Suppose the Israeli government decides that the Iranians are planning a missile attack on Israel.
They decide to strike first-what would be their logical targets? (Assume nuclear bombs are to be used).
Would the Israelis attack Iranian cities? Or wold the targets be military/missile bases only?
Israel is reputed to have 150-200 nuclear bomns-would these be enogh to cripple Iran?
I suspect that they would try to simulate a conflict on Iran’s border with Pakistan–then make it look like the Pakistanis launched.
2 hostile nuclear states take each other out with reprisals.
uranium is hard to acquire today, especially for people with a tense relationship to the major powers, so Israelis cannot afford to drop 200 bombs in a single war. All the more so on far-away Iran. If they run out of bombs, what is to stop NATO from threatening them with invasion every time Washington or Brussels aren’t happy with them? If you don’t have bombs nowadays, you end up like Gaddafi.
So at best they can destroy a few Iranian population centers, all the while loudly threatening population centers of other nations that may consider getting involved uninvited.
Conversely, Iranians need their nuclear bombs too. They can level a few (hopefully evacuated) Israeli cities, but they cannot run out of them in a single war. If they do, what will they use to threaten Americans and the Saudis in the future?
That, of course, raises interesting implications for the Pakistai weapons. One natural solution for Iran would be to use their indigenously made nukes in the first war and then replenish the arsenal with stolen/bought Pakistani nukes.