WarSclerotic

The US, on the other hand, possesses the right aircraft, in larger numbers and carrying better weapons, and has the infrastructure in the region to mount a far more effective attack than Israel could, including a sustained bombing campaign.

America’s long-range B2 stealth bomber would be the aircraft of choice for the task, whereas Israel would have to rely on its smaller F15E and F16I fighter bombers, backed up with a force of F16Cs to protect them. Given the long distances involved, the fleet of 80 to 100 Israeli planes would have to refuel in midair and Israel has a limited number of aerial tankers. For Israel to mount an attack on Natanz, Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant – about 1600km outside Israeli airspace – it would require at least five tankers to service the attack fleet.

There are three potential routes that the Israeli jets could take: north across Turkey, due east over Jordan and Iraq, or south over Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. All of the routes pose different degrees of risk.

And, although Iran’s air defences are ageing, Israeli pilots could face a competent Iranian air force equipped with Russian MiG29s, Su24s, Su25s and American F14s bought by the Shah in 1976.

Once over their targets, Israeli pilots would have to drop 2270kg bunker-busting GBU28 bombs capable of breaching 30m of earth or 6m of concrete. But some of Iran’s key sites of are so well buried and hardened that they would have to be bombed repeatedly.

The US has a far more powerful weapon: the 13608kg Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or GBU57 bomb, 20 of which were delivered to the US Air Force by Boeing last September.

None of this, of course, means that Israel won’t go it alone. As Amos Yadlin, one of the Israeli pilots who successfully attacked Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981, wrote in The New York Times this week: “The mistake then, as now, was to underestimate Israel’s military ingenuity.”

The Times