August 12th, 2010
The blogosphere is abuzz with Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest article in The Atlantic, entitled “The Point of No Return.” The link from the homepage is more direct: “Israel Is Getting Ready to Bomb Iran: How, why—and what it means.” Let’s all take a deep breath.
Consider the title: “the point of no return.” Israeli officials have used this ambiguous term since at least as early as January 2005 to describe the point by which Iran could produce a nuclear bomb. The problem is their estimate of this date keeps getting pushed back: first it was before 2006, then sometime between 2007-2009, then before the end of 2008, then by early 2010. Similar predictions were made in 2006, 2007, and 2008 that the US would bomb Iran before President Bush left office. Now, the fact that these forecasts proved inaccurate does not by itself invalidate Goldberg’s piece, but it certainly warrants a skeptical outlook.
Based off the Atlantic homepage’s headline, there are three questions Goldberg’s piece answers: how Israel will attack, why Israel will attack, and what the attack will mean. He answers the latter two superbly, both in laying out the situation from the perspective of Israeli leaders and the special burden of responsibility they bear for protecting the Israeli state, and in explaining what would likely occur as a result of an Israeli strike. Unfortunately, the “how?” question is the critical one — and there Goldberg offers strikingly little: ((Successive Israeli prime ministers have ordered their military tacticians to draw up plans for a strike on Iran, and the Israeli air force has, of course, complied. It is impossible to know for sure how the Israelis might carry out such an operation, but knowledgeable officials in both Washington and Tel Aviv shared certain assumptions with me. The first is that Israel would get only one try. Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation. These planes would have to return home quickly, in part because Israeli intelligence believes that Iran would immediately order Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israeli cities, and Israeli air-force resources would be needed to hunt Hezbollah rocket teams))
There are a number of issues with this analysis. First, without knowing who these “knowledgeable officials” are, we have no way of verifying whether they are, in fact, knowledgeable. Second, the notion that Israel has “one try” is nothing new, as Anthony Cordesman explained in The Wall Street Journal nearly a year ago, dovetailing research produced by him and others years earlier. Third, there is no way that a hundred Israeli jets could land and refuel in the Saudi desert without Saudi support because that would require an actual airbase. (Rumors of a “secret” airbase being constructed in the Saudi desert are highly questionable, seeing as the location of said base isn’t much closer to Iran than Israel is itself.) Refueling mid-air over Saudi territory without Saudi support is a logistical nightmare compounded by the fact that Riyadh would be hard-pressed to plausibly deny involvement unless it actively defended its airspace. Fourth, speculation of secret Saudi cooperation surfaced last year and was regurgitated earlier this year, and without further details is hardly more likely today. If such a secret plan existed, one would wonder what the Saudi royals thought about Israeli officials telling American journalists all about it. Finally, while Goldberg reports that US forces have been ordered not to shoot down Israeli planes in the event of a strike, we should note that there are ways of forcing planes laden with ordnance and extra fuel to abort a mission besides shooting them down. The bit about Hezbollah is spot on, though.
In sum, this is a good article in terms of explaining Israel’s thinking about its situation and what occurs in the region if a strike is launched, but it does little in terms of explaining how such a strike comes about without American support — and if Washington decides to act, why bother acting with Israel
The blogosphere is abuzz with Jeffrey Goldberg’s latest article in The Atlantic, entitled “The Point of No Return.” The link from the homepage is more direct: “Israel Is Getting Ready to Bomb Iran: How, why—and what it means.” Let’s all take a deep breath.
Consider the title: “the point of no return.” Israeli officials have used this ambiguous term since at least as early as January 2005 to describe the point by which Iran could produce a nuclear bomb. The problem is their estimate of this date keeps getting pushed back: first it was before 2006, then sometime between 2007-2009, then before the end of 2008, then by early 2010. Similar predictions were made in 2006, 2007, and 2008 that the US would bomb Iran before President Bush left office. Now, the fact that these forecasts proved inaccurate does not by itself invalidate Goldberg’s piece, but it certainly warrants a skeptical outlook.
Based off the Atlantic homepage’s headline, there are three questions Goldberg’s piece answers: how Israel will attack, why Israel will attack, and what the attack will mean. He answers the latter two superbly, both in laying out the situation from the perspective of Israeli leaders and the special burden of responsibility they bear for protecting the Israeli state, and in explaining what would likely occur as a result of an Israeli strike. Unfortunately, the “how?” question is the critical one — and there Goldberg offers strikingly little: ((Successive Israeli prime ministers have ordered their military tacticians to draw up plans for a strike on Iran, and the Israeli air force has, of course, complied. It is impossible to know for sure how the Israelis might carry out such an operation, but knowledgeable officials in both Washington and Tel Aviv shared certain assumptions with me. The first is that Israel would get only one try. Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation. These planes would have to return home quickly, in part because Israeli intelligence believes that Iran would immediately order Hezbollah to fire rockets at Israeli cities, and Israeli air-force resources would be needed to hunt Hezbollah rocket teams))
There are a number of issues with this analysis. First, without knowing who these “knowledgeable officials” are, we have no way of verifying whether they are, in fact, knowledgeable. Second, the notion that Israel has “one try” is nothing new, as Anthony Cordesman explained in The Wall Street Journal nearly a year ago, dovetailing research produced by him and others years earlier. Third, there is no way that a hundred Israeli jets could land and refuel in the Saudi desert without Saudi support because that would require an actual airbase. (Rumors of a “secret” airbase being constructed in the Saudi desert are highly questionable, seeing as the location of said base isn’t much closer to Iran than Israel is itself.) Refueling mid-air over Saudi territory without Saudi support is a logistical nightmare compounded by the fact that Riyadh would be hard-pressed to plausibly deny involvement unless it actively defended its airspace. Fourth, speculation of secret Saudi cooperation surfaced last year and was regurgitated earlier this year, and without further details is hardly more likely today. If such a secret plan existed, one would wonder what the Saudi royals thought about Israeli officials telling American journalists all about it. Finally, while Goldberg reports that US forces have been ordered not to shoot down Israeli planes in the event of a strike, we should note that there are ways of forcing planes laden with ordnance and extra fuel to abort a mission besides shooting them down. The bit about Hezbollah is spot on, though.
In sum, this is a good article in terms of explaining Israel’s thinking about its situation and what occurs in the region if a strike is launched, but it does little in terms of explaining how such a strike comes about without American support — and if Washington decides to act, why bother acting with Israel
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