Israel is bracing itself for war with Iranian proxies, as Tehran escalates its provocations. But what will the United States do if conflict comes?
The senior ministers of the Israeli government met twice last week to discuss the possibility of open war with Iran. They were mindful of the Iranian plan for a drone attack from Syria in August, aborted at the last minute by an Israeli air strike, as well as Iran’s need to deflect attention from the mass protests against Hezbollah’s rule in Lebanon. The ministers also reviewed the recent attack by Iranian drones and cruise missiles on two Saudi oil installations, reportedly concluding that a similar assault could be mounted against Israel from Iraq.
The Israel Defense Forces, meanwhile, announced the adoption of an emergency plan, code-named Momentum, to significantly expand Israel’s missile defense capacity, its ability to gather intelligence on embedded enemy targets, and its soldiers’ preparation for urban warfare. Israeli troops, especially in the north, have been placed on war footing. Israel is girding for the worst and acting on the assumption that fighting could break out at any time.
And it’s not hard to imagine how it might arrive. The conflagration, like so many in the Middle East, could be ignited by a single spark. Israeli fighter jets have already conducted hundreds of bombing raids against Iranian targets in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Preferring to deter rather than embarrass Tehran, Israel rarely comments on such actions. But perhaps Israel miscalculates, hitting a particularly sensitive target; or perhaps politicians cannot resist taking credit. The result could be a counterstrike by Iran, using cruise missiles that penetrate Israel’s air defenses and smash into targets like the Kiryah, Tel Aviv’s equivalent of the Pentagon. Israel would retaliate massively against Hezbollah’s headquarters in Beirut as well as dozens of its emplacements along the Lebanese border. And then, after a day of large-scale exchanges, the real war would begin.
Rockets, many carrying tons of TNT, would rain on Israel; drones armed with payloads would crash into crucial facilities, military and civilian. During the Second Lebanon War, in 2006, the rate of such fire reached between 200 and 300 projectiles a day. Today, it might reach as high as 4,000. The majority of the weapons in Hezbollah’s arsenal are standoff missiles with fixed trajectories that can be tracked and intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system. But Iron Dome is 90 percent effective on average, meaning that for every 100 rockets, 10 get through, and the seven operational batteries are incapable of covering the entire country. All of Israel, from Metulla in the north to the southern port city of Eilat, would be in range of enemy fire.
But precision-guided missiles, growing numbers of which are in Iranian arsenals, pose a far deadlier threat. Directed by joysticks, many can change destinations mid-flight. The David’s Sling system, developed in conjunction with the United States, can stop them—in theory, because it has never been tested in combat. And each of its interceptors costs $1 million. Even if it is not physically razed, Israel can be bled economically.
First, though, it would be paralyzed. If rockets fall near Ben-Gurion Airport, as during Israel’s 2014 war with Hamas in Gaza, it will close to international traffic. Israel’s ports, through which a major portion of its food and essential supplies are imported, may also shut down, and its electrical grids could be severed. Iran has honed its hacking tools in recent years and Israel, though a world leader in cyberdefense, cannot entirely protect its vital utilities. Millions of Israelis would huddle in bomb shelters. Hundreds of thousands would be evacuated from border areas that terrorists are trying to infiltrate. The restaurants and hotels would empty, along with the offices of the high-tech companies of the start-up nation. The hospitals, many of them resorting to underground facilities, would quickly be overwhelmed, even before the skies darken with the toxic fumes of blazing chemical factories and oil refineries.
Israel would, of course, respond. Its planes and artillery would return fire, and the IDF would mobilize. More than twice the size of the French and British armies combined—at least on paper—the IDF can call up, equip, and deploy tens of thousands of seasoned reservists in less than 24 hours. But where would it send them? Most of the rockets would be launched from southern Lebanon, where the launchers are embedded in some 200 villages. Others would be fired from Gaza, where Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both backed by Iran, have at least 10,000 rockets. But longer-range missiles, including the deadly Shahab-3, would reach Israel from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran itself. This presents a daunting challenge to the Israeli Air Force, which does not possess strategic bombers capable of reaching Iran and must grapple with the advanced Russian anti-aircraft weapons situated in Syria. Israeli ground troops would be forced to move into Lebanon and Gaza, house-to-house, while special forces would be dispatched deep within Syria and Iraq. Israel’s own conventional missiles could devastate Iranian targets.
