Israel Stands Alone

Daniel Pipes writes that President Bush has decided not to attack , which leaves only Israel to disrupt 's nuclear program.

Pipes considers the analysis of Whitney Raas and Austin Long "Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy ian Nuclear Facilities." Raas and Long consider five components of a successful strike:

• Intelligence: To impede the production of fissile material requires incapacitating only three facilities of 's nuclear infrastructure. In ascending order of importance, these are the heavy water plant and plutonium production reactors under construction at Arak, a uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, and a uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Destroying the Natanz facility, in particular, they note, "is critical to impeding 's progress toward nuclearization."

• Ordnance: To damage all three facilities with reasonable confidence requires — given their size, their being underground, the weapons available to the Israeli forces, and other factors — twenty-four 5,000-lb. weapons and twenty-four 2,000-lb. weapons.

• Platforms: Noting the "odd amalgamation of technologies" available to the ians and the limitations of their fighter planes and ground defenses to stand up to the high-tech Israeli air force, Ms. Raas and Mr. Long calculate that the IDF needs a relatively small strike package of 25 F–15Is and 25 F–16Is.

• Routes: Israeli jets can reach their targets via three paths: Turkey to the north, Jordan and Iraq in the middle, or Saudi Arabia to the south. In terms of fuel and cargo, the distances in all three cases are manageable.

• Defense forces: Rather than predict the outcome of an Israeli-ian confrontation, the authors calculate how many Israeli planes would have to reach their three targets for the operation to succeed. They figure 24 planes must reach Natanz, six to Isfahan, and five to Arak, or 35 altogether. Turned around, that means the ian defenders minimally must stop 16 of 50 planes, or one-third of the strike force. The authors consider this attrition rate "considerable" for Natanz and "almost unimaginable" for the other two targets.

Osirak Redux is available here in PDF format.

Raas and Long conclude that the Israeli Air Force possesses the technical capability to carry out an attack to destroy even well-hardened targets in with some degree of confidence. That leaves the question as to whether Israel, unlike the U.S., has the political will to do it.

Comments

[Matt]

Do they have the political will to do it? Seriously? The question is whether they have the will to survive. They have proven time and again that they have the will--and the skill--to do so. When everyone else abandons them, Israel will ensure its survival alone, as it always has.