War over Iran's nuclear plans: There must be another way out

The rationale for the war has never been unclear. Iran has developed a nuclear programme that it says is for peaceful purposes and power generation. However, it is known that any country with a well-developed peaceful nuclear programme has a degree of “breakout capacity”, the ability to quickly build a nuclear weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that medium-level uranium enrichment has begun at the Fordo plant near the Holy city of Qom, north of Tehran. It also says that new evidence suggests that Iran is secretly working to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Israel is a country that lives in perpetual existential fear for its security. That fear cannot be lessened when the leadership of Iran says things like there is no raison d’etre for an Israeli state, and that the Holocaust never happened. Israel is known for its track record of pre-emptive strikes against nuclear targets in the region. In 1981, it bombed the Osirak reactor near Baghdad, Iraq; in 2007, it attacked a facility in Syria that it believed was intended to be a nuclear reactor.

However, Iran, unlike Iraq and Syria, presents a much more challenging military question. This week, it was disclosed that a US classified war simulation – the “Internal Look” – concluded that an Israeli attack on Iran would lead to a wider regional war, and would prove perilous not only for Israel, but for the United Sates and the rest of the world.

For Israel, the military challenges in such an attack are quite daunting.

First, the distance. The potential targets in Iran are 1,500 kilometres to 1,800 kilometres from Israeli bases. For the operations to work, long-range aircraft are needed, and air-to air refuelling would be critical. Israel has three options in terms of routing, none of which is danger-free. Israel has long-range aircraft that can be topped up with fuel en route, but the tank capacity and the availability of tanker aircraft is still limited.

Second, the nature of targets. The two main choke points in the Iranian nuclear programme are the enrichment facilities at Natanz, south of Tehran, and Fordo. Both facilities are underground. Fordo is buried deep in the side of a mountain. For an Israeli air strike to be effective, it would need good intelligence information for precision, and special munitions. Israel possesses the US-supplied GBU-28 – a 2,268-kilogram laser-guided weapon with special penetrating warhead to take out underground targets – but it has limited supporting assets. The F-15l plane that is the platform for the GBU-28 can carry only one bomb, and therefore a sizable attack force would be required, and would have to fight its way in and out of heavily-contested airspace.  

In addition to the two targets, Israel may choose to strike at the heavy-water production plant in western Iran or the uranium conversion facility at Isfahan, about 340 kilometres south of Tehran. Both are in populated areas. The multiplicity of targets and their nature suggest that Israel may have to use a combination of weapons. Over the years, Israel has developed its own military technology that could be deployed, and it may also add a naval dimension to the equation to further obfuscate the coordination of its attack. Besides, the element of surprise that works in favour of Israel is not the case here.

Iran has already declared that, in the event of an attack by Israel or the US, it would respond in kind. But just what could it do to strike back?

Iran is no match for Israel in terms of military assets. Its missile arsenal is antiquated; only few of its ballistic missiles could reach Israel, and they are not known to be very accurate. Given that fact, experts concur that Iran is more likely to respond against Israel “asymmetrically, and through proxies”. The Shia Islamist group Hezbollah has more than 10,000 rocket launchers and scud missiles in southern Lebanon that could hit all of Israel. The Palestinian Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, could also attack Israel with shorter-range rockets. An extensive conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, and Israel and Hamas, would worsen the instability in the Middle East and could spark a much broader regional confrontation, and eventually drag the US into the fray.

The Iranian navy could lay mines to close off the Strait of Hormuz – a vital oil artery – and send the oil price to over US$200 a barrel. Terror attacks may also be used. Already, both Israel and Iran have engaged in a clandestine war as evidenced by the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and the attempted attacks on Israelis in India, Georgia and Thailand.

Iran faces another quandary. As a proud people (and they have every reason to be, with Persian history and civilisation dating back more than 5,000 years), Iranians would face humiliation if they responded weakly. However, they do not want to do anything that could invite massive reprisals from the world’s mightiest military power, the United States.  

Iran feels that it has been bullied enough by the West. The multiple sanctions have severely hurt the ordinary people. Its internal politics in recent years have been volatile, with a deepened power rivalry not only between the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and the Islamic democratic movements, but between the “Path of Imam” coalition and the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its massive military and commercial interests. These rifts add to the uncertainty over any responsive measures to be taken by Iran, and thus constitute a very perilous environment. 

Israel is a country that possesses as many as 400 nuclear warheads, and believes that it has a “sovereign right” to launch a pre-emptive attack in self-defence. Iran feels that if countries like Pakistan and North Korea are allowed to have nuclear weapons, it should too (that is, if it’s building one), as a deterrent. Both can justify their respective positions, and both could inflict a cataclysm of unimaginable proportions on each other and the world.

In her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam, Barbara Tuchman argues very convincingly that government leaders tend to carry out war policies that are contrary to the interests of the people despite the availability of feasible alternatives. The dire ramifications of an Israel-Iran war should be a call to all the leaders of the world to heed the fact that there must be another way.