Part 3 : Speculation
Rises About an Israeli Attack
Iran has
defended its nuclear program as peaceful and has defiantly pursued uranium
enrichment through years of international pressure and sanctions. Israel’s
increasingly urgent warnings on the need to halt Iran’s nuclear progress,
before it gets much closer to being able to build a bomb, have prompted
concerns that Israel might unilaterally mount a military strike — and have
added to the implacable enmity between the two.
Speculation
that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months as tensions
between the countries have escalated.
Tensions
flared in February when Israeli officials blamed Iran in two separate attacks.
On Feb. 13, Israeli
Embassy personnel were targeted by bombers in the capitals of
Georgia and India, injuring four people, including an Israeli diplomat’s wife.
The embassy blasts used methods that were similar to attacks on Iranian nuclear
scientists in recent years, for which Iran has blamed Israel. The next
day, a series of
explosions rocked a residential neighborhood in Bangkok, wounding
several people. Thai authorities found a cache of bombs in a rented house and
captured two men who carried Iranian passports. Evidence was
accumulating that the bombings were part of a single plot, for which
Israel has blamed Iran. Iranian officials have denied any involvement.
Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.
That was
the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the
Pentagon, who said that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s
nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation.
They described it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a
nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.
In a sign
of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, met
with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Feb. 19, and
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now
would be “destabilizing.” Similarly, the British foreign secretary, William
Hague, told the BBC that attacking Iran would not be
“the wise thing” for Israel to do “at this moment.”
In
November 2011, Israeli officials would not
confirm or deny multiple reports in the Israeli news media that
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahuwere pressing for a decision on whether to strike a uranium
enrichment facility at Natanz, the centerpiece of Iran’s known nuclear-fuel
production, and related sites across the country.
But in
January 2012, seeking to lower the tone of nervous discourse as the United
States and European Union imposed sanctions on Iran, Mr. Barak said that any decision
to attack Iran because of its nuclear program was “very far off.”
