How the U.S. military thinks Israel
might strike Iran.
BY MARK PERRY | SEPTEMBER 27, 2012
While no one in the Barack Obama administration knows
whether Israel will strike Iran's nuclear program, America's war planners are preparing for a wide
array of potential Israeli military options -- while also trying to limit the
chances of the United States
being drawn into a potentially bloody conflict in the Persian
Gulf.
"U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing on Iran has been extraordinary and
unprecedented," a senior Pentagon war planner told me. "But when it
comes to actually attacking Iran,
what Israel
won't tell us is what they plan to do, or how they plan to do it. It's their
most closely guarded secret." Israel's refusal to share its plans
has persisted despite repeated requests from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, a
senior Pentagon civilian said.
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."
According to several high-level U.S. military and civilian intelligence
sources, U.S. Central Command and Pentagon war planners have concluded that
there are at least three possible Israeli attack options, including a daring
and extremely risky special operations raid on Iran's nuclear facility at
Fordow -- an "Iranian Entebbe" they call it, after Israel's 1976
commando rescue of Israeli hostages held in Uganda. In that scenario, Israeli
commandos would storm the complex, which houses many of Iran's centrifuges;
remove as much enriched uranium as they found or could carry; and plant
explosives to destroy the facility on their way out.
Centcom, which oversees U.S.
military assets in the Middle East, has been given the lead U.S. role in studying the possible
Israeli strike. Over the past year its officers have met several times at
Centcom headquarters in Tampa, Florida,
and with Fifth Fleet naval officers in Doha,
Qatar, to
discuss their conclusions, the sources say.
The military analysis of Israeli war plans has been taking place separate
from -- but concurrent with
-- the controversy surrounding Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
insistence that the United
States present Tehran with
a "red line," which, if crossed by Iran's
nuclear program, would trigger a U.S. military strike. "That's
a political question, not a war question," the senior Pentagon war planner
said. "It's not in our lane. We're assuming that an Israeli attack could
come at any time."
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.
One thing is clear: the U.S.
military, according to my sources, currently has no interest in a preventive
strike. "The idea that we'll attack with Israel is remote, so you can take
that off your list of options," former Centcom commander Joe Hoar told me.
Nor will the United States
join an Israeli attack once it starts, the senior U.S. planner said. "We know
there are senior Iranians egging for a fight with us, particularly in their
Navy," a retired Centcom officer added. "And we'll give them one if
they want one, but we're not going to go piling in simply because the Israelis
want us to."
That puts the military shoulder to shoulder with the president. Obama and
the military may have clashed on other issues, like the Afghan surge, but when
it comes to Iran, they are
speaking with one voice: They don't want Iran
to get a nuclear weapon, they don't want Israel
to start a war over it, and they don't believe an Israeli attack should
automatically trigger U.S.
intervention. But, if they are to avoid becoming part of Israel's plans, they first need to
know what those plans are.
Three high-level U.S.
military and intelligence sources have told me that Centcom has identified
three options for Israel
should it decide to take preventive military action against Iran.
The first and most predictable option calls for a massed Israeli Air Force
bombing campaign targeting key Iranian nuclear sites. Such an assault would be
coupled with strikes from submarine-launched cruise missiles and Israeli-based
medium-range Jericho II and long-range Jericho III missiles, according to a
highly placed U.S.
military officer. The attack may well be preceded by -- or coupled with -- a
coordinated cyber and electronic warfare attack.
But planners for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Centcom have concluded that,
because of limits to Israel's
military capabilities, such an aerial campaign could not be sustained.
"They'll have one shot, one time," the U.S. military officer said.
"That's one time out and one time back. And that's it."
While Israel has 125
sophisticated F15I and F16I fighter-bombers, only the roughly 25 F15Is are
capable of carrying the bunker-busting GBU-28 guided missile, which has the
best chance of destroying Iran's
heavily fortified nuclear installations. And even then, each F15I can only
carry a single munition.
