Thursday, September 20, 2012

How Much Damage Could The Israeli Air Force Really Do To Iran?

A recent photograph of the suspected uranium-enrichment facility near Iran's holy city of Qom (Courtesy Reuters).

Israel Could Probably Destroy Only Two Of Iran's Nuclear Plants – It Would Take America To Do The Rest -- The Telegraph

I’ve often expressed doubt about whether Israel’s air force has the striking power to inflict enough damage on Iran’s nuclear installations to make war a rational option. It’s impossible to answer this question definitively, but on balance the answer is “probably not”. A quick reminder: the key factor here is whether Israel has enough air-to-air refuelling capacity to get its strike aircraft and the necessary fighter escorts all the way to their targets in Iran and back again. On paper, the Israeli air force has only 7 KC-707 tanker planes. It’s hard to see how this would be enough to keep the attack fleet of 125 F-15Is and F-16Is airborne for long enough.

Read more ....

My Comment: I concur with this analysis. Israel cannot do it alone. But if they do decide to strike, it would be to plunge the Middle East into war, and force the international community to intervene and (maybe) force Iran to curtail their enrichment process. But if this is the route that they decide to go down .... I doubt that the Iranians would listen and/or accommodate what the international community (or anyone else) believes that they should follow.

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