Analysis - Can Israel surprise Iran? Maybe not, but could still strike
Sun Sep 9, 2012 12:01pm GMT
By Dan Williams
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - 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.
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 defence suppression to allow them
in," said Walter Boyne, a former U.S. 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. U.S. 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 metre," 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 favours 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 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. The war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip 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 programme, 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.
Days before the Gaza blitz, Ehud Barak - defence minister then, as now -
made an unusual and unannounced live appearance on a top-rated TV satire
show, where he took a roasting with good humour and made sure to give every
impression that starting a war could not be further from his mind.
In another deliberate feint intended to wrongfoot the gossips, Israeli
generals summoned officers from garrisons around Gaza to a weekend retreat,
with their families, at a countryside spa. All but the most senior of those
invited commanders were then surprised to be woken up, that Saturday
morning, and dispatched back to base for combat within hours.
Asked about such ruses, a senior Israeli official shrugged and told Reuters
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."
(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Alastair Macdonald)
C Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved
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Received on Sun Sep 09 2012 - 08:36:51 EDT
