Report: Israel forced to change Iran strike tactics
Report: Israel forced to change … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.
Military personnel concluded a conventional strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities may fail, and have been forced to change their tactics accordingly, The Sunday Times reported Sunday, quoting western intelligence and defense sources.
“Israel’s plans have been constantly evolving in recent years according to the progress Iran is making,” The Times quoted a senior defense source as saying.
According to The Times, western defense experts discovered Iran’s Fordow nuclear site is hidden deeper underground than previously estimated and therefore safe from conventional airstrikes.
The Times report, quoting Western defense experts, added that due to the “upgraded” progress of Iranian enrichment, Israel has to change their tactics to prevent a loss of up to 20% of its planes from a conventional air strike.
Defense experts claim Israel have two options, to either deploy special forces on the ground, or use ballistic missiles with tactical nuclear warheads, The Times reported.
The Times report follows a Channel 2 investigation which discovered Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to raise its alert level ahead of a possible attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in 2010.
During a meeting of select senior ministers in 2010, Netanyahu allegedly ordered the IDF to raise its state of alert to “P-plus,” reserved for an imminent state of war, according to the report.
Then-IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi and then-Mossad chief Meir Dagan considered the order “illegal” and resisted it.
Among the arguments used most against a solo Israeli attack is an argument voiced by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. He expressed that an Israeli attack could not take out the Iranian program.
However, setting Iran’s nuclear plans back a few years to buy time for regime change or other unforeseen developments would be good in its own right, even if Israel cannot completely take out Iran’s nuclear program, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said recently, The Jerusalem Post learned.
Netanyahu, in private meetings, repeated a number of times that before Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, the Mossad and Military Intelligence were opposed because they thought the best that could be done was to delay the program for a couple of years.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak – who has emerged as the most bellicose minister regarding Iran – told the Knesset, “I believe that it is inestimably more complicated, inestimably more dangerous, inestimably more complex, and inestimably more expensive in terms of human life and resources to deal with a nuclear Iran in the future.”
Barak said “There is a forum of nine [ministers], there is a security cabinet, and when a decision needs to be made [on an Iran strike] it will be taken by the Israeli government.
Herb Keinon and Gil Hoffman contributed to this report.
WarSclerotic 
November 11, 2012 at 3:06 PM
We Have heard from military authorities in Iran how they would react to a nuclear strike by Israel on their country.
It might be that they don’t take the threat seriously or that they have already acquired a few nuclear from third parties – former soviet republics or Pakistan – and would respond in kind if Israel does use nuclear devices against the country.
One thing is very clear: leaders of Iran don’t worry about a nuclear attack ever emanating from the Jewish state.
November 11, 2012 at 3:13 PM
We Have never heard from military authorities in Iran how they would react to a nuclear strike by Israel on their country.
It might be that they don’t take the threat seriously or that they have already acquired a few nuclear weapons from third parties – former soviet republics or Pakistan – and would definitely respond in kind if Israel does use nuclear warfare against their country.
One thing is very clear: leaders of Iran don’t seem to worry about a nuclear attack ever emanating from the Jewish state.
November 11, 2012 at 4:44 PM
iran will be wiped off the map there wont be a response,if israel decides to launch a first strike iran will come to a halt it simply wont have the capacity to respond,just a 500 kiloton warhead will destroy all irans communications and electrical grid just from the EMP,and irans looking at about 50 megatons as a first strike at least 20 megatons will be nutron strikes,iran will be in the stone age for hundreds of years,stick to what you know about Danny