I have to agree:
Those in Europe or the Obama administration who advocate suspension say waving ‘preconditions’ shows our flexibility and incentives can bring Iran to the table. But, this process literally has been going on since Klaus Kinkel’s critical dialogue in 1992. During this time, Iran has not made a single concession. The European have made several. So too has Washington. Iran looks at the long-term; we can’t simply restart the clock every time a new administration takes office in Washington, Berlin, Paris, or London.
Obama’s aides are smart. They know the consequence of their actions. It’s hard not to conclude that they have made a policy decision to allow the Islamic Republic of Iran to become a nuclear weapons-capable state.
It is indeed. I guess the plan is to leave it up to Israel (who of course they will condemn after they solve the problem).
Well, Israel has bought their F-16Is with conformal tanks for some reason. The combat radius in those planes should probably allow them to reach Natanz. If it doesn’t, there’s always the F-15Is I guess. What do they Iranians have? Salvaged F-14s? Illusory S-300s?
You also ignored sub launched cruise missiles (the Israelis have several flavors) and Jericho ballistic missiles, all of which can reach the appropriate targets in Iran quite easily
I wouldn’t count on Israel saving the day. The window of opportunity is going away. Iran has buried most of its nuclear sites pretty well. And they are no doubt upgrading their air defense to deal with the tactics that Israel used when hitting Syria. Even if Israel does successfully strike, I doubt it’ll set back the Iranian program enough to warrant the effort.
Karl, there is the other option. It’s a little difficult for the leadership of a country to issue strike orders, when said leadership is part of a rapidly expanding cloud of highly ionised plasma. And frankly, I think the Israelis are capable of just that, if their survival is at stake – which it will be, if Iran gets nukes.
Let’s hope that in such a case they decide to strike at the focus of the infection as well. Three more targets would do; two in Saudi, one in Iran.
Fletcher, the problem with nuking the leadership of Iran (leaving aside for a moment the catastrophic political fallout – forgive the pun – from such actions) is that it is almost impossible to find them at any given time. I suspect that the Iranians, once having acquired a nuclear capability, will have sufficient presence of mind to keep the leardership with necessary privileges to order the use of the nukes dispersed or in some large population center (Tehran, for instance) which would make an Israeli nuclear strike problematic at best. With that said, even the famous Israeli intelligence services might be somewhat taxed identifying the location of anyone in the chain of command on a realtime basis…
Karl, I agree with you that we shouldn’t expect the Israelis to pull our chestnuts out of the fire if we decline to act ourselves, but if the Israelis do choose to act, the practical challenges are far less significant than you suggest. Iranian air defenses are unlikely to be superior to those used in Syria (the radars and fire control are very similar, it is the missiles and launchers that differ the most between the system that the Syrians have and the ones that the Iranians are trying to upgrade to), and the Israelis were able to cope with Syrians with little trouble. Yes, the Iranians will no doubt do their best using the information from the Syrian incident, but they lack the necessary technicians (religious dictatorships don’t typically encourage that sort of skill set, and the Iranians are notorious for preferring piety to competence), and they don’t have a very clear idea of just what the Israelis did in the first place. As for the issues of the buried sites, remember that all that equipment and all those people require power and air, not to mention temperature control, and all of these require relatively vulnerable surface installations (vents, exhausts, power lines/stations, etc.) that can be easily hit. The Israelis also have a VERY wide array of pentrator bombs (many from us, some from their own developers), and quite a bit of practice using them. The Jerichos are designed to knock out buried installations, and the SLCMs that they have can easily be adapted to that purpose. Finally, Reactors and reprocessing plants are simply too large and too hot to be buried, and thus quite vulnerable to an air strike.
None of this would be a cakewalk, but it is all quite doable, particularly if the Israelis feel (correctly or not) that they have no alternative. The real question is are they willing to pay the political price for their actions…given the alternative, I suspect that they will, though Karl correctly points out that we would be fools to presume that they will do this simply as a matter of course…