Does Israel have firepower for sustained operations needed against Iran?

Rowan Scarborough:

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... a U.S. air-war planner in the Persian Gulf War tells The Washington Times he does not think Israel's relatively small air force — compared with the United States huge bomber and cruise-missile fleet — has the firepower to properly hit all the necessary Iranian targets.

The only real way to stop Iran's atomic bomb, said retired Air Force Col. John Warden, is for the U.S. to shut down Iran's electric generation for the foreseeable future — a strategy not currently on the Pentagon's table.

That Israel is now ready to make war with Iran, whose radical Islamic rulers have threatened to destroy the Jewish state, was announced earlier this month. Speaking to an air and space institute audience, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon bluntly spelled out the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) milestone.

"This capability can be used for a war on terror in Gaza, for a war in the face of rockets from Lebanon, for war on the conventional Syrian army, and also for war on a peripheral state like Iran," said Mr. Yaalon, who was Israel's top uniformed officer during the buildup.

Israel's improved air-war prowess centers on three major achievements:

• Long-range bombers. Israel has purchased premier U.S. fighters especially configured for the buyer's specific threats — read, Iran. The more than 100 F-15I Ra'ams and F-16I Sufas are equipped with special extended-range fuel tanks. Augmenting the supersonic strike jets is Israel's perfection of aerial refueling from B-707 tankers.

• Armaments. Israel's innovative avionics industry is fitting the jets with a new bomb-guidance system that can find intended targets easier. The defense force now owns scores of BLUs — the military acronym for "bomb, live unit," which is also known as powerful "bunker buster" bombs capable of penetrating underground or hardened facilities.

• Intelligence. Israel now has in orbit a fleet of super-spy satellites, such as the Ofek-7 launched in 2007, that can regularly capture images of Iran's nuclear and defense sites for the air force's target list. With such constant satellite coverage, it is a safe assumption that war planners have studied Iran's high-value facilities and have a tactic for how to strike each one. Israel has added expertise in analyzing such sites since it produces atomic weapons.

But Israel likely would face stiff challenges. There are at least two-dozen prime nuclear sites in Iran, some that would require multiple strikes, a feat Israel's limited bomber fleet might not be able to achieve. It is one thing to take out Iraq's nearby nuclear reactor — as Israel's F-16s did in 1981. It is another to launch a much more massive campaign against fortified, dispersed targets more than 1,000 miles away.

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With Iran, if the United States wanted to absolutely ensure the Iranians could not build a nuclear arsenal, planners might opt to shut down all sources of power generation.

"Iran cannot sustain a nuclear research program if they don't have electricity and oil and a bunch of other things like that," Col. Warden said. "But that is a pretty draconian solution. We have the capability to do that. We could do that in 24 hours if we wanted to. But nobody else in the world is remotely close to being able to do it. And we wouldn't."

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"Iran requires 100 percent of its program in order to build a bomb," said Mr. Pike, founder and director of GlobalSecurity.org. "There do not seem to be any 'spare' or duplicate facilities. Israel does not need to destroy 100 percent of Iran's infrastructure to disable the program. Israel only needs to disable a big chunk of the program, which would render the remainder worthless. The major facilities are isolated, so there is not much danger of significant civilian casualties."

Mr. Pike said Israel might be considering another target: the nuclear workers and scientists themselves.

"Most of the people who work at these facilities live in housing that is more or less co-located with the facility," he said. "This makes for a short commute, and facilitates physical and operational security. Bomb the housing, and you destroy the program for a generation."

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I think it will take a sustained bombing campaign of a matter of weeks not days to neutralize Iran. Israel does not have that capacity. She can probably make a onetime strike, but it was be very hard for her to come back the next day without detection. She might be able to launch some missiles that would hit Iran, but I doubt she has enough conventional weapons to sustain a campaign.

The nuke facilities would be near the bottom of my target list in Iran. I would first neutralize the weapons Iran needs for a counter strike. I would destroy Iran's ability to make war by knocking out her missiles and naval assets. I would then knock out her weapon manufacturing facilities that she uses to supply groups like Hezballah and Hamas. Once her ability to make war has been destroyed, I would work on the destruction of her nuclear facilities. I do think we could knock out the power stations that feed those facilities. That is a vulnerability to be exploited.

Adam Brodsky suggest Israel should start by taking out Hezballah. No doubt Hezballah is part of Iran's strategic defense and they will attack Israel if it attacks Iran. Their failure to stop Israelis military in the 2006 war was a strategic defeat for Iran. That is why Iran and Syria have added more long range missiles to Hezballah's inventory. The missiles will again be aimed at Israeli non combatants instead of its military. Complicating the task for Hezballah and Iran is Israel's new Iron Dome missile defense system.