by Jack Lee
It’s not much of a secret that Israel will do a pre-emptive strike on Iranian nuclear facilities before they can produce their first nuclear bomb. The whole world believes this and more importantly, so does Iran. Actually the Iranians expect either the U.S. acting under UN sanctions or Israel to bomb their hardened nuclear production bunkers which is exactly why they built them so deep and so well protected. Something that is extremely expensive and unecessary if you were building just nuclear power. Do you believe that’s all they are doing? I sure don’t.
Interesting links.. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601207&sid=aGMckBoKKvoo
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132102
How well protected are these nuclear facilities? On the ground the Iranians have ringed the sites with the most sophisticated ground to air missiles and other anti-aircraft weapons they could buy (Russian of course) and these defenses are protected behind a second ring of early warning radar systems. In addition, Iranian Naval vessels have established a picket line hundreds of miles into the Indian Ocean and they sit for days scanning the horizon looking for aircraft or warships.
The Iranian border is almost completely encircled with an advanced radar system that in secret tests is capable of catching about 85% of enemy aircraft attempting penetration, except for a few small mountainous regions which remain blind spots, like the one in the Haj Omran pass in the Kurdish controlled area of Iraq bordering Iran, the Iranian radar is extremely well deployed. However, even if aircraft could sneak in through a blind spot, they would have to skirt the border between Iraq and Syria, go a 1000 miles out of their way, then cross an enormous open area inside Iran. This would require extremely long range aircraft, not to mention the high risk of early detection.
But, just for fun lets say Israeli fighter-bombers were able to sneak into Iran and close to their targets, what then? Well, they would be forced to climb up to about 10,000 feet in order to make a bombing run and this act would light up every SAM site in 50 miles. Then they would nose over, lock on to their targets and dive to around 2800 feet and release their bunker busting bombs now hurteling in at around 1500 kph. Then mission over – boogie for home. This would require three successive waves, one plane coming in right after the other in order to get the kind of deep penetration and devastation necessary to wipe out the main Iranian nuclear laboratory.
After all this time the F-16I jets would be nearly out of fuel and this leaves them with two choices, fly out over the Indian Ocean and the ditch at sea where a nearby Isreali ship would be standing by to rescue the pilots or have at least two refueling tankers to meet up the flight, but unfortunately they don’t have such tankers at this time.
This is virtually an impossible mission and completely improbable given known Israeli air force capabilities and their current munitions and the ultra modern Iranian defense system. Of course if it happened, successful or not, it could start a long distance war between Iran and Israel and who knows where this would spread, but then Israel has few options at this point and they are known for doing the impossible.
The Iranian’s General Amirali Hajizadeh, the Revolutionary Guards’ aviation commander recently said, “Israel’s F-15 and F-16 fighter jets would be trapped in our defense system,. . .” and “If a jet accidentally escapes, the base it flew from would be hit by our destructive missiles before the plane lands.”
On the Israeli side, Daniel Ayalon, emphasized last September, that Israel has “not taken any option off the table” when it comes to countering the Iranian threat. The same day, Israel’s top general, chief of staff Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, made it clear that he would not rule out a military strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, repeating that “Israel has the right to defend itself and all options are on the table.”
Given Iran’s new, improved long range missile abilities, their uranium enrichment program and warhead development, I would estimate that Iran’s nuclear facilities will be attacked within the next 12 months or the Genie will be out of the bottle forever and this is something Israel can’t allow to happen. END
A klog tzu meineh sonim!