Iran — The Victim of Rhetoric

Iran is the victim of rhetoric. Another military victory may be of use to Obama before the elections.

Israel doesn’t suffer from lack of political will or political correctness — the norms of international law bother it either.

The topic of a possible American or Israeli attack on Iran has existed for at least six years. The discussion first goes out and then flares up again. Last week, not only has the topic has been brought up again, it’s been brought up on unprecedentedly high level: the leaders of Israel, including President Shimon Peres, started talking about a possible forthcoming attack.

There is no particular doubt that Iran is trying to develop a military nuclear program, otherwise it would not be so actively working on the creation of ballistic missiles. It is well known that the higher the flight range of a ballistic missile, the less purpose there is in equipping it with ordinary conventional warheads. The Iranians are in need of nuclear weapon for two reasons. First, they want to defend themselves from a possible attack from the U.S., and second, they can talk to their Arab neighbors with a completely different tone and to gain a different type of influence in the Islamic world.

Regarding Israel, it is well understood in Tehran that in case of an attack, they will receive a guaranteed destructive response. This is why, in reality, the threat of such an attack is very much exaggerated. Nevertheless, in Tel Aviv, this isn’t understood, which is quite explainable. Due to the microscopic sizes of Israel’s territory, three or four nuclear loads of average power will put an end to its existence. Consequently, the Jews are not ready to expose themselves to such risk. Iran could fall victim to its own anti-Semitic rhetoric, behind which there are likely no real intentions.

Israel doesn’t suffer from a lack of political will and from political correctness at all. The norms of international law absolutely do not bother it. Throughout its entire history, this country has been doing whatever it wanted, committing aggressions with ease. It would have attacked Iran a long time ago, but there have been two impeding circumstances.

The first has been the occupation of Iraq by American forces. Because Israeli airplanes had to fly over Iraq anyway, the U.S. automatically became an accessory in the aggression, and their forces in Iraq were the main objective of Iranian retaliation (Iran is not capable of getting to Israel itself at this point of time). Today, this problem is obviated, because American forces have almost completely left Iraq. This is most likely the reason why now in Israel, a forthcoming attack is being discussed so openly. Even if it wants to, Iraq itself won’t be capable of stopping Israel because it doesn’t have aviation capabilities and air defenses. Even though aside from Iraq, Israeli airplanes would have to fly over either Jordan or Saudi Arabia, there are big suspicions that the air defense of these countries will “not notice” them. In those places, the fear of Iran is no less than in Israel.

The second limiting circumstance is purely technical in nature. Israel is situated quite far away from Iran. Moreover, it would have to destroy a significant amount of objects, but the locations of some of those objects are not known for certain. Besides that, some of the targets are hidden well underground. Israel does not have bombers; it only has 400 F-15 and F-16 fighters. There are less than 10 tanker aircrafts at its disposal, which is absolutely not enough to carry out such an operation.

Of course it would be possible to add several additional fuel tanks under the planes; however, they would take the room of weapons. Israel will need a lot of weapons in order to strike all the targets, as well as to neutralize the Iranian air defense system (which is quite primitive, but that doesn’t cancel out the necessity of neutralizing it). Israel has some ballistic missiles and also cruise missiles which can be launched from submarines, but in order to seriously destroy Iranian missile-nuclear potential, that won’t be enough. Comparing Israel’s capability to the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactors by the Israeli air force 30 years ago is unfair; then, there was only one object being destroyed, the distance to which was half of what Israeli airplanes would have to overcome today.

All these problems would automatically solve themselves if the U.S. would take a part in the attack with their cruise missiles from the sea and the air, strategic bombers, deck aviation and unmanned aircrafts. But there is no proof that Washington will want to do that. Firstly, unlike his predecessor, Obama, as one may notice, is not a big fan of waging wars. Secondly, American forces in Afghanistan, which are absolutely not prepared to repulse the attacks due to the lack of air defense tools and an extreme lack of armored vehicles, might become a target of Iranian retaliation (in the air and on the ground).

On the other hand, a military victory may be of use to Obama before the elections — the destruction of a link of the axis of evil. That’s why he might take a risk.