Will Israel Strike Iran's Nuclear Facilities?

Israel does not have the capacity to totally destroy Iran’s nuclear program. There are other limiting factors too.

Netanyahu’s urge to strike Iran also stems from a strategic reality, that the more relationships the US has in the region, the less significant Israel is to the US.

(Photo: Chetan Bhakuni/ The Quint)

US President Joe Biden has declined to support any Israeli strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in response to the latter’s missile attack on 1 October. It did, however, counsel Israel about a proportionate response to the barrage of 180 Iranian ballistic missiles.

His advice came after consultations with the G7 leaders about coordinating new sanctions against Iran, even as his administration tries to keep the conflict in the Middle East from expanding further.

There are cogent reasons for this approach by President Biden. The Israeli military does not have the capacity to comprehensively destroy Iran’s nuclear program but wants to force the US to step in and finish what Israel has started unilaterally. This requires a commitment from the US.

The Israeli Air Force, which is occupied on multiple fronts, cannot, at this point in time, deliver a sufficiently large air attack to take out all of Iran’s nuclear facilities in a finite timeframe. There are other limiting factors too.

To reach Iran, the Israeli Air Force has two options. It can either overfly Jordan-Iraq/Jordan-Saudi Arabia but these countries may not like to permit this as it makes them party to the conflict. Or it could take a long and circuitous route to the US military base at Djibouti and then go around through the Arabian Sea. This will have a limiting effect on the size of the force that can be deployed.

Additionally, Iran had keenly analysed how the US, and Israel in particular, dealt with Saddam Hussein’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, along with the US' subsequent air operations since 1991.

Thus, for Iran, protection against the US' bunker-busting weapons has been a principal design consideration for its nuclear facilities. Further, unlike Iraq’s desert terrain, Iran has a mountainous terrain, which is far more appropriate for burying nuclear facilities.

Iran is four times the size of Iraq and has dispersed its nuclear program across the country. Many significant targets in Iran are not readily identifiable, especially those associated with the research and design of a limited, clandestine nuclear weaponisation effort.

Besides, Iran, anticipating such strikes, is likely to have moved its weapons-grade uranium/plutonium stock to safe places. The US' Human Intelligence (HUMINT) network in Iran is not so robust. Even when complimented by the far more capable Israeli HUMINT effort in Iran, the US will have to cope with Iran's counter-intelligence.

Thus, with Iran having taken many nuclear facilities underground, there is no guarantee that any Israeli attack would destroy every one of them, and if it cannot, then the US will have to step in to complete what Israel started. This will harden Iran's resolve to rapidly develop and deploy more nuclear weapons.

It needs to be noted that rhetoric notwithstanding, Iran has, to date, refrained from taking those final steps towards nuclear weapons while offering partial cooperation to nuclear inspections. This is because, for Iran, its nuclear program is not an end in itself but a primary tool to make Washington take Tehran more seriously.

If Israel successfully attacks and destroys Iranian facilities, then the Iranians would go back to square one. But if the Israeli attack fails to inflict crippling damage, the Iranians would emerge stronger and they could retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz and crippling the global economy, painting Israel as the villain.

Iran sits atop the entire Persian Gulf, whose narrowest part, the Strait of Hormuz, is about 33 km wide. The shipping traffic corridor, however, is only nine km wide. More than 90 percent of all oil exported from the Persian Gulf (two-thirds of of the global supply), transits through this. And Iran has the ability to mine the Strait of Hormuz and target super-tankers with its anti-ship missiles.

Were the Strait to be shut down through military action, or even if a couple of ships were sunk, the impact on energy markets, not to mention the equity markets and the global economy, would be drastic. It could take months to clear sunken ships. And Iran’s military has been practising such operations since the 1984-87 “Tanker War”.

Further, Iran could, particularly in the event of Israeli overflights being permitted by Jordan or Saudi Arabia, opt for limited ground action, which may be supported by Shia elements in the Iraq and Iran-leaning sections of Lebanon and Syria. These retaliatory actions have the potential to destabilise the Middle East and the Levant.

It remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Netanyahu will heed President Biden’s counsel. As per many Israelis, since the events of 7 October last year, Netanyahu has leaned towards ‘war and more war’ in order to avoid accountability for Hamas' attacks, and also to dodge the earlier criminal charges against him. But Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack which also hit areas around Tel Aviv, seems to have changed that narrative.

Many Israelis, now perceiving Iran as the primary instigator of unrest in the Middle East and themselves as victims of perennial violence from Iran’s proxies like Hamas (Gaza), the Houthis (Yemen) and Hezbollah (Lebanon), are calling for a substantial attack on Iran even if the war escalates and spreads.

Congressional Republicans have urged Israel to retaliate aggressively against Iran’s missile barrage and demanded that the Biden administration release the weapons required for the task. If Netanyahu decides to up the ante against Iran, the chances for a broader conflagration will rise incrementally.

Netanyahu’s urge to strike Iran also stems from a strategic reality. The more relationships the US has in the region, the less significant Israel is to the US. One way to ensure its own significance to the US is by alienating both adversaries and allies.

(Kuldip Singh is a retired Brigadier from the Indian Army. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)