Crisis Iran
Officer's club blog
Time is running out in the Iran versus West spat. The crisis is beginning to snowball, and its number of moving parts are increasing exponentially.
Today marked a suprising announcement from the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Muhammad El Baradei, as he confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran was only "months away" from developing a nuclear bomb. The announcement is surprising because the IAEA has long tried to "keep the peace" between Israel, the U.S. and Iran. El Baradei's announcement will escalate the crisis.
Also today, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (widely expected to replace Ariel Sharon as head of the Likud Party in elections next month) asserted that he would "not hesitate" to strike Iran as Prime Minister.
The point has not been lost on the Iranians, who just announced that they are purchasing sophisticated surface-to-air missiles from Russia.
Logic dictates that Israel would strike before the Iranians had a functional bomb, to assure that any Iranian retaliation would be non-nuclear. Military resolution of the crisis is looming, here's a strategic overview.
Iran has 6 major facilities that are connected with nuclear processing, all located in the west and center of the country. They include one heavy-water plant, two research reactors/facilities, a uranium processing plant and uranium enrichment facility, and a light-water reactor near Busher.
Here's a map of their locations: cns.miis.edu
If Israel acts unilaterally to remove these facilities, the range of targets may be limited. Israel will want to focus her resources on taking out the "big three" targets: nuclear processing facilities at Busher, Nataz, and the heavy-water plant at Arak. If the United States joins the attack, expect the US Air Force and US Navy apply a "bomb to the stone-age" campaign, knocking out all facilities that deal in nuclear development.
Israel's resources are limited, and an Osirak-like strike against Iran would be far more complicated than the 1981 operation. A key complication is Iraq. Now that the U.S. controls Iraqi airspace, the Israelis would have to seek permission from Washington to move on the Iranians. American authorization would be seen as American complicity in the attack. I suspect that if Washington did give the go-ahead for airstrikes, their attitude may be "we're going to get blamed anyway, we may as well join them."
Another major problem -one that is rarely mentioned- is that Israel does not have the single most important element in warfare at its advantage: surprise. The Iranians are expecting an attack, and are preparing accordingly. There will be Iranian army units near all of these facilities in case of commando incursions, a heavy blanket of surface-to-air missiles (sophisticated ones) around each possible target, and Iranian Air Force fighters nearby to intercept any IAF F-15s and F-16s. Couple this with the fact that Israel has to hit triple the targets than they did in 1981, at twice the range, you begin to understand the magnitude of the obstacles to such an operation.
In 1981, Saddam was in the middle of a war with Iran, and did not have the resources to dedicate to a counterattack. Iran has some 500 medium-range Shahab missiles at its disposal, all with the capability to hit Israel or U.S. bases in the region. So not only will the Israelis be headed into a possible ambush, they will actually have to deal with retaliation this time around.
Israel has been planning for the possibility that Iranian counteracts could involve nukes (or any type of WMDs). They will soon add two more Dolphin-class diesel submarines to their fleet, and have equipped them with submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capabilities. The development of subs as a "second-strike" weapon indicates an Israeli intention to survive an atomic detonation, and have nuclear retaliatory options at their disposal. Israel has long held nuclear-response plans in their inventory, and they are frightening ones (see The Samson Option.)
The Iranian Shahab-3 Missile can reach Israel and most of CENTCOM's bases.
Iran's President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map"
Israeli Dolphin subs are capable of delivering commandos or launching cruise-missiles
The diplomatic window for this crisis is rapidly shrinking. Military resolution could come in a few short weeks. There is a distinct possibility that Ariel Sharon orders the attack on the eve of Israel's parlimentary elections to electorally boost him over Netanyahu. We know that the Israelis have been planning for this specific contingency -at minimum- since 2002, when the Iranians acknowledged the existance of two secret nuclear processing facilities.
The unknowns are considerable. Will the Israelis use nuclear weapons preemptively or will they go conventional? Will America join them? Or will the U.S. act on its own accord? How would a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on an Arab state fare in the Middle East? Would it help or hurt democratic progress in that region?
Unfortunately -due the Iranian refusal to play ball with negotiators- we may be hearing the answers to those questions more sooner than later.
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