This force, while lethal, is also modest. The Israeli Air Force would likely
have to carefully pick and choose its targets, settling most probably on four:
the heavy-water production plant at Arak, the
uranium-enrichment centers at Fordow and Natanz, and the uranium-conversion
facility at Isfahan,
while leaving out the military site at Parchin and the nuclear reactor at
Bushehr, which houses Russian technical experts.
The Israeli attack would also likely include the F16Is to knock down Iran's
air defense network, or perhaps drop other, less effective, bunker-busting
munitions to reinforce the F15I sortie. Some of these F16Is, but not all of
them, would be able to refuel from Israel's seven to ten KC-707
tankers.
Even with that, and even with the best of luck (good weather, accurate
targeting, sophisticated refueling, near total surprise, precise air-to-air
interdiction, a minimum of accidents, and the successful destruction of Iran's
anti-aircraft capabilities), senior U.S. military officers say that Israel
would only set back Iran's nuclear capability by one to two years at best --
not end it.
Which could be why Netanyahu is so anxious for the Obama administration to
say when or if it would join an attack. As Hoar, the former Centcom commander,
bluntly put it: "Compared to the United
States, Israel
doesn't
have a military."
Included in the U.S.
arsenal is the recently developed Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the GBU-57,
which can punch through 200 feet of hardened concrete before detonating its 5,300-pound
warhead. The United States,
which recently developed the GBU-57, is rumored to have only about 20 in its
inventory -- but the Israelis have zero. "There's a good reason for
that," Gardiner said. "Only a B-2 bomber can carry the 57." He
paused for effect: "You might know this, but it's worth mentioning,"
he said. "Israel
doesn't
have any B-2s."
Israel's likely inability
to destroy Iran's nuclear
capacity in a single stroke, even in a best-case scenario, has led U.S.
war planners to speculate about a second, out-of-the-box, and extremely
dangerous military option: what they're calling an "Iranian Entebbe."
In this scenario, the Israelis would forego a massed air attack and instead
mount a high-risk but high-payoff commando raid that would land an elite
Sayeret Matkal (special forces) unit outside of Iran's
enrichment facility at Fordow, near Qom.
The unit -- or other elite units like it -- consisting of perhaps as many as
400 soldiers, would seize Iran's
enriched uranium for transport to Israel.
The operation's success would depend on speed, secrecy, simplicity, and the
credibility of Israeli intelligence. According to the Pentagon war planner, Israel's access to intelligence on Iranian
military and policy planning is unprecedented, as is their willingness to share
it with U.S.
intelligence officials.
The Israeli unit would be transported on as few as three and perhaps as many
as six C-130 aircraft (which can carry a maximum of 70 troops) that would be
protected by a "swarm" of well-armed F16Is, according to the scenario
being considered by U.S.
military officers. The C-130s would land in the desert near Fordow. The Israeli
commandos would then defeat the heavily armed security personnel at the
complex, penetrate its barriers and interdict any enemy units nearby, and seize
the complex's uranium for transport back to Israel. Prior to its departure, the
commando unit would destroy the complex, obviating the need for any high-level
bombing attack. (Senior U.S.
military officers say that there are reports that some of the uranium at Fordow
is stored as uranium hexafluoride gas, a chemical form used during the
enrichment process. In that case, the material may be left in place when the
commandos destroy the complex.)
"It's doable, and they have to be thinking along these lines," the
highly placed U.S.
military officer said. "The IDF's special forces are the best asset Israel
has." That said, "In some scenarios," the U.S. military
planner who told me of the potential
operation said, "there would
be very high Israeli casualties because of nearby Republican Guard [sic]
divisions. This operation could be quite bloody."
Bloody or not, the Israeli leadership may not be quick to dismiss such an
operation, given Israel's
history of using such units. Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are
former Sayeret Matkal officers, and recently Israeli Defense Forces head Benny
Gantz (himself a Sayeret Matkal veteran)
said the IDF had formed an elite special operations
"Deep Corps" to strike far inside hostile territory. And, of course,
it bears remembering that Netanyahu's brother Yonatan was the sole casualty in Israel's Entebbe
operation.
