WarSclerotic

The Israel Air Force announced that it had returned from a week of joint maneuvers with Italy over Sardinia that included long-range flights, midair refueling and complicated bombing runs. On Thursday, the Home Front Command held a large-scale civil defense exercise aimed at preparing the public for missile attacks in the center of the country.

The Jericho III ICBM equipped with a nuclear warhead provides Israel with a powerful deterrent against a nuclear Iran.  It gives Israel a credible Electronic Magnetic Pulse (EMP) capability to loft a low kiloton yield warhead to an apogee over Iran that upon detonation would destroy the country’s industrial infrastructure, frying motherboards of hundreds of thousands of computers, disabling telecommunications, transportation and industrial systems. According to veteran Iran watcher, Ken Timmerman, President and CEO of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, that possibility was confirmed by ex-CIA case officer Chet Nagle at a Capitol Hill EMPact America  press conference in Washington, DC on Tuesday, the day before the Jericho III test was announced. Doubtless an Israeli EMP attack would cause thousands of whirling centrifuges enriching uranium at the Natanz cascade hall and the Bushehr nuclear plant producing plutonium to be shut down. It might spare Iran’s vital oil and natural gas producing region in the Gulf. It would free Iran’s restive people from the nuclear nightmare of the Mullahs. If the EMP apogee was low enough, then according to Timmerman, it would largely spare Iran’s agrarian rural areas and the country’s bread basket. The Islamic regime and industrial infrastructure concentrated in the Tehran region could collapse. Moreover, he said, the neighboring Gulf region would be spared collateral effects. The Israelis hope that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leaders got the message behind the ICBM test on Wednesday. We referred to the capabilities of Jericho III in our NER article on The Iranian Missile Threat:

We have written that Israel has a full quiver of options. These include its own nuclear capable missile the Jericho III, cruise missiles launched from its Dolphin submarine fleet, and cyber warfare techniques like Stuxnet that have disabled Iran’s nuclear development infrastructure.  Conventional air attack scenarios that would endeavor to reduce the Natanz and other nuclear underground facilities would be fraught with complex air route and logistical problems. Obtaining Saudi, Iraqi and even Turkish airspace permission would be doubtful.

In the wake of the Jericho III test there are Ha’aretz  reports about Security Cabinet debates in the Netanyahu government pressing for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the IRGC. According to MSNBC, polls show that the Israeli population is divided about such a prospect. This despite an assessment by Iranian Defector and ex-CIA spy Reza Khalili in a recent report in the Washington Times  who said that Iran already has nuclear arms. Debka speculates that recent IAF joint maneuvers in Italy with NATO Air Force units are a prelude to unleashing a possible attack involving the US, UK and Israel directed out of Washington. There are some who  believe with the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and re-deployment to Kuwait and the Emirates might facilitate such an Iran attack scenario.

That would be the equivalent of a Wag the Dog scenario by the Obama Administration that frankly seems incredible. You may recall the 1997 Robert di Niro black comedy by that title.

Timmerman commented that it is doubtful that Obama would countenance such an EMP attack scenario. However, he did agree that Israel has demonstrated its own credible EMP capability with the successful test of the Jericho III. That is why other high technological capabilities in the IDF quiver with more laser-like precision seem more likely to be deployed should the balloon go up. Think of a super Stuxnet, swarming attacks of ground hugging, radar evading UAVs and attacks by Pope Eye tube-launched cruise missiles from Dolphin submarines. Couple this with Western support of credible Iranian opposition both inside and outside Iran which could culminate in regime change. Clearly the nuclear clock is ticking and Israel is deliberating over which Iran attack scenarios achieves the greatest good.