But even if these countermeasures could succeed in curtailing much of the missile fire, they would also inflict many thousands of civilian casualties. This is precisely what Iran wants, its proxies preventing the flight of residents from combat areas in order to accuse Israel of committing war crimes. West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, meanwhile, would likely stage violent protests that Israel would put down harshly, setting the stage for the Security Council to condemn Israel for employing indiscriminate and disproportional force and for the United Nations Human Rights Council to gather evidence for the International Criminal Court. What Iran and its allies cannot accomplish on the battlefield, they can achieve through boycotts, isolating and strangling Israel.
Does all this seem a little far-fetched? Not to the senior Israeli government ministers who have been contemplating precisely these sorts of scenarios. And over all of them looms a pressing question: How will the United States respond?
The question is paramount for multiple reasons, beginning with America’s role in precipitating the potential for conflict. Whether inadvertently, by diminishing its principal Sunni enemies—Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the Taliban, and the Islamic State—or purposefully, by signing the nuclear deal, the United States has empowered Iran. While quick to oust Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi—both Sunni—President Barack Obama refused to intercede against Iran’s Syrian ally, Bashar al-Assad. President Donald Trump failed to respond forcefully to the Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia and on international shipping in the Gulf, or even for the downing of a U.S. Navy drone last June. Rather than a departure from long-standing policy, the hasty withdrawal of American troops from Syria appears to many in the Middle East as yet another American move that will strengthen Tehran. Few in the region will be surprised if the American president eases sanctions and negotiates with his Iranian counterpart.
But along with turning a blind eye to Iranian aggression, the United States has also provoked it. Iran has exploited the profits and legitimacy of the nuclear deal to dominate great swaths of the Middle East and surround Israel with missiles. With the expiration of the treaty’s sunset clauses, Iran could then break out, making hundreds of nuclear weapons while deterring Israeli preemption.
But if that was the Iranian hope, its aspirations were destroyed overnight by President Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal and reimpose sanctions. Faced with a collapsing economy, the regime had two painful options: Either enter into talks with Trump under conditions the Iranians find humiliating, or else initiate hostilities—first in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and if that fails, against Israel. Turning to action, the regime must hope, will prove to the United States that without sanctions relief and a renewed nuclear treaty, Iran can plunge the entire region into chaos.
Aware of these dangers, Israeli leaders nevertheless supported the undoing of a deal that they believed paved Iran’s path to hegemony and a nuclear arsenal. They fully supported the sanctions, even though they risk triggering a war. Better for it to face that risk now, they reasoned, than in five years, after Iran has completed its Middle East conquests, encircled Israel, and acquired nuclear bombs. Better for conflict to occur during the current administration, which can be counted on to provide Israel with the three sources of American assistance it traditionally receives in wartime.
The first is ammunition. Beginning with the 1973 Yom Kippur War and continuing through two Lebanon wars and three major clashes with Gaza, Israel has run low on crucial munitions. In each case, the United States agreed to resupply the IDF either by airlift or from its pre-positioned stores inside Israel. Only once, during the 2014 Protective Edge operation, did the Obama administration delay shipments of arms—in that case, Hellfire missiles—to express its displeasure over rising Palestinian casualties.
The second kind of backing is legal. Because the UN reliably votes to condemn Israel, the United States has rallied likeminded states to oppose or at least soften one-sided resolutions and, in the Security Council, cast its veto. The United States has also acted to shield Israel from UN “fact-finding” missions that invariably denounce it, and from sanctions imposed by international courts. When the Goldstone Report, filed after the 2009 Cast Lead operation in Gaza, accused Israel of crimes against humanity, both the Obama White House and the Democratic majority in Congress came to Israel’s defense.