The difficulty with the Entebbe-style option is that Israel would be forced to mount
"a robust CSAR [combat search and rescue] capability" to support it,
a senior JCS planner noted.
That would mean landing other C-130s
carrying helicopters that could pick up endangered commandos or retrieve downed
aircraft crews. Such CSAR units would have to be deployed to nearby countries,
"or even land in the Iraqi desert," this senior officer said.
This
CSAR component complicates what might otherwise be a straightforward operation,
as it involves other vulnerabilities -- an "escalatory ladder" that Israel
may not want to climb.
Skeptics of this option include Admiral Inman. "The Israelis could get
to Entebbe," he said, "but they can't
get to Iran.
My sense is that the fact that the Israelis are even thinking about this
operation shows that they realize that their first, bombing option won't work.
They're desperately grasping for a military solution, and they know they don't
have one."
But Colonel Gardiner believes this Entebbe-style operation is possible.
"It's a non-escalatory option, it's entirely doable, and it's not as
dangerous as it seems," he said. "We have to understand what Israel's goal is in any attack on Iran. The whole
point for Israel
is to show that they can they can project power anywhere in the region. So
let's take a look at this from their perspective. There aren't three divisions
near Fordow, there's one, and it's dug in. It wouldn't take the Iranians three
hours to respond, it would take them three days. This reminds me of Osirak [the
Iraqi nuclear reactor that Israel
destroyed in a 1981 airstrike]. The last ones who wanted to admit that the
Israelis did that were the Iraqis. That'll be the case here. The Iranians will
be embarrassed. It has appeal. It makes sense. If it's simple, if it's done
fast, if it's in and out. It could work."
A third operation is less exotic, but perhaps most dangerous of all: regime
decapitation. "The Israelis could just take out the Iranian
leadership," the senior Pentagon war planner said. "But they would
only do that as a part of an air strike or a commando raid."
The
downside of a decapitation strike is that it would not end Iran's nuclear program; the upside is that it
would almost certainly trigger an Iranian response targeting U.S. military
assets in the region, as it would leave the Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces
in charge of the country. It would be the one sure way, U.S. officers with whom I spoke believe, for Israel to get the United
States involved in its anti-Iran offensive, with the U.S.
mounting operations in a conflict it didn't start.
How would the U.S.
military respond to an Iranian attack? "It depends," the Pentagon
planner said. "If the Iranians harass us, we can deal with it, but if they
go after one of our capital ships, then all bets are off." Even so, a U.S. response would not involve a full-scale,
costly land war against the Tehran
regime, but rather a long-term air interdiction campaign to erode Iranian
military capabilities, including its nuclear program,
the planner said.
But a decapitation campaign would deepen the rift between the Obama administration
and the Netanyahu government. The war talk in Jerusalem
has already eroded the views of many senior U.S.
military officers who were once strongly committed to Israel, but who now quietly resent Netanyahu's
attempt to pressure the United
States into a war that it doesn't want.
"Our commitment to Israel
has been as solid as with any ally we've ever had, and a lot of officers are
proud of that," Lt. General Robert Gard, a retired Army officer, said.
"But we've done it so that they can defend themselves. Not so they can
start World War III."
This U.S.
distaste for involvement in an Israeli strike has been percolating for some
time. In March, the
New York Times detailed a Centcom war game dubbed "Internal
Look," in which the United
States was "pulled into" a
regional conflict in the wake of an Israeli attack. The results "were
particularly troubling" to Gen. James Mattis, the Centcom commander. Among
its other conclusions, "Internal Look" found that Iranian retaliation
against U.S. military assets
could result in "hundreds of U.S.
deaths," probably as the result of an Iranian missile attack on a U.S. naval
vessel.
The simulation, as well as Iranian threats to close the Straits
of Hormuz, suggest why Mattis
requested that the White House approve the deployment of a
third aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf.
