thing operating at vast scale and depth against a very large defensive force primarily orientated towards defending the very thing Israel would be attacking.
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SubscribeIsrael attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities might be a mistake. The far greater mistake has already been made (and the folly continues) by USA and the other Western democracies. Our laughable responses to Iranian threats, deadly attacks and spreading of terrorism have been as nothing compared with the sheer stupidity of allowing its nuclear programme to continue. We alternately wring our hands in despair and pretend to be tough. Pathetic!
US intelligence agencies are agreed – Iran has not taken any steps to produce a nuclear device. Similarly, the Iranian fatwa outlawing nuclear weapons remains in place.
The JCPOA was the roadmap to a balanced approach, protecting Iran’s ventures into nuclear power while making an Iranian quest for a nuclear weapon both unnecessary and counterproductive, while promising Iran sanctions relief. The JCPOA was endorsed by the UN Security Council, making it binding in international law on everybody.
No-one (credibly) maintains that Iran violated the JCPOA. And yet, neither Europe nor the US ever followed through on their end of the bargain. When Trump was elected, he simply reneged on the JCPOA, in flagrant violation of its terms. Europe feebly squeaked that it would continue to abide, but never followed through.
When Biden was elected, he promised to re-engage on the terms of the JCPOA, but reneged on that promise.
There’s the rub. The US is incapable of following through on agreements. The White House or Foggy Bottom may in all sincerity want the agreement and want to abide by it, but then Congress or Treasury or the Pentagon intervene and make a mockery of what was just promised.
Even if you wanted to be friends with the US, what are you to make of this? Isn’t the lesson the US are shouting out to the world: On us you cannot rely, look out for yourself?
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said that Iran’s breakout time – the amount of time needed to produce enough weapons grade material for a nuclear weapon – “is now probably one or two weeks” as Tehran has continued to develop its nuclear program.
Maybe he’s wrong. Almost everyone agrees they’re one year out at the most.
U.S. intelligence agencies all agreed ? Lately they have all agreed only on one political line or another, Not on any serious estimate of the intentions or capabilities of America’s opponents or even of her allies. These agencies are filled with good analysts and have access to limitless information, but their leadership, all of them, are ‘political’ to the core..One reason why US wars have been lost for decades.
As to whether it’s wise to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities; we won’t know until it’s tried.
The most elementary problem of our NeoCon warmongers is that they fail to grasp changing reality.
The “enmity” between Iran and Saudi Arabia was alway a made-up one, carefully fostered by the US. While it lasted, the US was able to leverage the Saudis’ fears to sell billions worth of military toys to Saudi Arabia.
During their war on Yemen, the Saudis began to realise that those toys were not very effective. Then China came in and persuaded both Iran and Saudi Arabia that they need not be enemies. Only last week, a high-level diplomatic meeting between Saudi Arabia and Iran ended in harmony. The days when the US could manipulate Saudi Arabia by conjuring up the spectre of Iran are gone.
Attacking Iran’s oil installations is pretty much the most stupid thing Israel and the US could do – which is disconcerting, because NeoCons always do the most stupid thing.
First of all, it is not guaranteed to succeed. Russia has been busy over the last months supplying Iran with air defence assets. Unlike Western air defence assets, the Russian ones actually work, and thanks to NeoCons’ habit of telegraphing their plans, they also know where to put them.
Secondly, Iran has said unambiguously that if their oil installations are hit, the oil will stop flowing. That of course is of minor concern to the US, who do not depend in Gulf oil. Israel is wholly dependent on imported oil, but it is supplied by Azerbaijan via Turkey; maybe that would not be disrupted, but who knows – if Turkey joins BRICS in a few weeks, Turkey may change its mind about which side its bread is buttered.
A disruption to the flow of oil would kneecap Europe, but the US has shown that it does not care about Europe’s fate.
Another benefit, in the NeoCon mindset, would be that China would be existentially hit. China has done its best to remain aloof, but a threat its oil supplies would force China to intervene. It would be interesting to see how. But those joint naval exercises of China, Russia and Iran must have been based on some threat assumption.
Yes, right yet again.
I sincerely doubt there exists any great enthusiasm among the American public to join Israel’s war.
The views of the American public are utterly irrelevant to what its ruling “class” do. The only time those views are accorded any importance is when there is so much public anger and action that they cannot be ignored eg Vietnam.