Finally, the United States has supported Israel on the day after the fighting, in negotiating cease-fires, troop withdrawals, and prisoner exchanges, and establishing frameworks for peace. The tradition began after the 1967 Six-Day War, with the U.S.-brokered Security Council Resolution 242, and continued through the shuttle diplomacy of Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger in 1973–74 and Condoleezza Rice in 2006. Only after the 2014 fighting did Israel reject America’s offer of mediation, due to its government’s lack of faith in Secretary John Kerry.
Such distrust is absent from Israel’s relations with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and there is little doubt of this administration’s willingness to supply the three traditional types of assistance. But what if Israel needs more than that? What if there were a situation in which the survival of the Jewish state were threatened? Would the United States intervene?
The answer is yes—to a degree. Every two years, U.S. and Israeli forces hold joint exercises called Juniper Cobra to strengthen Israel’s air defenses. After participating as an IDF reservist in the first Juniper Cobra, in 1990, I worked with my American counterparts to deploy Patriot missile batteries in Israel during the Gulf War. Since then, the cooperation has significantly expanded, including the stationing of an American-manned X-band Radar system in Israel and the temporary deployment of the THAAD system, employing some of America’s most advanced antiballistic technology. Though the details remain top secret, the United States is clearly committed to helping protect Israel’s skies. Whether American troops would go on the offensive on Israel’s behalf, striking Iranian bases, remains uncertain.
That ambiguity is only deepening in an election year in which the incumbent and his opponents are campaigning to end old Middle Eastern wars, not get bogged down in new ones. Polls taken after the president’s decision to withdraw from Syria showed a lack of bipartisan support for even a small-scale American military involvement in the region. Yet administration officials have repeatedly assured me that Israel is not Syria or Saudi Arabia, and that Israel can count on massive U.S. support if needed.
I continue to believe that is true. I recall President Obama’s comment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office six years ago this week, on the last day of my service as Israeli ambassador. “The United States will always come to Israel’s aid in the event of a war,” he said, “because that is what the American people expect.” But I also remember that, back in 1973, Egypt and Syria saw a president preoccupied with an impeachment procedure, and concluded that Israel was vulnerable. In the subsequent war, Israel prevailed—but at an excruciating price. The next war could prove even costlier.
I want to go into what Adam Dalgliesh has written above and it is even worse than I thought. The writing of Dalgliesh veers from fatalism to defeatism. There is not one spark of revolutionary optimism or even basic determination in Dalgliesh. Take this:
So that what Dalgliesh is claiming is that trump is a total wimp despite the bombast.
Does dalgliesh mean to tell us that Erdogan threatened trump with America being forced to leave the base in Turkey called Incerlik.
really! So Trump could answer OK then what is NATO going to do about you forcing America to pull out, and then what are we America going to do about our OWN presence in NATO.
If he was a man then Trump would add that we will give our total support to all branches of Kurdism, open support, to tear apart your country and create a big and viable Kurdistan.
That did not happen. And Dalgliesh leads us on the wrong path. Something else is going on, I am not sure what… But it is certain that Dalgliesh rather than revealing it is obscuring it.
By the way the election of Trump was totally progressive in my book, at least in the respect of a challenge to (THE BROTHER OF) Bush and his war on Saddam.
Yes that is what Trump said and often in the campaign.
But what did trump do? he joined with Islam in the “White Helmets” staged lies, very like the Mohammed el Dura affair.
Then he joins with top dog Islamist and pretender caliph that is caliph Erdogan.
Then he slanders the Kurds in unmistakable words.
Do you think people follow him for that, not at all, but they follow him despite that because they have no other alternative.
And as the months have passed Trump has become more and more explicit in his commie hatred stirring up and his followers move towards Fascism too, to equal the Dems.
Just to end these thoughts that Dalgliesh has no confidence in the progressiveness of the American people, a progressive essence which is despite Trump, the false prophet.
The American people are in their deep mentality opposed to Islam, and this opposition to Islam is rooted deep in their history.
Trump squanders this quality and Dalgliesh is covering for him.
