Can Israel still surprise Iran?

Stealth Israeli strike
on Tehran's nuclear facilities may no longer be possible, but plans for attack
have not necessarily been shelved


Reuters
Published: 09.11.12, 00:31 / Israel News

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cancellation
of a security cabinet session on Iran following a media leak last
week laid bare a conundrum long troubling Israeli strategists: Could they count
on any element of surprise in a war on their arch-foe?

Possibly not. Years of public speculation, much of it stoked by official statements in Israel and abroad, about the likelihood and timing of such a conflict, have afforded the Iranians plenty of
notice to fortify their threatened nuclear facilities and prepare retaliation.

Given the difficulties Israel's jets would face in reaching and returning from distant Iran, as well
as their limited bomb loads, losing the option of mounting sneak attacks may
seem to have put paid to the very idea of an attack launched without its ally
the United States.

Yet experts are not rushing to rule that out. Some believe Israel is still capable of achieving a
modicum of surprise, and that in any case it might hope a combination of
stealth, blunt force and, perhaps, hitherto untested innovations can deliver
victory – even if Iran is on high alert.


Iran's Parchin nuclear site (Photo: ISIS website)

Israel, whose technologically advanced military has a history of successful derring-do, might
place less importance on catching Iran completely off-guard and instead strike
openly and with combined forces, causing disarray among the defenders in hope
of delivering enough damage to a select number of targets.

"The probability of achieving surprise is low, but I think the Israelis will count on their
technical competence in defense suppression to allow them in," said Walter
Boyne, a former US air force officer and a writer on aviation history.

He predicted the Israelis would mesh air raids with a swarm of strikes by ground and naval units, a view echoed by Lynette Nusbacher, senior lecturer in war studies at Britain's Royal
Military Academy Sandhurst. She suggested Israel could also incorporate cyber-attacks to blind Iran as an assault began.

"There is no question that Israel can achieve tactical surprise if required," Nusbacher
said, differentiating the short-term shock from Iran's long readiness for an
attack. "As long as the
direction or timing or form of the attack is unexpected then surprise is
possible."

Israel and its Western allies believe Iran is covertly seeking means to build nuclear weapons, while Tehran insists it wants only to generate electricity and medical isotopes. US
President Barack Obama says he hopes sanctions and diplomacy will deflect Iranian policy. But
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have made clear they might soon resort to
force.

Nusbacher indicated that pinpoint intelligence and planning might also help Israel overcome Iran's
anticipation and counter-measures, making up for limitations on the element of
surprise: "Remember that while the Iranian nuclear facilities are each more or less defended, their
locations are known to the meter," she said. "Precision can't entirely make up for surprise.

"But surprise isn't everything."

Jitters and chatter

Israeli military planners chafe at their civilian compatriots' freewheeling and jittery
discourse about a possible confrontation, worried that the Iranians could glean
key warnings simply from monitoring Israeli news and social media. If they do indeed
contemplate a solo surprise attack, they may also be concerned that the United
States, loath to see a war on the eve of a presidential election and while it
still favors a diplomatic solution, could also be tipped off about a strike
early enough to insist its Israeli ally stand down. There were no such
problems in 1981, when a squadron of Israeli fighter-bombers took off from the
then-occupied Sinai desert to destroy Iraq's atomic reactor, nor in 2007, when
Israel alleged launched a similar sortie against Syria out of the blue.


By contrast, experts think Israel would need to dispatch many scores of jets and support aircraft
against Iran, and possibly fire ballistic missiles, all difficult to hide from
the public in a small country.

Though a media blackout would be allowed under Israeli emergency laws, such sudden and sweeping censorship would be so unprecedented as to telegraph what was meant to go
unpublished – and in any event may prove impracticable in today's wired world.

Nonetheless, some other measures could limit exposure, such as choice of timing. Operation Cast Lead was launched on December 27, 2008 – deep in the Western holiday season and on a Saturday morning, the Jewish Sabbath, when Israel's own media pare coverage to a minimum
and newsrooms are barely staffed.

Israel is also trying to restrict the circle of those in the know. The number of those privy to the
details of Iran planning in the military and government has been kept very
small, a depth of secrecy akin to that surrounding Israel's own nuclear
program, which is assumed to include the region's only atomic weapons.

Netanyahu would be legally required to gain security cabinet approval for an attack on Iran. But
after a newspaper reported on Wednesday that ministers on the panel had been
presented with conflicting intelligence assessments about Iran, a leak that
angered Netanyahu, at least one senior leader, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, called for the 14-member security cabinet to be shrunk in order to ensure more discretion.

For similar ends, Israel may go so far as to temporarily misdirect its own populace, away from talk of imminent attack.

Asked about such ruses, a senior Israeli official shrugged and said that they were a legitimate tactic for military planners dealing with a democratic society: "Such things are
kosher," he said, "when you have a free press and free speech."

And while certainly not advocating the kind of extensive public discussion seen lately in Israel on the prospects for a conflict, the same official saw a counter-intuitive benefit in
that such perpetual talk might erode Iran's level of alertness:

"The more you brace to defend yourself, the more tired you get – or you make the
mistake of writing off the threat as a bluff," he said. "Perhaps
that's the case with Iran."

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