Israel-Iran: Attack or feint
By Dominic Moran for ISN
According to reports, over 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s took part in a major training operation over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece earlier this month, purportedly practicing maneuvers and refueling procedures crucial to a possible attack on Iran.
Support helicopters and refueling aircraft external pagereportedly flew around 1,500km - roughly the distance between Israel and Iran's primary uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.
Dr Ephraim Kam from Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies told ISN Security Watch there had been no official confirmation of the training operation from Israel. "There was a denial, so if it took place it seems that the idea was to carry out such an exercise as part of the preparations to enhance the military option against Iranian nuclear sites," he said.
An Israeli strike is fraught with potential pitfalls and by no means guaranteed of striking a major blow to the Iranian nuclear program, which would likely require multiple raids and risk a major military escalation. (See US, Iran: Empty threats, by Kamal Nazer Yasin for ISN Security Watch.).
Any attack would also impact deleteriously on Israel's improved position vis-à-vis western nations, the University of Haifa's Dr Soli Shahvar told ISN Security Watch.
Referring to Iran, Kam said, "They have better air defenses than they had before, though the more sophisticated system [S-300] is probably not operational. […] Russia did supply Iran with a new, much better system [29 Tor M-1 systems]."
Russian officials relate that the S-300 surface-to-air missile is capable of intercepting aircraft at up to 27,000m and at an operating distance of 145km and believe it is superior to the Israeli-deployed US Patriot. Israeli defense analysts have confirmed that Iranian receipt of the system would make it far more difficult for the Israeli air force to attack Iranian targets. Russian supply of the system is far from assured.
Referring to September's Israeli strike on a site in northern Syria, Shahvar said, "Maybe [Israel] was trying to sense what the world's reaction would be to an attack on a nuclear facility."
This month's exercise appeared intended as a thinly-veiled threat to Iran to acquiesce to the P5 plus one (UN Security Council permanent members and Germany) offer of an improved incentives package, subsequently proffered by EU foreign policy head Javier Solana on 14 June.
The improved package offers civil nuclear support, including binding nuclear fuel supply guarantees, joint R&D work and aid with building a light-water reactor in return for an Iranian agreement to halting uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.
Iran has yet to respond but appears unlikely to agree given recent advances in indigenous centrifuge fabrication and its stated plans for the expansion of cascades at Natanz from 3,000 to up to 9,000 centrifuges.
Revolutionary Guards commander General Mohammad Ali Jaafari warned last Saturday that Iran would respond to any US or Israeli attack by launching a barrage of missiles against Israel and moving to control the strategically crucial Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf.
A previous US Navy projection warned that Iranian naval forces, utilizing small craft, would succeed in inflicting major losses on US-led naval forces patrolling the Gulf in the event of hostilities.
Reassessment
A controversial December external pageUS National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) argued that Iran likely suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003, providing greater impetus to ongoing diplomatic efforts while undermining the argument for military strikes.
However, the report has been progressively undercut in the months since its publication, Kam argues: "There is a tendency to lower the profile of this assessment. The latest [US] assessment […] did not deny the former assessment but it did represent the issue in a different way closer to the Israeli assessment." Israel believes that Iran has an ongoing nuclear weapons program.
In a May external pagereport the IAEA said that Iran still owed the UN nuclear watchdog significant explanations concerning possible nuclear weapons research, citing a distinct lack of Iranian cooperation on the issue.
With the diplomatic impact of the December NIE waning, the US has gained greater traction for its calls for strengthened sanctions against Iran, resulting in a series of unilateral moves by western European powers, the slight extension of UN sanctions in March and imposition of moderate punitive measures by the EU in April.
Nonetheless, with oil prices high and several European countries actually experiencing a strengthening of economic ties with Iran, there appears little willingness to consider moves to effectively isolate the Islamic Republic.
Flawed strategy
Recognizing the limited prospects of the current carrot and stick approach, US President George W Bush appears set on extending support for Iranian opposition movements.
Citing anonymous sources, New Yorker columnist Seymour Hersh external pagereveals that the Bush administration won greatly increased funding for US espionage efforts through a late 2007 Presidential Finding known to congressional and intelligence sector leaders. The funding boost comes amidst a significant expansion in the "scale and scope" of espionage and special operations activities in Iran, he argues.