To sum up my opposition to Dalgliesh
1. The defeat by Trump of the brother of George W. Bush was very progressive
2. His followers in this were progressive
3. But Trump has no independent position, he is a pragmatist which is the dominant philosophy of capitalist America. Trump disintegrates and becomes a great danger and a willing tool of Islam.
4. If Trump was not now a willing tool of Islam he would already have bombed Iran nuclear bomb making and it is really as simple as that.
5. Finally it is very, very late in the day
By the way there is talk often about the IDF and the generals, general this and general that, making this and that preparation.
listen, they ahve proved they havent a clue.
Also it is not a military ruled state. it is ruled by politicos. And they are the most corrupt and bankrupt inthe world.
I note that Michael Oren is now opposing the 2003 war on Saddam but CAROLINE GLICK WAS EMBEDDED AND HAS NEVER CHANGED.
And Glick is a big name still.
this is the reason that Israel will go down the drain.
Allow Iran with the help now of Trump this total incompetent to get the nuclear bomb on a delivered rocket it is all over for the Jews on this earth.
Israel despite what the antisemitic conspirators preach,like Icke, is small fish.
Trump does not bomb the Iranian Fascists.
Trump does nothing but make mischief.
Trump is the greatest enemy on earth that Israel has ever had.
Look beneath the blanket of lies and find the truth which is hard to take on board but the truth is there.
trump in all these thing is not rational and not honest. In this sense Trump is kind of the other side of the coin to AOC and such antisemites.
under this cover trump pulls America and the American people away from Israel and away from jews. Like AOC. he just does it differently.
Adam dalglieth writes here stuff and every bit of it can be challenged
Part of his election promises was to protect Israel. In what way does pulling out of Syria help Israel.
Trump is backed by the Christians in America which are sometimes called “Evangelicals”. So he could not argue Dalgliesh claims that he must remain to defend Israel from Iran encroachment. So that is false. yes indeed that was super easy for Trump to argue to his base,I would have thought.
Then there is the Kurds. the enemy of the Kurds is Erdogan who is a supporter of ISIS. That is what American troops were fighting. So now Trump helps Erdogan. What sense is there in that?
Iran is also the enemy of the Kurds. That raises the issue of Iran surrounding Israel and the need for Israel to be always in alliance with the Kurds. So that is another issue. Trump ends the Obama deal, but is allowing Iran to go nuclear against Israel. Why is trump not bombing the Iran nuclear. After all trump bombed Assad claiming Assad used poison gas, which was a 100 per cent lie manufactured by Obama Al Qaida White Helmet organization.
The logical conclusion if you are a sane person…This man Trump and his personnel is either an idiot, or is partly mad. He flounders around like a fish dying out of water. I insist his answers to global warming science are part of this. His non answer like Belman…just bombast denial. as if taking up the science is below their dignity!!!
In any case Israel is in more and more danger.
And the alternatives to Mr Trump in Warren or Sanders…even worse.
(By the way I oppose all fascist attacks on trump in Congress…that is a different matter)
And worst of all Israel is totally paralysed. Not one answer from one person in Israel do I see.
@ Sebastien Zorn: You are correct in saying the obvious, that Iran is a big place. Israel is much smaller.
All Iranians are not the enemy, only the Mullah’s, IRGC and their supporters.
Iran must not be allowed to obtain nukes or maybe it will use them. One EMT nuke fired above Nebraska would likely destroy much of the USA’s infrastructure. Iran could do this from a ship in the Atlantic Ocean now if they had a nuke that fits on one of their ballistic missiles.
So it is interest of both the USA and Israel to keep Iran from getting nukes.
An EMT fired over Iran likewise would destroy all of their infrastructure. My guesstimate is that Israel has that capability now. Whether Israel has this capability in a non-nuclear fashion I do not know.
The USA certainly does have this via a nuclear capability. The USA in a non-nuclear manner could from the air destroy Iran’s military capabilities in about two weeks.
Iran must not be allowed to believe they can get away with attacks by surrogates and not be held accountable on their soil. They do care about their families and friends getting killed in-spite of religious extremism. They do care about getting their power structure and infrastructure getting destroyed.
