(How) Should Israel Bomb Iran?
Diplomacy has run its course, sanctions are too late, and Israel can't cry wolf again.
By Bret Stephens, WSJ Opinion, February 7, 2012
Can Israel attack Iran? If it can, will it? If it will, when? If when,
how?
And what happens after that?
On Sunday with Matt Lauer, President Obama said "I don't think that Israel
has made a decision on what they need to do." That didn't square with the view
of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who's been reported as saying he expects an
Israeli attack this spring. Nor does it square with public warnings from Israeli
Defense Minister Ehud Barak that the Iranians would soon enter a "zone of
immunity" from foreign military attack if nothing is done to stop them.
Yes, these war drums have been beaten before. But this time it's
different.
Diplomacy has run its course: Even U.N. diplomats now say Iran uses
negotiations as a tactic to buy time. The sanctions are too late: Israel can't
afford to wait a year or two to see if Europe's embargo on Iranian oil or the
administration's squeeze on Iran's financial institutions will alter Tehran's
nuclear calculations.
Covert action—computer bugs, assassinations, explosions—may have slowed
Iran's progress, but plainly not by enough. And Israel can only hint so many
times that it's planning to attack before the world tires of the
bluster-and-retreat routine.
Two additional points. Washington and Jerusalem are at last operating from a
common timetable—Iran is within a year of getting to the point when it will be
able to assemble a bomb essentially at will. And speaking of timetables,
Jerusalem knows that Mr. Obama will be hard-pressed to oppose an Israeli
strike—the way Dwight Eisenhower did during the Suez crisis—before election day.
A re-elected President Obama is a different story.
That means that from here until November the U.S. traffic light has gone from
red to yellow. And Israelis aren't exactly famous for stopping at yellow
lights.
But can they do it? There's a mountain of nonsense exaggerating Israel's
military capabilities: Israel does not, for instance, operate giant drones
capable of refueling jet fighters in midair.
The bottom line is that a strike on Iran that sets its nuclear ambitions back
by several years is at the outer periphery of Israel's military capability, but
still within it.
As for how Israel would do it, the important point is that any strike that's
been as widely anticipated as this one would have to contain some significant
element of surprise—a known unknown. What could that be? Here's a hint: Gen.
Hossein Salami, the deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, recently
warned that "any place where enemy offensive operations against the Islamic
Republic originate will be the target of a reciprocal attack." Look at a map:
Africa and Central Asia are wide open places.
What happens on the day after? Israelis estimate that between Hamas in Gaza,
Hezbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran itself, there are some 200,000 missiles and
rockets pointed in their direction. They could start falling before the first
sortie of Israeli jets returned to base. Israel's civil defenses have been
materially improved in recent years. But the country would still have to
anticipate that missile and rocket barrages would overwhelm its defenses,
causing hundreds of civilian casualties. Israel would also have to be prepared
to go to war in Lebanon, Gaza and even Syria if Iran calls on the aid of its
allies.
Put simply, an Israeli strike on Iran would not just be a larger-scale
reprise of the attacks that took out Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 and Syria's
in 2007. On the contrary: If it goes well it would look somewhat like the Six
Day War of 1967, and if it goes poorly like the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Nobody
should think we're talking about a cakewalk.
So: Should Israel do it? If the U.S. has no serious intention to go beyond
sanctions, Israel's only alternative to action is to accept a nuclear Iran and
then stand by as the rest of its neighbors acquire nuclear weapons of their own.
That scenario is the probable end of Israel.
Then again, if Israel is going to gamble so much on a strike, it should play
for large stakes. The Islamic Republic means to destroy Israel. If Israel means
to survive, it should commit itself similarly. Destroying Iran's nuclear sites
will be a short-lived victory if it isn't matched to the broader goal of ending
the regime.
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