We think we know Israel can't attack Iran with any hope of degrading Iran's nuclear program:
The result is that, at a time of escalating public debate in both the United States and Israel around the possibility of an armed strike on Iran, high-level Pentagon war planners have had to "fly blind" in sketching out what Israel might do -- and the challenges its actions will pose for the U.S. military. "What we do is a kind of reverse engineering," the senior planner said. "We take a look at their [Israeli] assets and capabilities, put ourselves in their shoes and ask how we would act if we had what they have. So while we're guessing, we have a pretty good idea of what they can and can't do." ...
But it's not clear that Israel, even with its vaunted military, can pull off a successful strike: Netanyahu may not simply want the United States on board politically; he may need the United States to join militarily. "All this stuff about 'red lines' and deadlines is just Israel's way of trying to get us to say that when they start shooting, we'll start shooting," retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman told me. "Bottom line? We can do this and they can't, because we have what the Israelis don't have," retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner said.
If we can reverse engineer how Israel would try, why wouldn't Israel just tell us? It could be that the Israelis can't do the job. But since the question of Iran's nuclear program has been a matter of higher concern for about a decade now, you'd have to accept that the Israelis have not spent the last decade getting the capabilities to strike Iran. It has certainly been clear since 2006 that we aren't going to attack (Bush would have been impeached and Obama doesn't have it in him).
And I have to disagree with what the colonel says about Israel lacking what we have. The crucial difference is that Israel has what we don't--the worry that they're a one-bomb state and that Iran gets that bomb.
Back to the reverse-engineering claim. I have to disagree again. We look at Israel's capabilities and we can reverse engineer what Israel would do if Americans were in charge of planning the operation.
The idea that a commando raid is the height of thinking outside the box is ludicrous. With our resource-rich way of waging war, we have no idea how Israelis might truly think outside the box. We actually think that putting 400 troops on the ground in Iran isn't right inside the box of big operations. Shoot, there's a book about that operation--written in 1991. It was pretty good.
I think Israel can reach Iran. If Iran threatens to cross whatever red line Israel thinks puts Iran out of reach, they'll act.
And given how long Iran has been attacking America and killing Americans, from the Embassy Crisis over thirty years ago, to the Beirut barracks bombing, to the Persian Gulf, to Iraq, and even today in Afghanistan, I'd hope our military would be a little more focused on what we will do to Iran if they dare attack us rather than pretending the Israelis are the bad guys in this drama.
Maybe the Israelis would share more about their plans with us if they thought we could be trusted to treat the secret as if Israel's life depended on it rather than President Obama's second term.
