How Israel could attack and destroy Iran’s nuclear program has transformed in the last nine months, even more so in the last few.
Before April 19, an attack on Iran’s nuclear program was theoretically possible via an aerial attack using Israel’s stealth capabilities to eliminate Iran’s advanced S-300 anti-aircraft radar systems, followed by waves of strikes on key nuclear program sites.
Another goal would have been to disable Iran’s underground facility at Fordow by dropping a series of 5,000-pound or smaller weapons, one after another, on the same spot.
Over the past few months, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took credit for the Israel Air Force destroying Iran’s S-300 anti-aircraft radar systems on April 19, and the rest on October 26.
This means that at any moment, Israel could launch an airstrike on the nuclear program, which is essentially undefended in any real way from such strikes – for now.
Put differently, what a year ago would have been seen as a risky mission, is now something, from a military point of view, that has already been partially done, with the rest remaining very doable.
Tehran had three main indirect ways to scare Israel off from attacking its nuclear program. If Jerusalem dared to carry out such a strike, it was promised a hellfire of missiles from Hamas and Hezbollah – and powerful, unusually dangerous ballistic missiles from Iran itself.
The two terrorist groups, at least for now, are disarrayed and disorganized, and so are unable to help their Iranian sponsors.
The Islamic Republic itself has fired 300 ballistic missiles at Israel in two separate volleys on April 13-14 and October 1 and did not manage to harm Israelis or Israel’s airpower, despite striking some unmanned air bases.
With help from the US and having its first real test of the Arrow 2 and 3 missile defense system, Israel managed to shoot down the vast majority of the ayatollahs’ ballistic missile threats.
SO, EVEN before the American election – and last week – an attack on Iran’s nuclear program no longer carried anywhere near the same risks, not as far as the operation itself, or regarding the nightmarish response that might be expected from Tehran.
During the US election campaign, President-elect Donald Trump publicly called on Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear sites. Since he was declared victor, he has reportedly continued to support such a strike, should Tehran not back down from its nuclear advances in a serious way. Several reports have even suggested that he will finally give Israel a bunker-buster capability to carry out the attack.
Despite repeated requests from Israel, Trump did not do so in his first term. Even if he doesn’t do it in the next, his strong support of an attack relieves Israel of much of the diplomatic worries it had regarding such an operation from the Biden administration.
Trump’s new administration can be relied on to provide Israel a defensive umbrella from Iranian ballistic missiles following such an attack – whereas, with the Biden administration, its response in such a scenario was a question mark.
New possibility for eliminating Iran’s nuclear sites
Last week suggested another new possibility for eliminating Iran’s nuclear sites. Israeli officials, on the record, have been smartly remaining completely silent about the possibility of doing to Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility what the IDF did to Iran’s underground Masyaf missile facility in Syria.
One does not need to have access to classified information to see the clear parallels. If the IDF could bring 120 Special Forces for three hours into Syria to destroy a sensitive Iranian facility, in the best-defended part of Syria from both air and on the ground after Damascus, why couldn’t Israel carry out an adapted version of such an operation at Fordow?
Suddenly, there is a public possibility that Israel could eliminate Iranian nuclear facilities either by airstrikes or by a Special Forces operation.
The truth is that even using the concept of the Masyaf operation should not be too unheard of.
ISRAEL HAS taken public credit for covertly killing former Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in the heart of a highly secure Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility in Tehran in July, and for seizing Iran’s nuclear secrets from a similarly high-value facility in Tehran in 2018 – not to mention the several Iranian nuclear facilities that Iran accused the Mossad of covertly blowing up between 2020 and 2021.
In some ways, it could be argued that the unexpected IDF decision to publicize all of the details of Masyaf was to be as “in your face” as possible to its adversaries about the many different ways the military can get to any strategic site, under or above ground.
This also all took place after Reuters reported in November that Iran started building a “defensive tunnel” in Tehran following Israeli counterstrikes on October 26.
The last element to consider is time.
Several top Israeli officials, including former prime minister Naftali Bennett and former defense minister Avigdor Liberman, called for striking Iran’s nuclear facilities both back in October and right now, in the limbo period between the Biden and Trump presidencies.
Since no such attack took place, it appears clear – and sources have confirmed – that Israel prefers to first see what Trump’s preferred time frame and strategic handling of Iran will look like.
All of the events since April, up until and including last week’s disclosures of the Masyaf operation, should leave no room for doubt: if Israel wants to attack Iran’s nuclear program it could do so, in multiple ways.
How much time Iran has to back down from the nuclear standoff to avoid an attack – a month, several months, or a year – is probably the only question that remains.