Israeli Attack On Iraqi Nuclear Facilities

Author : Whitney Raas
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 33 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (678 download)

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Download or read book Osirak Redux? written by Whitney Raas and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 33 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: As of this writing Iran's nuclear ambitions have been the subject of serious debate within the international community for over two years. Iran contends its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and insists the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) guarantees the right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes; the United States asserts that Iran intends to use its civilian nuclear facilities as a cover for nuclear weapons development. Spanning the middle ground are France, Germany, and the UK, currently engaged in ongoing but periodically stalled negotiations over the status of Iran's uranium conversion and enrichment activities, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which acknowledges "concerns" regarding Iranian nuclear intentions but maintains there is no convincing evidence that Iran's true objective lies in militarizing its nuclear program. With very few exceptions, Israel has repeatedly stated its unequivocal opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran, and much speculation exists in the media today about Israel's military intentions towards Iran. Even though Israeli leaders have publicly maintained that no military action is under consideration, they have not ruled it out and multiple reports have indicated that Israel is indeed contemplating a preventive military strike to remove the threat of an Iranian nuclear capability. This is not without precedent: On June 7, 1981, Israel launched one of the most ambitious preventive attacks in modern history. Eight Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-16s supported by eight IAF F-15s destroyed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak in one of the earliest displays of what has become known as "precision strike." None of the IAF planes were lost, and, despite the political repercussions, the raid was considered a great success. More than twenty years later, some in Israel are again mulling the possibility of preventive action against an unfriendly state's attempts to gain nuclear weapons, this time Iran. In a report given to Prime Minister Sharon in 2003, a group of Israeli and American scholars and analysts present a grand strategy that calls for Israel to develop and maintain a "Long Arm" capability for long-range precision strike. This report, known as Project Daniel, further argues that this "Long Arm" be used for preventive action against attempts by unfriendly states to gain weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The project's chair, Louis Rene Beres, reiterated this view in a recent op-ed, calling on Israel to maintain strong preventive capability against adversaries' attempts to develop WMD even as it develops anti-ballistic missile systems. As Iran's nuclear program moves forward, the argument of the Project Daniel group may seem increasingly compelling to the government of Israel (as well as outside observers in the U.S. and elsewhere). Yet no unclassified net assessment of Israel's current capability to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities exists. The capabilities of the IAF have grown dramatically in the past two decades, yet the Iranian facilities are a significantly more challenging target than Osirak. This paper will attempt to fill this gap in the existing literature by providing a rough net assessment of an Israeli strike on known Iranian nuclear facilities. It will do so by taking the strike on Osirak as a generic template for the strike and then attempting to update the scenario to account for both the improved IAF capabilities and the much tougher Iranian defenses. The paper will first present a short overview of the Osirak raid, followed by a description of the nature and location of the Iranian nuclear facilities in the context of targeting for the IAF. The next section will attempt a rough estimate of the "weaponeering" necessary to destroy the target set. The third section will discuss the forces the IAF and Iran possess relevant to this planned strike, while the fourth will attempt to evaluate potential attack routes and the interaction of the forces. The paper will conclude with a brief discussion of the likely outcome of an Israeli attack and some policy considerations based on this outcome. In addition to specific assessment of the Iran-Israel scenario, this paper will also provide insight to the more general phenomenon of the use of precision-guided weapons as a counterproliferation tool. As concern over WMD proliferation grows, the use of precision-guided weapons for strikes on individual targets may become even more appealing. The Bush Administration has already made military counterproliferation part of its national strategy. The case of Iran provides a template for the prospective use of precision weapons and problems associated with the use against various targets of interest, especially nuclear-related, hardened, and well-defended targets.