'Israel aggressing Iran': What it would look like

"For months, there have been rumors of a strike by Israel on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The propaganda build-up is very similar to that directed against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 2002. In both cases, an isolated state with limited military and physical resources is depicted as a horror  that threatens to end the survival of the world,...

 According to several US respected analysts on the Middle East like Vince Cannistraro, former CIA head of Couterterrorism and Judith Yaphe of National Defense University, the message emanating from Israel and its right-wing U.S. supporters, is that the road to Jerusalem and an Arab-Israeli peace leads through Iran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contends that since Iran’s support of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon means permanent hostility to Israel’s existence, the only way to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace, is to use brute force...

In the past, the United States had lead in confronting Iran. For years, the United States Air Force has had “Project Checkmate,” a secret, strategic planning group tasked with running detailed contingency scenarios for a possible massive, 3-day US attack Iran. It is part of CENTCOM and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defense and cyber experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA, DIA and other government agencies.

Time changed this... all through the late spring and the summer, “Israel wanted to start something and drag us in.”

This correspondent first heard of the threats of a preemptive Israeli strike as early as last May when DOD and CIA officials told me of classified DOD drills being conducted in support of an Israeli attack on Iran. All summer long, the drills continued supervised by teams of senior former and serving CIA and DIA officials who were personally opposed to any such attack.

Last spring, then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, who had a fixed and determined will, resisted the very idea of such an attack. In August, after Gates retired, there were leaked rumors that Israel would attack after Adm. Mike Mullins, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired in September...After Mullins stepped down, President Obama sent the new Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to Israel to argue that an attack would not succeed in its aims and attempted to get a commitment from Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu not to strike Iran without warning. According to U.S. military ad intelligence sources Panetta failed to get that pledge.

And Israeli attempts at intimidating kept on. Within the last two months, there appeared numerous accounts portraying Israel’s military capability as invincible...The boasts of Tel Aviv’s invincibility prompted Professor Paul Williams of the National Defense University, to comment to me, “The Israelis are not invincible. Pride goes before the fall.” 

Could Israel Do It?

According to former U.S. military or intelligence sources,  the war would begin without warning. Israel would fall silent, as it did before the Osirak strike in 1981. The attack would utilize three Israeli strike units: its aircraft, its missiles, and cruise missiles launched from its three diesel subs. However, the most important strategic element would be Israel’s Air Force.

In the words of a former U.S. Middle East expert and intelligence official, an account verified by others, the  most highly-regarded scenario would involve a strike package of 70-80 aircraft that would fly up to the corner of the Mediterranean, adjoining northern Syria and southeastern Turkey. There the strike planes would top off, then fly east over southern Turkey, infuriating the Turks, who nonetheless probably would not shoot the planes down. After hitting their targets in Iran, and realizing that hostile Turks would now be in the air, the Israeli planes would be in peril. With the need for fuel becoming more acute with each passing minute, Israel’s aircraft “would barrel straight through Iraqi and Jordanian airspace in a direct line for home.,”

Thanks to US pressure, the Iraqis would not engage the aircraft either, and Jordan, much as it did back in June 1981 during the Osirak operation, would scramble its air force belatedly and without any real desire to engage,...

What would Iran’s Reaction be?

The 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah War (called the Second Lebanon War in Israel) was an attempt by Israel at eliminating the MAD counter-force in Lebanon. It was an attempt that failed. According to Lord Elgin in an article,  a British weapons consultant for British Aerospace, Iran had purchased and supplied to Hezbollah, a large number of very nasty, relatively low cost Russian AT-14 Kornet solid fuel anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), and the Iranian-trained Hezbollah commandos dug in massive numbers of these in concrete bunkers and firing positions. According to a former, high-ranking DOD official, after over 50 Merkava main battle tanks were hit, and after Israel’s American-made warplanes and pinpoint weapons proved ineffective, failure stared Tel Aviv in the face. Either Israel had to use neutron bombs and deploy a large number of Israeli soldiers to remove the Hezbollah threat or it could declare peace. Israel declared peace.

In the case of an attack on Iran, Israel has a vast array of weapons including neutron bombs, nuclear weapons, and fuel air explosive (FAE) bombs. But if Israel used an FAE weapon in an attack, Iran and its allies in Lebanon would fire thousand upon thousands of scud missiles armed with high explosive (HE) warheads “at every Israeli population center down as far as Tel Aviv,” according to one former DOD intelligence official.  

The Syrians, using larger and more actively guided missiles, could shower Israel with high explosive warheads, while Israel would attempt to use its Green Pine radar system, and a combination of US and Israeli anti-missile missiles, to shoot down these salvos. Former CIA and DOD analysts told this reporter that Israel in the beginning would have good success in knocking down many incoming missiles, but the sheer number of incoming missiles would “totally overload all any defensive measures.”

A former U.S. intelligence expert, with direct knowledge of Israel’s attack plans, emphasized: “The Israelis have no defense against this. Israel has a massive disincentive against the use of any kind of nuclear weapon. Israel has only two population centers and this attack would finish them.” ...

There appear to be three major targets in Israel’s strike plan: the uranium-conversion facility at Esfahan, the fuel-enrichment plant at Natanz, and the heavy-water production plant and heavy-water reactor under construction at Arak. Even if Israel's Air Force reached those targets, their being deep underground would make them hard to hit. “It would take thousands of sorties,” said a former Pentagon official. And given the range, the Israeli planes couldn’t stay at the area for very long, adding "the Israelis have no idea of the scale and complexity of this kind of operation."

Resolution?

American resistance to any Israeli strike spiked recently when two senior US military leaders bridled at the scheme. Only a few days ago, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey and CENTCOM chief Gen. James Mattis (who commanded the battle of Falllujah in 2004) told President Obama about his seeming lack of firmness in letting Netanyahu know the “law of the land” – how deeply the US military was opposed to a strike by Tel Aviv. The president’s reply was not what the generals expected. Two U.S. officials close to the exchange, said that Obama said that he “had no say over Israel” because “it is a sovereign country.”

One can understand the generals’ bluntness and anxiety. Any strike by Israel would place all US military personnel and assets spread throughout the Persian Gulf in peril. The Persian Gulf is the keystone of the world oil market and any instability could weaken the already-faltering world economy. US assets in the region are immense... ... ... A surprise attack by Israel would put all these assets in peril, and Generals Dempsey and Mattis warned Obama that it would take 45 to 90 days to ramp up a force to defend the region if Israel attacks. 

Even in Israel, the Begin doctrine no longer holds dominion...

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect about the incessant calls for an Israeli strike was the fact that the most strident hawks, both US and Israeli, appeared to see war as something abstract, a pin in your opponent’s map. But any war gives license not only to the righteous but to the avid, the brutal and criminal and any war ignore the fact that war means the death of helpless and innocent people.

Thankfully, this latter view seems be seizing new ground and gaining new strength in both Israel and America."