_Os_ wrote: Wed Oct 16, 2024 10:20 pm
Calculator is enjoying my posts, another one for him …
How is Israel going to strike back against Iran?
Israel has a policy of escalation dominance, they always one up their opponent in the belief the opponent backs down (but now Houthis/Hamas/Hezbollah/Iran … aren’t backing down). The expectation of some is they try to outdo Iran’s ballistic missile strike which broke Israeli/US missile defence, with something larger and more spectacular. There’s reasons that won’t happen though.
1st of April, Israel attacked an Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing an Iranian general. Iran responded through a drone and missile attack on 13th of April (the largest single drone attack in history), that was almost entirely intercepted. Israel didn’t respond through escalating, but by destroying an S-300 radar. It’s publicly known that Iran and the US held talks the month after through intermediaries, on avoiding further escalation, neither want escalation unlike Israel. The speculation is Iran and the US were indirectly talking during the incident (there’s an
Oman backchannel). That’s why the US (and it was mostly the US) got an Iranian drone turkey shoot (unlike Iran’s second ballistic missile strike), because the Iranian response was given to the US beforehand. Israel was only allowed to hit an Iranian radar in response to a massive Iranian attack, they had to listen to the US and not escalate because without the US they cannot defend themselves against Iran.
Israel later went for Hezbollah (and other incidents, assassinating the Hamas political leader in Tehran at the end of July), which from Iran’s point of view was escalation. The response was Iran’s second ballistic missile strike. Iran’s military doctrine is built around three areas (its
“forward defence” strategy): proxies, ballistic missiles, and advanced nuclear technology. The first two are obvious, the third not so much, Iran pursues a nuclear hedging strategy getting as close to having nukes as possible, improving their tech and capabilities, without ever getting nukes. The goal is having the advantages of having a nuke (because everyone knows they’re close/capable) without the downsides of having a nuke (more sanctions etc). It’s the opposite of Mad Mullahs rushing to nuke Israel they're often presented as, and something closer to coldly rational people mastering uranium enrichment and ballistic missile technology then letting others work out the rest.
When Trump withdrew from the (Obama era) US nuclear deal with Iran (JCPOA) in 2018 and adopted a maximum pressure posture, with the probable goal of regime change (the Saudis supported the Trump plan too, which heightened that perception for Iran). That gave Iran's nuclear programme a lot of momentum inside the regime, and enrichment was boosted. What is happening now is larger than what caused that change in threat perception. Hezbollah being attacked followed up by a massive airstrike on Iran, would radically alter Iranian calculations.
The hard part of making a bomb is fissile material, Iran now has a stockpile of 60% enriched Uranium which isn’t far from the 90% weapons grade.
Bliken has stated Iran could now produce weapons grade material in a week. Iran also started tooling for producing Uranium metal (part of the weaponisation process), when they started boosting their enrichment. Any change in the threat perception from the point of view of Iran potentially pushes them towards nukes: If the Saudis started a suspicious nuclear programme (threatens the nuclear advantage part of their strategy), if Iranian proxies were massively weakened (threatens the proxies part of their strategy), if there were strikes on their nuclear facilities (threatens the nuclear advantage part of their strategy). Anything that looks like a possible threat to the Iranian regime could trigger nukes.
Because of Iran’s human capital, industrial capacity, how advanced their nuclear programme is, and their main allies all having nukes. It’s a very short journey for Iran to actually build weaponised nukes,
estimates are about 6 months most of which could be conducted in secret. Problem is, there’s then potential for a chain of proliferation. The Saudis will not accept Iran having advanced ballistic missiles and nukes. The Turks will not accept not having nukes if Russia/Israel/Iran/Saudis all do, maybe Egypt won’t either. The US isn’t going to sanction Turkey/Saudi/Egypt like it does NK or Iran, for one thing part of the point in making Egypt/Saudi/Jordan/Lebanon allies is bribing them not to attack Israel. So other US allies potentially then seek nukes to improve their security position: Taiwan/South Korea/Japan/Poland. It starts looking a bit out of control.
Which all means there’s a strong chance Israel’s attack is limited to some military targets Iran can shrug off, similar to how Iran’s targets in Israel were of a military nature. The US has almost certainly been telling Israel not to go full Gaza genocide on Iran like it already has on Lebanon (what did Netanyahu say "I will turn Beirut into Gaza" or some shit?). If so that’s twice Israeli escalation dominance didn’t happen against Iran, twice they backed down after a massive attack. If Israel doesn’t do that and goes full Netanyahu instead, it has to deal with a potential Iranian retaliation which is something along the lines of a nuclear test. Then long term, a nuclear armed Iran that has already defeated Israeli/US missile defence once and has enough missiles for a saturation attack. And after that a significantly more dangerous ME the US has little hope of policing.