Bush was seeking up to US$400 million targeted specifically at providing increased intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program and fomenting regime change, the article claims.
Referring to US efforts to build up the Iranian opposition, Kam said, "Personally I am doubtful as to whether this attempt will be successful. I believe that eventually the Iranian regime might change […] but [this] will be the outcome of internal domestic developments, not of external American efforts."
The purported funding boost came in the same period as the December NIE and appeared to signal a shift in focus that, while indicating a lack of faith in diplomatic efforts on the Iranian nuclear issue, may also signal a desire to placate fractious hawks angered at the diminution of the military option.
Providing support for opponents of the Tehran government - armed or otherwise - appears both problematic and a losing bet. The Kurdish Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) is believed to have close ties to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and there is little evidence that Ahwazi Arab separatist movements in the southwestern Khuzestan province - mentioned as a potential funding recipient in Hersh's article - are capable of providing a significant challenge to the Tehran authorities.
Some analysts have criticized alleged US support for the Iranian Baluchi Jundallah militant movement as a proxy force as shocking given the group's rumored ties to al-Qaida.
Mitigating factors
The focus on covert actions on both sides is both a function of the diplomatic impasse between Iran and the US and of the dangers posed to world oil markets and wider regional security by a direct military confrontation.
Iran would likely respond to an Israeli or US attack through missile strikes on Israel's Dimona reactor and population centers, Shahvar said. "If there were hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of Israelis dead the reaction [could] be nuclear." He said, adding that he fears for the safety of Jews in Arab countries and Iran in the event of a major escalation.
Israeli leaders have refused to rule out a military strike but have bigger fish to fry at the moment in the form of ongoing coalition ructions and multiple negotiation tracks, despite their ongoing rhetorical commitment to the cessation of the Iranian program.
The seemingly successful negotiations with Hizbollah on a prisoner swap demonstrate the degree to which regional and cross-border tensions have eased since the May Lebanese political pact and are a clear indicator that Iran is not standing in the way of Hizbollah's pursuit of its own priorities vis-à-vis Israel.
The current calm on the Lebanese-Israeli border suits both Hizbollah and the Israeli government, which was severely undermined by the 2006 Lebanon conflict, and would be threatened by an Israeli strike on Iran.
A resort to military force also threatens profound global economic destabilization. A recent external pagestatement by former Israeli chief of staff and current prime ministerial leadership contender Shaul Mofaz, decrying sanctions as ineffective and calling an attack on Iran "unavoidable," precipitated an immediate spike in oil prices.
With Bush, US Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials going cap in hand to Saudi Arabia seeking a significant increase in oil output, the strictures of domestic US pressures heading into the November presidential and congressional elections also militate against the exercise of the military option, which would likely severely undermine improvements in the security situation in Iraq.
There have been minor but symbolically important efforts that could establish the basis for a broader future dialogue with Iran, with stop-start talks between the US and Iran over Iraq reconstruction and the US signing on to the June incentives package.
A significant easing of tensions concerning the nuclear issue will be crucial to any future process that recognizes Iran's NPT-mandated right to civil nuclear development while prevent the militarization of Tehran's atomic program.
Importantly, the P5 plus one package, explicitly eschews the resort to force or threat of the same toward any UN member state in solving the Iranian nuclear crisis while linking the resolution of the same to efforts to free the Middle East of nuclear weapons and other WMDs - effectively providing an opening for the diplomatic politicization of Israel's nuclear program.
Ultimately leverage is required and will be difficult to achieve; of necessity, will be primarily economic in character; and cannot be effectively achieved without the full involvement of Iran's regional rivals and the US.
With its lack of oil refining capacity and growing domestic inflationary pressures, a broader economic aid package coupled with a commitment to joint development on the part of Gulf states, while unlikely in the short term, may ultimately bring Iranian concessions where bluster, threat postures and moves to isolate the Islamic Republic have failed.
Meanwhile, an Israeli strike appears unlikely in the interim, Kam noted:
"The Israeli government prefers political efforts because they are not risky and as long as there is a chance that these political efforts will succeed I think that it will postpone any military operation - which is also true with regard to the American administration."