Unthinkable (29 page)

The fact that Israel has not struck Iran despite considering, planning, training, and preparing for such an operation since at least 1997—and that it has warned repeatedly of and debated endlessly such a strike—is an important departure from Jerusalem's traditional approach to security issues. This unusual restraint on the part of the Israelis speaks to the
many challenges that Israel faces when contemplating an attack on the Iranian nuclear program.

THE FOUR PARADOXES.
Israel faces a set of formidable military problems it would have to overcome to have a significant impact on Iran's progress toward a nuclear weapon (problems that were not present for either the Iraqi or Syrian raids). In addition to the military challenges, for an Israeli strike to succeed in its basic aims, Jerusalem will have to unravel four paradoxes:

1. 
It will spur Iran to rebuild, and probably to weaponize.
An Israeli strike would be beneficial only if afterward Iran can be convinced not to rebuild its nuclear program or else be prevented from doing so. However, there are few events that would be more likely to convince Tehran to rebuild its program (and even acquire an outright nuclear arsenal) than an Israeli attack.

2. 
It will undermine the inspections and sanctions needed to prevent Iran from rebuilding
. Preventing Iran from rebuilding its nuclear program after an Israeli strike requires that the inspections and sanctions on Iran remain in place after the operation. Yet an Israeli strike would be the surest way to undermine the diplomatic foundations of sanctions and inspections.

3. 
It requires American support, but could alienate the United States.
Especially because of the first two paradoxes, an Israeli strike would probably fail to achieve its goals without the full support of the United States. However, there are few events more likely to infuriate the U.S. government than an Israeli strike against Iran, especially if it triggers Iranian retaliation against the United States.

4. 
It will provoke that which it is meant to prevent
. An Israeli strike would be intended to prevent future attack by a nuclear Iran and its allies such as Hizballah and PIJ—attacks that would most likely come in the form of terrorism, rockets, and conventionally armed missiles. But an Israeli
strike on the Iranian nuclear program would almost certainly provoke Iran and its allies to attack Israel by those very same means.

These four dilemmas, coupled with the technical military hurdles the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) face, create a vexing set of problems for an Israeli strike against the Iranian nuclear program. They demonstrate that Israel does not have a good military option. And that is why it would be better for everyone—Israel, the United States, the rest of the Middle East, the world, maybe even the Iranian people, too—if Israel were
not
to attack Iran.

An Israeli military strike on the Iranian nuclear program would be operationally difficult for the Israelis. As brilliant and daring as the IDF has proven itself to be, it is ultimately a small military with limited capabilities operating under severe geopolitical constraints.

Israel has both ballistic and cruise missiles that, in theory, might be used in an attack against Iran's nuclear sites, but in practice they are likely to be of secondary importance. Israel has four submarines (soon to be joined by a fifth and eventually a sixth) that can fire Popeye Turbo cruise missiles with a 930-mile range. Each sub, however, can only carry about a dozen of the missiles, each of which has a 400-pound warhead—not much compared to the 2,000-pound or 5,000-pound bombs that Israeli aircraft would carry. These limitations make Israel's cruise missiles much more useful to try to take out key Iranian radars, surface-to-air missile (SAM) batteries, and command and control sites. They might also be useful against Iran's less well-defended nuclear facilities, but not for attacking Iran's hardened, underground enrichment sites. Even then, Israel would have difficulty getting all of these short-range subs in position near Iran to launch simultaneously, and might prefer to hold back some or all of their missiles for follow-on strikes or to respond to Iranian retaliatory actions—neither of which would be easy for Israel's fighter-bombers to handle.

Israel also has extended-range Jericho II and III ballistic missiles capable of hitting Iran. Both of these carry a 2,200-pound payload and are believed to be quite accurate—at least for ballistic missiles. But the Jerichos would actually have to be extremely accurate (and able to penetrate buried, hardened targets with a conventional payload) to cause significant damage to Iran's enrichment facilities. The Jericho II isn't up to this challenge and it is not known if the Jericho III is. Israel also has good reason not to expend many (or perhaps any) of its Jerichos on the strike. Analysts think that Israel has fewer than one hundred of them, and they are believed to be its primary nuclear delivery system.
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It is also one of the few weapons Israel has to strike at Iran during the inevitable rounds of retaliation with Iran expected to follow a first strike.
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Consequently, both the cruise and ballistic missiles are likely to play only a supporting role in any attack on Iran. The main burden would have to be carried by the manned aircraft of the IAF. And the IAF is going to have its work cut out for it.

The first problem that the IAF faces is airspace. There is no direct or semi-direct route from Israel to Iran that does not pass through someone else's airspace. Israeli aircraft would have to overfly some combination of Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, and/or Saudi Arabia. Although none of these countries' leaders would grieve at the loss of the Iranian nuclear program, none would condone Israeli warplanes violating their airspace. It would be a humiliation for them and all would fear a backlash from their anti-Israeli populations. Moreover, as a result of the Syrian civil war, Turkish air defenses facing south (toward Syria
and
Israel) are alert, mobilized, and reinforced by NATO batteries (including American Patriot missile units), making Turkey an inhospitable route. The rest tend to have weaker air defenses, mostly focused in the wrong direction—toward Iran for Iraq and Saudi Arabia, toward Turkey for Syria and, to some extent, Jordan—making all of them far more conducive to an Israeli overflight.

