when will israel attack iran, page-156

Interesting thread, loaded with lots of rubish by the looks of it. Lets be realistic here, Israel may have never publicly announced that they have nuclear weapons but most if not all Countries acknowledge that they have them, in unkown quantities and launching platforms.

If you do enough research you will come to realise that on a military and technological level Israel is way ahead of any other Countries in the middle east and most of the world, I would go as far as saying that Israel probably has better weapons technology then Russia & China(dont mistake quality & quantity).

If Israel wants to bomb Irans Nuclear facilities they will, If they want to take out Military and Industrial facilities they will and there is nothing Iran can do about it. Iran could attempt to retaliate militarily but I cant see how they would achieve much as they would not be able to get their airforce or ground forces close enough to Israel to do any damage, There only option would be to launch very large long range missiles which would either be shot down by Coalition forces or other Countries over other Middle Eastern airspace, and if a missile did make it the thousands of km's to Israels airspace I would think they would be able to shoot most if not all of them down.

Now lets look at what the retaltion from Israel would be from any 2nd strike. Lets look at a worst case scenario here say that either Iran or Syria landed a chemical or biological in Israel, II would think that Israel would deem a nuclear attack a fair response and knock out an entire section of the Country.

I think that the knowledge of Israels nuclear aresenal would deter any middle eastern state from attacking them from a miltary perspective, the only way I could see them attacking israel would be through cross border gorilla warfare. But in a state of war the borders would be well protected and most like a buffer zone created in Syria and lebanon so any real damage would be done in those 2 Countries.

Now lets say that Russia is Iran's biggest allie, would they risk attacking israel knowing that Israel most likely has Nuclear armed missiles already aimed at its population centres, they wont want to be drawn into a stand off with another nuclear power that is also a military state. Furthermore I would think that Russia would not allow Iran to retaliate against Israel because if Israel Nukes Iran, Nuclear fallout will most likely effect Russia. I think the last think Russia would want is for Iran to get into a full scale war with Israel.

Did I mention that iran have submarines capable of Launching nuclear warheads, so even if another Nuclear power took out Israel(China, Russia) they would be pretty worried about those Submarines cruising around with missiles that can take them out in one shot.

Bottom Line: I think Israel will do a quick raid on Iran, take out a whole array of facilities, Iran will say that the raid was a failure and nothing important got destroyed, The whole world will condemn Israel(as always, whilst secretly saying "Lucky they did the job for us") and life will go on. It could even be a good opportunity for Russia to take control of some of Iran's oil.

Anyway, thats just my thoughts, and its just an opinion. I dont think anyone should go to war but I think its pretty clear that Israel wont stand for a Nuclear Iran and they will take whatever course of action is required to ensure they dont obtain nuclear weapons capability.

PS: no need to have a crack at me about my opinion or any racist rants about Jews, Muslims, Cristians or any other religions or races for that matter.



If you want an interesting read check out something called "Project David", I randomly came across this a few years ago when I was studying international politics.

here is also a good little extract I just found then from a random google search.

Israeli national security strategy is founded on the premise that Israel cannot afford to lose a single war. Because the best way to avoid losing a war is to not fight it in the first place, Israeli strategy begins with the maintenance of a credible deterrent posture, which includes the willingness to carry out preemptive strikes. Should deterrence fail, Israel would seek to prevent escalation, and determine the outcome of war quickly and decisively. Since it lacks strategic depth, Israel must prevent the enemy from entering its territory, and must try to quickly transfer the battle to enemy territory.

Israel applies its nuclear weapons to all levels of this formula. The total Israeli nuclear stockpile consists of several hundred weapons of various types, including boosted fission and enhanced radiation weapons ("neutron bombs"), as well as nuclear artillery shells. Strategically, Israel uses its long-range missiles and nuclear-capable aircraft (and, some say, submarines with nuclear-armed cruise missiles) to deter both conventional and unconventional attacks, or to launch "the Samson Option", an all-out attack against an adversary should defenses fail and population centers be threatened. In addition, despite Israel's insistence that it "will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East," these systems represent an effective preemptive strike force. At the same time, Israel deploys tactical systems designed to rapidly reduce an invading force. Following the 1973 war, Israel fielded at least three batteries of atomic-capable self-propelled 175mm cannons equipped with a total of no less than 108 warheads, and placed atomic land mines in the Golan Heights during the early 1980s.

Nuclear weapons need not be detonated to be used as weapons. Early in the 1973 war, Israel went on a nuclear alert, partly in the knowledge that it would be detected by the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets, Israel assumed, would restrain their Arab allies while the Americans would speed up resupply efforts. While the USSR did inform Egypt that Israel had armed three nuclear weapons, the extent to which Israel's nuclear alert affected the timing of Washington's subsequent decision to rearm Israel is not clear.

Israel does not have an overt nuclear doctrine beyond its insistence that it will not introduce nuclear weapons into the region. Instead, it follows a policy of what Avner Cohen calls "nuclear opacity" - visibly possessing nuclear weapons while denying their existence. This has allowed Israel to enjoy the benefits of being a nuclear weapons state in terms of deterrence without having to suffer the international repercussions of acknowledging their arsenal. Israel also has a strong commitment to preventing its potential adversaries in the region from becoming declared nuclear weapon states, as evidenced by Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear installation.

Given the very long range of the Jericho-2 missile, some analysts have speculated that this system was developed to deter Soviet intervention in the region. The USSR has always been one of the primary targets of Israel's nuclear force, as Israeli assumptions hold that no Arab nation would attack Israel without Soviet support. The purchase of fifty F-4 fighters from the US in 1968 provided Israel with a platform capable of delivering a nuclear payload as far as Moscow, and it has actively pursued imagery and other information necessary for targeting weapons against the USSR. In 1979, the US agreed to provide Israel with access to high-resolution images of its neighbors taken by the KH-11 satellite. Israel was able to use this agreement to view targets of interest in western Russia (as well as to obtain targeting information for the attack on the Osirak reactor). Israel received more such data during the mid-1980s through the espionage activities of Jonathan Pollard.

Although commonly viewed as the ultimate guarantor of its security, the nuclear option has not led Israel to be complacent about national security. On the contrary, it has impelled Israel to seek unquestioned superiority in conventional capability over the Arab armies to forestall use of nuclear weapons as a last resort - as early as 1962-63, prime minister David Ben-Gurion eschewed restructuring the IDF to base it on nuclear weapons. Instead, IDF doctrine and tactics stress quality of weapons versus quantity; integration of the combined firepower of the three branches of the armed forces; effective battlefield command, communications, and real-time intelligence; use of precision-guided munitions and stand-off firepower; and high mobility.

As of 2000, Israel had not acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968). It was, however, a party to the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water (1963).