(By itself). i have read that Israel and Saudi Arabia have arrived at an "understanding’ that would allow IAF planes to cross the kingdom to attack Iran.
at any rate, could Israel destroy all the enrichment facilities on its own?
If confined to conventional explosives, i would say no-Israel has no heavy bombers, and F-16s cannot carry extra-heavy bunker buster bombs. They could destroy the reactor though-but would that gain them anything?
If Israel is prepared to use nukes, then yes-but that risks setting off a huge war-hard to see SA allowing this. Which leaves sabotage-does the Mossad have enough agents in Iran to attempt this?
Also, withing a few months, Iran will get advanced SAM air defense systems from Russia-these may well make bombing impossible.
Things are geeing interesting.
If Israel has agents adequate to sabotage the enrichment facilities, then we don’t know it. Which is really just a tautology, because nobody knowing is one of the necessary conditions for the agents being able to do it.
You’re also missing some potential avenues of attack. Nobody’s officially admitted to anything, but Stuxnet, for instance, was probably created (in whole or in part) by Israel for exactly this purpose.
I think this is better suited to Great Debates than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
“F-16s cannot carry extra-heavy bunker buster bombs”
Are extra-heavy bunker buster bombs necessary?
Israel has the F-15E which has a higher payload than the F-16.
“Iran will get advanced SAM air defense systems from Russia-these may well make bombing impossible.”
“impossible” is an awfully big word. Even if bombing is deemed too costly, cruise missiles are an option. Cruise missiles + fighters + EW (including jamming and radar homing missiles) would make the Iranian air defense personnel’s day interesting.
I’m not sure of the depth of their facilities, but I’m pretty sure even the largest bunker busters would be inadequate. Even nuclear earth penetrating weapons aren’t able to destroy sufficiently buried facilities.
So Israel would almost certainly be unable to destroy them through the air. They might have other means like sabotage, but I think it’s unlikely they or anyone else could stop a determined Iran without a ground invasion.
Israel couldn’t destroy the deeply-buried and heavily-armored bunkers themselves…but they could wreak great havoc on the support that these facilities depend on. They could knock out the supplies of water and power.
If they got really nasty, they could knock out water and power to major Iranian cities. Tehran is a little like Los Angeles in this: it would not take much at all to deny the city its water and electricity.
And alll of Israel is also like Los Angeles, with highly vulnerable water and electric supply.
Which is why Israel will not attack Iran. (aside from the fact that it is physically impossible to destroy deep underground facilities from the air)
So Ralph, you can sleep easy at night.
Could Israel Destroy Iranaina Uranium Enrichment?
No (:-
p.s. Israel probably gets its oil from Iran
(:- 
I highly doubt that. Any SAM launcher big enough to threaten a flight of planes 30,000 feet up relies on active radar to find and track them. Anything that relies on radar can be triangulated then lit the hell up.
As it happens, Israel is producing drones specifically for SEAD purposes. There’s definitely an element of arm’s race to it, but in this particular case the game is heavily rigged against the ground guys.
What makes you two so certain of these things? The USA has built, tested, and upgraded bombs specifically designed to penetrate and destroy the deepest of Iran’s underground nuclear facilities (Fordow).
Israel may not have the capability, but I believe we do.
And Israel may have the capability. They purchased a number of GBU-28s and have F-15Es capable of delivering them. Who knows if repeated strikes by GBU-28s would be enough to destroy Fordow?
I know that we used multiple strikes to destroy hardened aircraft shelters.
And Israel could do other inventive things to destroy Fordow. They’re in the process of purchasing some V-22 Ospreys from us. I could imagine them flying a team of commandos to Fordow, landing them, having them penetrate the facility on foot and plant explosives inside to bring the whole thing down.
Also, Isreal demonstrated some capability for defeating hostile air defenses when it bombed Syria’s nuclear reactor. I’m not sure how well those would stack up against Russia’s S-300 system, but I wouldn’t count the Israelis out.
Lastly, Israel will be buying their own F-35s soon(ish), which should help significantly if it decides to go after Iran’s nuclear program.
And if Israel chooses to use its (very likely real) nuclear arsenal?
Remember–the Middle Eastern States fear the “street”–angry popular uprisings. They have used the old “look at them nasty Jews–they offend our honor” ploy to distract King Mob for so long, they can’t back off from it.
And Israel’s very survival rests on this.
On destroying’s Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities?
I don’t think that’s true. An Israel with nuclear technology and nuclear weapons could very well co-exist with an Iran with nuclear technology and/or nuclear weapons.
I think that Bosda (he can contradict me if I am wrong) is saying that an Isreali attack (especially nuclear) on Iranian facilities could very possibly imperil the Jewish state more than a Nuclear Iran.
Because, as he points out, the “Arab Street” has 40+ years of negative propaganda regarding Israel, because it helped keep the politicians in power (see the American South during Jim Crow for similar tactics). But it has been a ‘controlled’ indignation…but what controls will the leaders be able to maintain if an fellow Muslim country (even one that is distrusted and disliked by many Arab leaders) is nuked?
Right now, Israel has peace with Jordan and Egypt which seems to be holding (even during the time of the Muslim brotherhood), Syria is a charnel-house and Lebanon is barely hanging on. In terms of threats to the Nation-State, Israel is as secure as she has ever been.
(And no, I am not discounting Hezbollah or Hamas; but they have the ability to be a nusiance, not a threat to the nation-state of being. IMHO)
A nuclear attack? Or even a bombing attack? That would make any peace treaty with Isreal by any Muslim state impractical, if not wriitten off, simply because the people that the leaders have indoctrinated with propaganda for decades would not allow it. Even more secular Muslim countries like Turkey would find themselves in an untenable position (and the Turks are the only Isalmic nation in the immediate vicinity that could pose a viable risk to the existence of the Nation of Israel).
So besides it being probably non-feasible to launch a conventional attack (the logistics are daunting), a nuclear pre-emtive strike (no matter how successful) may well put Israel in a worst position than a potentially/someday nuclear armed-Iran
I think that was what he was saying. It certainly is how I intepreted it. If I am wrong so be it.
IMHO as always. YMMV.
Israel’s F-35s are scheduled for delivery in late 2017, which means initial operational clearance sometime in 2020. That’s assuming the planes are actually delivered on time, which seems unlikely given Lockheed’s track record. Israel probably won’t have full ground attack capability from its F-35s until something like 2025.
I thought Block 3F was currently slated for release in 2018 or 2019? And isn’t the plan to pretty much keep the entire F-35 fleet current on software?
The original plan was for Air Force IOC in 2009. The US Navy expects IOC with Block 3F aircraft in 2019. Since the program hasn’t met any of its plan dates so far, I very much doubt it will meet most of them in the future.
That’s especially true for Israeli aircraft, since they will (presumably) be arming it with domestically procured weapons that will probably add another 5 years.
This was also my thought. They’ll have to up their game, since Iran has probably learned enough to close off the attack vector(s) used in the Stuxnet attack and to watch for new signs of attack. But I’m sure Israel has a lot of very clever people who punch the clock every day and work on nothing but developing the successor to Stuxnet.
I admittedly don’t know much about Israeli bombs, but didn’t they buy a whole bunch of SDBs from the USA? I thought those were tested with Block 2B.
I wonder if a young woman gave an Iranian engineer some pictures of herself on a flash drive, and he looked at them at work.