For a surprise attack against Iran, it seems likely that Israeli warplanes could penetrate the air defenses of most of these countries (with the
likely exception of Turkey), conduct the attack on Iran, and return to Israel without even being detected. The IAF has demonstrated an ability to evade radar detection by flying at absurdly low altitudes where terrain features mask their planes from enemy radars. More recently, Israel has used a combination of electronic and cyberwarfare to confuse and blind enemy radars.
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The problem is that once things start blowing up in Iran, these countries will alert their air defenses, making it far harder for Israeli warplanes to mount a repeat strike without having to fight their way through Turkish, Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi, and/or Saudi air defenses. In addition to the military problem this would create for additional strike waves, it is highly unlikely that Jerusalem would want to pick a fight with another Muslim Middle Eastern state after having attacked Iran. These limitations mean that Israel would realistically get one strike with its air force, unless follow-on rounds of combat escalated to the point where Israel was taking so much damage that it was willing to fight one or more of these other states to get at Iran. The latter is both unlikely and would represent a disastrous outcome for Israel.

The next problem Israel faces is distance. As the crow flies, it is about 965 miles from the relevant Israeli air bases to Qom (where the Fordow facility is located), 985 miles to Natanz, 1,000 miles to Tehran, and about 995 miles to Esfahan. In theory, Israel has 125 strike aircraft capable of reaching targets in Iran. It has 25 of the F-15I Ra'am (“Thunder,” the Israeli variant of the F-15E), which have an unrefueled range of about 2,400 miles. It also has 100 F-16I Sufa (“Storm,” a Block 52 F-16D with Israeli avionics and conformal fuel tanks), which have a reported unrefueled range of about 1,100 miles.
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There is no way that Israel's F-16Is can get to Iran and back without being refueled, and that may be the case for the F-15Is as well. While the F-15Is' nominal range would seem adequate to get to Iran and back, reality is more complicated. Because of air defenses and political considerations, the Israeli planes may not be able to fly on a straight line to Iran. Every detour adds miles and burns fuel. Moreover, for significant chunks of these flights, the aircraft would have to fly at
low altitude, which burns far more fuel. Plus, there is a trade-off between weight and weapons: the more ordnance you carry, the heavier the plane, the fewer miles you can fly.

Since most or all of these planes cannot make it to Iran and back on their own, they would have to be refueled along the way. Refueling greatly complicates the operation. The best way to refuel would be to use dedicated tanker aircraft, of which Israel has a small number. However, tanker aircraft are both difficult to hide and vulnerable to enemy air defenses. They would likely have to overfly Turkish, Syrian, Jordanian/Iraqi, or Saudi territory and might have to orbit there for hours, waiting for the strike aircraft to return to fill them up for the return leg. In addition, the refueling requirements of a strike of 125 aircraft to targets more than 950 miles away in Iran might exceed the capacity of Israel's tanker fleet, although there are reports that the IDF has been secretly buying cargo aircraft and converting them to tankers.
⁶
In spring 2013, the United States and Israel agreed on a new arms deal that will provide Israel with additional tankers, but they are not expected to arrive for a year or more, and even if this solves the problem of numbers, it still does nothing about the problem of tanker vulnerability.
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Another refueling method the Israelis might employ would be for the strike aircraft to refuel one another in flight (called “buddy” refueling). That eliminates the need to have big, slow, vulnerable tankers flying over hostile airspace, but it would also reduce the number of strike aircraft with the fuel to make it to Iran, shrinking the number of bombs on target. Depending on a variety of technical factors, buddy refueling could cut the size of the actual strike force by 50 or even 75 percent—which could make it impossible for Israel to achieve anything of military value. Another alternative would be for the Israeli warplanes to refuel on the ground. There are no countries on the route that would voluntarily refuel an Israeli strike package, but the IDF might opt to set up a covert, forward refueling point in the desert of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia. While feasible, it would be a risky, complicated addition to the mission.
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The problems of airspace and distance mean that, at best, Israel would
get one strike during one night, with no more than 125 tactical strike aircraft. Various factors starting with refueling could reduce that number significantly.

Iran's own air defenses probably could not defeat an Israeli strike, but they would make it harder. Iranian radar coverage is incomplete and many of Tehran's radars are old and poorly maintained. Nevertheless, there are enough of them that they would probably force an Israeli strike package to weave its way through one or more of the valleys of the Zagros Mountains and fly low across Iran's central plateau after debouching from the mountain passes to avoid detection. This flight plan would require still more fuel, increasing the likelihood that Israel would have to refuel the strike force more than once.

Both Iran's fighter fleet and its inventory of surface-to-air missiles are unimpressive. Tehran has few modern systems, fewer still procured in the past fifteen years, and none that are properly maintained. It has too few (just 24) of its most capable interceptor, the short-ranged MIG-29, and its dozen or so semi-operational F-14s and Mirage F-1s are obsolete and no match for Israel's modern F-15s and F-16s. Its SAMs are too few, too old, and too limited in capability and range to pose much of a threat to the Israelis. And the competence of Iranian air force and air defense force personnel is no match for the IAF pilots.

Nevertheless, if Iran's air defenses are even modestly alert, they could create additional problems for the Israelis. At the very least, the Israelis would face some tough choices regarding how much effort they would want to take away from bombing the nuclear sites to devote instead to fending off Iran's air defenses. For the Osirak strike in 1981, almost half the planes in the Israeli strike force were dedicated fighter escorts. The IAF may feel that Iran's air force does not merit that much respect, but either way it would be another risk. Similarly, if the Israelis believe that they would need some of their aircraft to act as dedicated SAM suppression, electronic warfare, and jammer aircraft (or merely carry heavy electronic warfare pods for this purpose), that too would limit the number of bomb droppers or the number and size of the bombs. These kinds of
trade-offs further demonstrate just how challenging this operation would be and how narrow its margin of possible success.