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.
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.
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.
Suddenly, there is a public possibility that Israel could eliminate Iranian nuclear facilities either by airstrikes or by a Special Forces operation.
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