‘Israeli strike against Iran won’t be easy’

“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh,yeah,bomb Iran,’ it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula,who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.

Speculation that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months. In a sign of rising US concern,Tom Donilon,the national security adviser,met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Sunday.

The possible outlines of an Israeli attack have become a source of debate in Washington,where some analysts question whether Israel even has the military capacity to carry it off. One fear is that the US would be sucked into finishing the job — a task that even with America’s far larger arsenal of aircraft and munitions could still take many weeks,defence analysts said. Another fear is of Iranian retaliation.

Michael V. Hayden,who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009,said flatly last month that airstrikes capable of seriously setting back Iran’s nuclear programme were “beyond the capacity” of Israel,in part because of the distance that attack aircraft would have to travel and the scale of the task.

Given that Israel would want to strike Iran’s four major nuclear sites — the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo,the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the yellowcake-conversion plant at Isfahan — military analysts say the first problem is how to get there. There are three potential routes: to the north over Turkey,to the south over Saudi Arabia or taking a central route across Jordan and Iraq.

The route over Iraq would be the most direct and likely,defence analysts say,because Iraq effectively has no air defences and the US,after its December withdrawal,no longer has the obligation to defend Iraqi skies. Assuming that Jordan tolerates the Israeli overflight,the next problem is distance. Israel has American-built F-15I and F-16I fighter jets that can carry bombs to the targets,but their range falls far short of the minimum 2,000-mile round trip.

Israel would have to use airborne refueling planes,called tankers,but Israel is not thought to have enough. Any number of tankers would need to be protected by ever more fighter planes.

Another major hurdle is Israel’s inventory of bombs capable of penetrating the Natanz facility,believed to be buried under 30 feet of reinforced concrete,and the Fordo site,which is built into a mountain. Assuming it does not use a nuclear device,Israel has American-made GBU-28 5,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs that could damage such hardened targets,although it is unclear how far down they can go.