Will Israel cross the red line of targeting Iran’s nuclear sites?

But as the war in the region this past year has repeatedly shown, such boundaries and limits have become increasingly meaningless.

Talk of a potential Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is a case in point.

Certainly there’s no shortage right now of hawkish analysts and commentators who think that this is the ideal moment for Israel to destroy the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme.

“The country’s breakout time to a bomb is down to one to two weeks,” claimed American political scientist and national security strategist Matthew Kroenig, writing in Foreign Policy magazine last week.

“Hamas and Hezbollah are in no position to retaliate. And the Islamic Republic just asked for it. In fact, this may be the last best chance to keep Tehran from the bomb,” Kroenig concluded, in a rather alarmist if not entirely inaccurate assessment.

His view is typical of the kind that has found traction in certain quarters of late, including in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) earlier this month.

“If there were ever cause to target Iran’s nuclear facilities, this is it… the question for American and Israeli leaders is: If not now, when?” the newspaper asked.

For the moment, though, the execution of such a direct attack is not a strategy favoured by US President Joe Biden. Asked last week whether he would support a strike on Iran’s nuclear sites by Israel, Biden was seemingly unequivocal in his response

“The answer is no,” he told journalists, adding that the US will be “discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do”.

The problem with Biden’s answer, however, as recent events in the region have starkly shown, is that Washington hasn’t exactly overexerted itself when it comes to reining in Israel on previous red-line issues in Gaza and Lebanon. And even if it did, evidence to date suggests that Israel would pay little or no heed.

US election

The Biden administration’s reluctance to use serious leverage on Netanyahu, is compounded by the fact that we are barely a few weeks out from a knife-edge US presidential election.

In short, the last thing the President wants is to upset some Jewish voters at home and scupper the chances of his potential Democratic Party successor Kamala Harris, while letting Donald Trump back into the White House.

For the current US administration these domestic electoral priorities are blurring the urgency of this arguably very consequential moment between Israel and Iran – but that doesn’t change its undeniable reality.

Ultimately, that reality as to whether or not Israel decides to strike Iran’s nuclear programme or other targets in response to recent missile attacks on the Jewish state will come down to Netanyahu and his government. That in itself, say some observers, should be cause for real concern.

To begin with, it’s not as if Israel hasn’t done so before.

The Stuxnet cyber-attacks in 2010, said to be codenamed “Operation Olympic Games”, saw what was allegedly a joint Israeli-US effort using a computer virus that temporarily halted Iran’s nuclear programme.

Assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists and sabotage bombings, such as the 2021 explosion that caused a power failure at the vast fuel-enrichment plant at Natanz built deep underground, are other examples of such efforts.

But such attacks have never succeeded in stopping Iran’s nuclear ambition indefinitely.

As an article complied by two researchers from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defence and security think tank recently highlighted, such indirect attacks “allowed Israel to repeatedly roll the clock back on Iran’s nuclear progress while maintaining some level of credible deniability and avoiding further military escalation”.

In doing so it has allowed both sides to largely remain within the “rules” established by Israel and Iran in conducting their “shadow war”, the RUSI experts concluded in their assessment published in the online Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

But events of the past year have moved that “shadow war” much more into the open and the stakes have never been higher for both sides and others caught up in the region and beyond.

So, are we perhaps on the brink of seeing a direct attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities of the kind that the Israeli military and security establishment has planned and rehearsed for over two decades now?

According to a recent analysis in The Economist magazine, at least twice in the past, in 2010 and 2011, Israel’s generals have been ordered by prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu to prepare for imminent strikes on Iran.

In both cases, however, the security chiefs questioned the legality of the order, given without the necessary cabinet authorisation, and Israel stepped back from going to war with Iran.

But today there is a very different mood in Israel’s corridors of power.

With a coalition government and cabinet laced with ultranationalist right-wing politicians itching for a showdown with Israel’s arch enemy, garnering political approval for a direct attack on Iran’s facilities these days is almost a given.

Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign rally at the Grand Sierra Resort on October 11, 2024 in Reno, Nevada

Momentum

ON the ground also, whether it be its erosion of Iran’s Hezbollah proxy in Lebanon or onslaught against Hamas in Gaza, some of Israel’s military chiefs sense they have momentum and now is the moment to deal a blow as Iran stands on the threshold of producing a nuclear weapons capacity.

Writing recently on social media, Naftali Bennett, a hardline Israeli nationalist and former prime minister who once described himself as to the right of Netanyahu, added his unequivocal voice to the chorus of hawks wanting to strike now.

“Israel has now its greatest opportunity in 50 years, to change the face of the Middle East,” insisted Bennett.

“We must act to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, its central energy facilities, and to fatally cripple this terrorist regime.”

Bennett added: “We have the justification. We have the tools. Now that Hezbollah and Hamas are paralysed, Iran stands exposed.”

