Israel’s Boasting Defies Reality: There’s No Military Option on Iran

For three decades now, our political and military leaders have tricked the public into thinking that Israel actually has a military option against Iran’s nuclear project. The truth is, if such an option ever existed, it was when the program was at its inception. Back in 2008, a member of the security cabinet who dealt with the issue told me that Israel missed its chance to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities when they were still in their infancy and George W. Bush was in the White House.

If so, why is the “military option” cliché still heard night and day, especially now when a revival of the Iranian nuclear deal with six major powers is once again on the table? It’s mainly for domestic consumption, but it also stems from public figures’ tendency to credit themselves with capabilities they don’t really have.

That is, they’re making statements that have no basis in reality, and like the tail that wags the dog, this attests mainly to Israelis’ provincialism and lack of humility. As if Jerusalem thinks it knows what’s in America’s best interests.

Take former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Mossad chief from 2016 to 2021, Yossi Cohen. They credit themselves with influencing Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal in 2018 and impose sanctions on Iran. Actually, the U.S. president, who promised to withdraw from the deal during his election campaign, did so for his own reasons.

Another example is Shimrit Meir, the diplomatic affairs adviser to the previous prime minister, Naftali Bennett. She tried to take credit for Washington’s delay in returning to the nuclear deal, claiming she persuaded Joe Biden not to rejoin. A few foolish Israeli journalists even repeated her claim. But there’s one minor problem – the leaders who delayed the decision to return to the deal were in Tehran, not Washington.

Above all, Israel’s operations against Iran’s nuclear program are designed to delay the project. They’ve certainly played a key role in the fact that even today Iran hasn’t yet become a nuclear threshold state, though it’s very close. Still, former Mossad chiefs Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo knew that no matter how successful they were, their operations wouldn’t prevent Tehran from making a nuclear bomb if it was determined to do so.

A conclusion like in 1981

Since 2009, the Mossad, according to foreign sources, has carried out dozens of sabotage operations against nuclear facilities and assassinated at least 10 nuclear scientists. Most of the sites have returned to operation and the scientists’ successors have been no less talented.

Even the 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the father of Iran’s military nuclear program, didn’t delay the project. In early August, the website Iran International published a report claiming that Saeed Borji, a protégé of Fakhrizadeh, is running Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear detonators. London-based Iran International is considered a site the Mossad uses to leak information when it doesn’t want to leave fingerprints.

There’s no doubt that Mossad chief David Barnea, Israeli army chief Aviv Kochavi and new air force commander Tomer Bar will continue with covert actions against Iran, but sooner or later they’ll come to the conclusion reached in 1980 by Nahum Admoni, then the deputy Mossad chief in charge of preventing Saddam Hussein from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Admoni told his prime minister, Menachem Begin, that covert actions had been exhausted. Only a military option could prevent Iraq from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The rest is history – history that took place on June 7, 1981, after the Israel Air Force bombed the Iraqi reactor on Begin’s order. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made a similar decision 26 years later when he realized that it was impossible to thwart Syria’s nuclear program with ground-based covert operations. Once again the air force accomplished the mission and bombed the reactor.

A screengrab released in March 2018 shows what the Israeli military describes at the before and after an Israeli airstrike in 2007 on a suspected nuclear reactor near Deir el-Zour, Syria.Credit: IDF/Handout via Reuters TV

But despite the strikes on the Syrian and Iraqi facilities, Israel doesn’t have a realistic option to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. Iran has learned the lessons of Syria and Iraq and spread its nuclear assets across the massive country. Iran has dozens of sites for processing the nuclear chain: mining uranium, processing and converting to gas, enriching and storing. Some of these facilities are buried deep underground (the uranium enrichment facilities of Natanz and Fordo).

Near the town of Arak, the Iranians have a heavy water reactor (construction was frozen under the 2015 nuclear deal) that will be able to produce plutonium – another channel for extracting fissile material. Iran also has laboratories and plants where thousands of engineers, scientists and technicians are at work.

With refueling, the air force can reach almost any point in Iran. According to foreign reports, Israeli F-35s have done this. According to foreign reports, Israel also operates drones over Iran and has hit a huge Iranian storage facility, destroying 120 drones, while one of its drones hit the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, the reports say. A few years ago, Iran claimed that it brought down an Israeli drone launched from Azerbaijan, an Israeli strategic ally that borders Iran.

But Israel doesn’t have bunker busters – massive bombs dropped from huge American bombers. Israel requested such weapons from the Obama administration but was turned down.

Moreover, since the Iranian nuclear program is spread out geographically, Israel needs outstanding intelligence; this goes for both large and known sites and small concealed workshops and laboratories. Iran can easily hide a laboratory where weaponization takes place. Does Israel know where all these facilities are?

Another difficulty is that any Israeli operation over Iran wouldn’t come in one fell swoop but in several waves. And let’s assume an Israeli attack were only partially successful. What price would be exacted by Iran or its proxies in the region? How many Israeli planes would be shot down? How many Israeli pilots would be killed or captured? How many Israelis would be killed when thousands of missiles would be launched in response by Iran and Hezbollah?

As things stand now (and there hasn’t been much change for many years) the United States is the only country with a military option against Iran. But the Americans, after their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, eschewed that route during the Trump presidency and under Biden, too.

The United States is tired of wars, especially in the Middle East, and prefers to return to the nuclear deal. Washington prefers diplomacy to any adventurous military move. Israel’s military and political leaders should therefore avoid blabbing empty promises and arrogant statements.

Israel should operate quietly, continue to make it hard for the Iranians to make progress, and maintain a dialogue with the Americans behind closed doors. There appears to be no realistic alternative but the deal that’s in the works, Even if it’s not ideal, it should be as beneficial as possible for Israel. A return to the deal will prevent Iran from building a bomb for at least three years – and that’s the best of a bad lot.

And on the margins, there’s an issue that for some reason Israel doesn’t seem to want to discuss: Does Iran really want to build a nuclear bomb? Even if we don’t believe that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, issued a fatwa against weapons of mass destruction, how can we explain that 35 years after it launched its efforts, Iran still doesn’t have a bomb and hasn’t even passed the nuclear threshold?

History teaches that every country that wanted to develop, assemble and store nuclear bombs did so within five to seven years. India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Africa (which eventually dismantled its weapons) all did this. According to foreign reports, so did Israel.