Will Israel Attack Iran?

That indeed seems to be the question in a lot of people's minds...Robert Kaplan over at the Atlantic Monthly for one. And he says, essentially, no way in hell.

While admitting the problem of an ongoing Iranian quest for nuclear weapons and recognizing that Israel is the only nation that Iran has specifically threatened with annihilation, Kaplan feels that the US, for various reasons, would be unlikely to sign off on an Israeli strike. And since the US controls the air space over Iraq, the Israelis would be unable to strike at Iran even if they wanted to.

Kaplan (who's writing I genuinely like) misses a couple of things, I think.

First of all, he makes the assumption that faced with the possibility of an existential threat to themselves, the Israelis would necessarily seek or require US assent before a preemptive strike on Iran.

Israel's history would indicate exactly the opposite.

The last two long range IDF operations were the 1981 destruction of Saddam Hussein Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq (which saved countless American lives) and the destruction of Yasir Arafat's headquarters in Tunis. In both cases, the Israelis acted based on what they saw as their national security interests, without informing anyone of the fact beforehand to preserve secrecy. And in both cases, the Israelis achieved total tactical surprise, demolished their targets, and suffered no losses of aircraft or crews.

In a more recent case, the IDF took out a Syrian nuclear facility, but delayed their strike for months at the insistence of none other than Condi Rice. Eventually, they got tired of waiting for Rice and company while the Syrians got closer to bringing their reactor online, and the IDF leveled it.

Kaplan has spent considerable time in Israel, and he's no doubt aware of a rather pervasive Israeli attitude when it comes to depending on the guarantees of other nations on questions of their national security, even the United States. They have some justification for that.

In 1948, the UN, including the US voted to allow Israel to proclaim itself a state - and in response to the UN's Arab members aided and abetted by Britain proclaiming a jihad designed to murder every Jew in Israel, did absolutely nothing....a mere three years after the Holocaust.

The Truman administration, which Kaplan somehow cites as one of the most pro-Israel in US history not only refused to intervene with Britain's arming and officering the Arab armies but in a uniquely craven act slapped an arms embargo on the infant Jewish state which was fighting for its life and proclaimed America neutral.

In 1956, after Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula in response to repeated Egyptian raids against its territory and attempts to close the strategic Straits of Tiran, President Eisenhower got the Israelis to withdraw and end the fighting by giving them American security guarantees that UN peacekeepers would ensure the Sinai would remain demilitarized and that the Straits, as an international waterway would be kept open to Israeli shipping. A decade later, in 1967, those 'guarantees' were proven worthless when Nasser got the UN to pull out its peacekeepers out of the Sinai in 24 hours and once again blocked the Straights of Tiran - while the US remained, in the words of Lyndon Johnson "neutral in thought word and deed."

Nations don't have friends, they have interests...and the Israelis have a better reason to know that than most countries.

Kaplan is quite correct that the Bush Administration is unlikely to sign off on a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran. Aside from the fact that the last thing the US wants in Iraq is any complications that might be caused by an Israeli strike , the administration is loaded with pro-Saudi functionaries like SecDef Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condi Rice, who promulgate an Arabist view of the Middle East in Washington and who somehow fail to get the connection between an Iranian threat to Israel and an Iranian threat to the US and its interests. For these reason, the Israelis are unlikely to confide in the US about a strike on Iran's nuclear assets until it is already in progress and too late to recall.

Could the IDF pull off a strike on Iran? Definitely, although it would involve razor thin planning and likely the use of bunker busters or even tactical nukes because of the way the Iranian installations are situated underground.

In spite of all the fanfare over the large scale long range Israeli military exercises over the Aegean Sea recently, I seriously doubt that the Israelis are planning on sending a huge air armada to Iran.