But many analysts maintain that a direct strike on such targets would be a step too far. Hitting the likes of the Natanz enrichment facility, for example, would constitute an outright act of war by Israel.

And even if Israel took the decision to go ahead, such an operation is fraught with logistical challenges. To begin with there is the issue of distance. It is more than 1,000 miles from Israel to Iran’s main nuclear bases, and to reach them Israeli planes would have to cross the sovereign airspace of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and potentially Turkey.

Fuel, too, poses problems given that flying to the targets and back would take all of Israel’s aerial refuelling capability and leave little or no margin for error, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS).

Then there is the question of Iranian air defence. According to the CRS report, Israeli bombers would need to be protected by fighter jets. That would require a strike package totalling about 100 aircraft, according to the CRS report, equivalent to almost one-third of the Israeli air force’s 340 combat-capable aircraft.

Many of Iran’s nuclear facility sites are also dispersed around the country in heavily fortified locations deep underground including the biggest at Natanz and the second-biggest plant at Fordow.

Doing significant damage would require large numbers of bunker-busting bombs and missiles. As the recent strikes in Beirut that killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah showed, Israel does have such weapons but they are not necessarily powerful enough to destroy the more heavily protected Iranian nuclear facilities.

Military analysts say that the only conventional weapon capable of destroying such underground facilities is the giant precision-guided bomb GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) that can plough through 190 feet of earth before detonating, according to the US military.

Given that US help and supply of this weapon would not appear forthcoming for now, the question then is whether Israel itself has such capabilities. While never openly acknowledging it has its own nuclear capacity, it’s widely accepted that Israel does and therefore most likely would have the ability to produce the sort of bunker-buster bombs needed to destroy Iran’s underground enrichment plants.

But weaponry and operational capacity aside, it remains the geopolitical implications that will be at the forefront of any decision to carry out such strikes.

Natanz uranium enrichment facility is seen outside the city of Kashan, 186 miles (300 km) southeast of Tehran, Iran 

Missile bases

Some reports suggest that several Israeli security chiefs are counselling caution and would much prefer any strikes to focus on other targets such as Iran’s missile bases from where the recent attacks on Israel were launched.

Iran’s main ports, specifically the oil terminals, could also be a target, weakening an already shaky economy impacted by international sanctions.

But the US is wary of this given its potential effect on oil prices, especially with a presidential election looming.

Israel, of course, might also choose to go for Iran’s political leaders or senior military figures in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), with some analysts indicating that perhaps a repeat of the devastating pager bomb-type operation used to kill Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon might be deployed.

All of these are retaliatory options but the nuclear facilities strike is by far the most extreme, and one that would likely provoke an all-out war with Iran and throw the region ever deeper into chaos and uncharted political territory.

Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian has said he wants to re-engage with the west to resolve the nuclear standoff and secure sanctions relief to boost his country’s economy. But clearly any Israeli strike would almost certainly result in a total shift in Iran’s nuclear doctrine.

As RUSI analysts concluded in their recent assessment published in the online Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Tehran could well double down on its decision to build nuclear weapons in response to a limited Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities.

“Tehran may see the actual weaponisation of its nuclear programme as the only option left that can guarantee the security of the Iranian regime,” the analysts said.

As if to confirm that assessment, just last week a hardline Iranian MP was reported to have said that 39 of the country’s politicians had signed a letter addressed to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, saying the country should strengthen its defence doctrine by including nuclear weapons.

A possible shift in Iran’s nuclear doctrine was also underscored by a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an interview he gave to an Iranian news agency.

“Some politicians have already raised the possibility of changes in [Iran’s] nuclear strategic policies,” said Brigadier General Rasoul Sanaei-Rad.

“Moreover, such actions (an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear plants) would cross regional and global red lines … any potential response from Iran would undoubtedly reflect on this and have an impact,” warned Sanaei-Rad, hinting that Iran could retaliate by targeting Israel’s nuclear facilities. As all this dangerous brinkmanship plays out between Israel and Iran, US political dynamics remain the constant backdrop. While the Biden administration – for now – has made clear that it doesn’t support a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the mood could well change were Donald Trump re-elected in the coming months.

Trump presidency

ISRAEL is already emboldened by its military and intelligence successes against Iran’s proxy Hezbollah. Its resolve might be further strengthened were there to be a Trump presidency willing to support an Israeli strike on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme.

A Trump win, of course, is far from certain and even if it did come to pass, his taking over of the White House is sometime off yet. Meanwhile, the pressure on Israel to respond decisively to Iran grows by the day.

Many analysts still maintain that Iran’s nuclear facilities are – for now – a step too far in Israel hitting back.

But if Israel’s military strategy to date is anything to go by then only the naïve or foolish would dismiss the notion that it’s best to expect the unexpected in this widening conflict.

The only thing certain here is that Israel’s retaliation is coming and as defence minister Yoav Gallant made clear last week, it will be “deadly, precise and above all surprising”. Those words in themselves are ominous enough to ponder for the moment.