But while Mattis was worried about the Iranians, he was also worried about Israel,
whose saber-rattling he views with discomfort, his closest colleagues say.
"Internal Look" not only showed that the results of an Israeli attack
were unpredictable, as the
Times reported, but, according to a Pentagon
official, it also showed that the less warning the United States has of an
Israeli attack, the greater the number of casualties the United States will
suffer. "The more warning we have, the fewer American lives we'll
lose," a Pentagon civilian familiar with U.S. thinking on the issue told me.
"The less warning, the more deaths."
According to another senior Pentagon official, Obama and Gen. Martin Dempsey
"have discussed in detail" the likelihood of an Israeli attack. As
early as the autumn of 2011, when Dempsey became chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, Obama told him that the United States would "neither
help nor hinder" an Israeli strike, this official said. While Obama's
closely guarded formulation hasn't made it into the American press, his words
are common knowledge among Israeli officials and had appeared just six months
after Obama took office, in July 2009, in
a prominent editorial in the pro-Netanyahu daily
Israel
Hayom.
Obama, the editorial stated, "will try to have a dialogue with Iran"
while knowing that such an effort will probably not succeed. Obama "would
prefer that there be no Israeli attack but is unprepared to accept
responsibility for Israel's
security if he fails [in a diplomatic dialogue] and the U.S. prevents Israel from attacking," the
editorial added. "Thus it arises that while Israel
has no green light to attack Iran,
it does not have a red light either. The decision is Israel's. The U.S. will neither help nor hinder."
Nevertheless, the U.S.
military fears that Iran
will assume the United States
has approved an Israeli strike, even if it hasn't -- and will target U.S. military assets in the Persian
Gulf.
That may be why Dempsey told a roundtable of London reporters in
August that
he did not want to appear "complicit" in an
Israeli attack. The remark touched off speculation that the United States was softening its stance toward Tehran or pressuring Israel to back away from using
military force. In fact, nothing had changed: Dempsey was explicitly telling Iran that any Israeli attack would
not
have the approval or the help of the United States.
So while Israel waited
for Obama to explain or correct Dempsey's statement, no clarification was
forthcoming. "Dempsey knew exactly what he was saying," the highly
placed military officer said, "and he wouldn't have said it without White
House approval." After a moment, he added: "Everything the military
says has to be cleared, and I mean everything."
Those outside the U.S.
government who follow these issues closely agree. "The administration's
message has been remarkably consistent," U.S.-Iran expert and
author Trita Parsi said. "We always hear about how America
believes war is 'the last resort,' but in this case, President Obama really
means it."
Gard, the retired Army officer, agreed: "It's clear to me that
President Obama will do everything he can to stop Iran from getting a bomb," he
said. "But no president will allow another country to decide when to shed
American blood. Not even Israel."
Gard has a reputation as a military intellectual, has led several initiatives
of retired military officers on defense issues, and is a useful barometer of
serving officers' views on sensitive political controversies. "There is a
general disdain in our military for the idea of a preventive war," he
said, "which is what the Israelis call their proposed war on Iran."
George Little, the Pentagon spokesperson, provided this statement: "The
United States is prepared to
address the full range of contingencies related to potential security threats
in the Middle East. But it's flatly untrue --
and pure speculation -- to suggest that we have definitively ruled anything in
or out for scenarios that have not taken place. Meanwhile, the United States and Israel
are in complete agreement about the necessity of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear
weapon."
Still, according to a respected retired military officer who consults with
the Pentagon -- and who speaks regularly with senior Israeli military officers
-- Israel's political elite
is likely to be surprised by Obama and the U.S.
military's response should Israel
launch a preventive attack on Iranian nuclear sites. "If Israel starts a war," this retired officer
said, "America's
first option will be to stop it. To call for a ceasefire. And, by the way,
that's also our second and third option. We'll do everything we can to keep the
war from escalating. We'll have 72 hours to do that. After that, all bets are
off."