If history's any indication, the raid on Iran's nuclear facilities would most likely be carried out by small tactical groups of IAF jets just as the raid that took out Syria's clandestine nuclear site was.The Israelis would likely use small groups of planes, flying in tight formation to minimize radar signals and fly along established air corridors, mimicking the call signals and radio traffic common to commercial aircraft. An airstrike would also likely be proceeded by an Israeli missile strike on the Iranian surface to air missile sites and radar installations shortly before the Israeli planes hit their targets. Some of these strikes could be delivered by air from a distance outside the range of Iranian fighter craft (most of which are outdated and in bad shape), others from the Dolphin submarines Israel possesses. The Iranian nuke installations are guarded by the same supposedly invincible Russian-built Pantsyr missile defense systems the Israeli successfully blinded when they destroyed the Syrian nuclear site earlier this year. It's likely the Russians and the Iranians made a few tweaks to the system based on that, but it's also highly likely that the IDF also has a few new tricks up its sleeve as well.

The Israelis would also need to leave sufficient planes available to deal with any problems from Iran's stooges along their borders. Israel's Iron Dome missile defense shield, designed to deal with the sort of Qassam and Katyusha rockets used by Hezbollah and Hamas just recently tested successfully, and would likely give the IDF added flexibility in dealing with Iran's proxies in the region.

Kaplan raises the point that the Israelis would be unable to get at Iran because of US control of the skies over Iraq. Assuming that the Israelis chose not to try and evade US forces in the area and go in over Iraq, they have other options. Israel's attack on Syria's nuclear facility was done by flying over Turkish air space, and the IDF still maintains close ties with the Turkish military, in spite of Erdogan's Islamist government. The Turkish military hasn't got much use for the idea of a nuclear armed Iran next door, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they covertly cooperated with the IDF to take out the mullah's nuclear toys.

Of particular interest to me was the use of helicopters and ground troops in Israel's recent military exercise.This raises the possibility that the Israelis may actually be planning to use small units of ground troops in an operation as they are rumored to have done in Syria. Aside from Turkey's military, the Israelis also have good friends in the Kurdish Persh Merga, who they've been training and supplying with arms since the Saddam years. Both areas could be clandestine staging areas.

Here's what terrorism expert Steve Emerson had to say about the matter on FOX:



Emerson of course is probably correct - at best, the Israelis would be unable to totally destroy Iran's nuclear facilities because they're so widespread, but even damaging a fairly small percentage, particularly in Bushehr and Natanz would likely set the Iranian efforts back ten to fifteen years.

How likely is an Israeli strike on Iran? Unfortunately, it's very likely.

The IAEA's clueless commissar Mohamed El Baradi recently contradicted all his previous statements by revising his estimates,saying that Iran is now only six months to a year from having nuclear weapons.And the Iranians themselves just tested the latest version of their Shehab 3 ballistic missile, which can carry a one ton payload, has a range of over 1200 miles and could easily hit Israel.

If you were the Israelis, would you wait until those missiles had nuclear warheads?

That, of course is essentially the difference between the US and Israeli positions.Israel faces an existential threat in the near term.The threat to the Great Satan from Iran will come later, although not so much later as we might think.

What would make the most sense would be for the US and Israel to cooperate in destroying Iran's nuclear infrastructure, especially since the US is going to be blamed by Iran regardless of whether it participates or not, but that scenario is fairly unlikely.

The US could pull off a strike far easier than the Israelis could, and destroy a great deal more of Iran's nuclear infrastructure, but doing so would cause President Bush incredible political fallout here at home from the Democrats here in Congress.They'd go berserk. If it happens at all, I would look for it in the period after the election, especially if Barack Hussein Obama is going to be our next president. Doing it in that time frame would give the president a rough month or two but not cause him any problems with impeachment.

As for the Israelis, I'd give it the same time frame if nothing changes between now and then - between November and December. If Obama is slated to be the next president, you can up the odds on an Israeli strike on Iran considerably. By then the Israelis will also have gone to elections, ridding itself of the poisonous abscess of the Olmert government. All indications favor a center right coalition, most likely made up of Likud, Israel Beiteinu and the NRP, with Binyamin Netanyahu as the next Israeli Prime Minister.

After elections, with a new Knesset, new leadership and a new security cabinet, the Israelis will be a in a much better position to do what they will likely need to do.