@ Bear Klein:
Iran’s a big place. Khamenei has openly said that a nuclear exchange would be ok because one strike would destroy Israel but one strike or even a number would leave most of Iran intact and the Mullahs would consider that a good exchange even if millions of Iranians die. So, I hope Israel continues to accumulate missiles, nukes and subs. Also bases in neighboring friendly countries.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
It is public knowledge that Israel can hit Iran via submarine, Jericho Missiles and via its air-force.
You are correct they need to know they will be hit directly.
Why isn’t anybody talking about hitting Iran, itself? What do they care if we just hit their proxies and their forces outside their country? Is Iran shielded against an EMP attack, for instance, for starters? I hope Israel is steadily adding to its nuclear submarine fleet. Or, do they not want to do that because it would erode secret intelligence support from the dissident population within Iran.
Since it is likely Iran is racing towards military nuclear capability it would behoove any nation capable of destroying such capability. This would be in the USA interest and naturally Israel’s.
In addition the IRGC must be severely damaged and Iranian government structures severely damaged. Hopefully the opposition will use any such military action as an opportunity to remove the Mullah’s from power in Iran.
Supplementing my previous comment, it is noteworthy that, to date, the Trump administration’s prime antidote for countering Iran’s malign activities has been the use of economic sanctions. The president and his advisors should reflect upon the fact that these sanctions have not been effective. In my opinion, it is time to up the ante with a more proactive state-of the-art approach — increasingly destructive cyber attacks, counter-insurgency-type special operations, or even direct military action should be considered.
I fully agree with Mr. Oren’s astute observations and Mr. Dagliesh’s comments. I would hope that the Israeli government and the Trump administration are even at this very moment seriously discussing a coordinated joint and devastating attack on both Iran itself and its proxies if Iran should have the temerity to launch a major attack on Israel. The public announcement by the U.S. and Israel of a specific agreement to launch a joint retaliatory attack would, in itself, be likely to deter Iran from precipitating a war in the first place. Even a preemptive attack by the U.S., with or without Israeli involvement, is justifiable at this point given that Iran has already initiated hostilities with Saudi Arabia with its devastating attack on Saudi oil fields and is at this very moment accelerating its uranium enrichment program; thereby coming closer to possessing a stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Oren’s perspective in this article is designed for public consumption.
In reality, Israel will most probably preempt any such major attack on the part of Iran. Israel has a variety of options long before it considers launching conventional tactical nuclear weapons.
Iran would prefer to see a different President before it lets loose all of it’s “junk” on Israel.
Israel is prepared for most anything. Don’t worry.
the retaliation would be a nuclear strike against the government in Iran.
This observation by Michael Oren provides the key, in my opinion, as to why Trump has promised to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria (although he actually hasn’t done this yet), and why he decided not to block Erdogan’s Syrian invasion. While many protested and denounced this decision by Trump, he undoubtedly believed that had he faced down Erdogan and backed the Kurds, the outcry against him, especially from those who have been loyal to him up till now, would be much worse. Incerlik could and probably would have retaliated by forcing the U.S. to evacuate from Incerlik and its other air bases in Turkey, and the Pentagon and most Congressman would have blamed Trump for this. At a time when he is confronting a serious and determined effort to to remove him from office, Trump took the Syrian “option” that the thought would make him the least number of enemies at home. He had no truly popular options, since most Americans apparentlly want nothing to do with the Middle East.
Most of Oren’s analysis is brilliant and on target. But I disagree that the U.S. has helped Israel by “negotiating troop withdrawals and prisoner exchanges,” which have always been to Israel’s disantvantage and never helpful to Israel. Also, America’s efforts to act as a mediator between Israel and its enemies have generally worked against Israel’s interest, as the U.S., at least before the Trump administration, has persistently proposed “solutions” and “peace processes” that require Israel to withdraw from strategic territory, with little or no assurance that the Arabs would then keep the peace. True, Israel has always accepted U.S. mediation–but its financial and military dependence on the U.S. gave it no choice.
As for the magnitiude of the Iranian threat to Israel, Oren is 100 per cent right.