BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 649, November 21, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israeli air power now has capabilities beyond any yet seen in military history. Its aerial strike capabilities are likely to prove decisive to the outcome of any military action taken against Iran in Syria.
Iran has big plans to create a military outpost in Syria, right on Israel’s doorstep. From there, the Islamic Republic could threaten and attack Israel in the future.
Israel is currently employing two tools to try and prevent this from happening: diplomacy and deterrence. Diplomatically, Jerusalem is reaching out to global powers and the international community, informing them of the consequences of Iran’s actions in a bid to create pressure on Tehran. To achieve deterrence, Israel is making clear to Iran and its agents that it has no intention of allowing them to proceed with their plans.
But what can Israel do if these prevention efforts fail, as they might? In such a scenario, Israel would have to fall back on military action. Some of that action would likely involve Israel’s new aerial strike capabilities.
These recently developed capabilities might well surpass any display of air power seen in military history thus far. They are based on an ability to use precise intelligence, combined with precision-guided weaponry, to destroy up to several thousand targets in just a matter of hours.
This is a tool that the Israel Air Force, together with the Military Intelligence Directorate of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), has been developing quietly over recent years. It is a game-changing capability that significantly boosts Israeli deterrence against its enemies. It also boosts actual war fighting capabilities, should these be called upon.
In recent weeks and months, there have been indications that Iran is testing the waters in Syria. It is seeing how far it can go, and how far it can push Israel’s red lines.
In November, a Western intelligence source shared satellite imagery with the showing a new Iranian base being built south of Damascus. The facility can house hundreds of personnel and vehicles. It is a mere 50 kilometers from Syria’s border with Israel, and represents the tip of the iceberg of Iran’s plans for Syria.
This month, during a visit to London, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the BBC in an interview that the Iranians “want to bring their air force there, right next to Israel, they want to bring Shi’ite and Iranian divisions right next to Israel. They want to bring submarines. So we will not let that happen, we will resist it.”
Israel’s Kan News broadcaster also recently reported Iranian plans to set up a division in Syria made up of 5,000 soldiers, air force bases containing Iranian fighter jets, and Iranian naval bases on the Syrian coastline.
Iran has already deployed to Syria thousands of Shiite militia members recruited from across the Middle East. They have been armed and trained by the Iranian Republican Guards Corps and the elite overseas Iranian Quds Force.
The Iranians also run militia units made up of Syrian recruits. The Commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Solemani, was recently photographed in eastern Syria with members of one such militia, the al-Baqr Battalion. The Iranians also helped build up other Syrian military forces, like the 313 Battalion.
At the same time, Iran appears to have stepped up efforts to create missile factories on Syrian soil, which it can use to arm its chief Shiite proxy, Hezbollah. One of these factories was reportedly struck by Israel last month.
As ISIS crumbles and the remainder of the Syrian Sunni rebels face defeat in Syria, Iran, which runs Assad’s ground war, will be free to shift the focus of its Syrian presence towards Israel.
Israel is prepared to deal with this threat militarily if necessary, though the intelligence challenge would be considerable. Many of the targets in question would not be clear-cut Iranian military entities, but rather proxies and militias attempting to disguise themselves or embedded into the local environment. Still, Israel’s intelligence capabilities should be up to the job of detecting and monitoring the targets and passing them on to the air force.
So far, Israel has used its precision strike capabilities for pinpoint attacks on targets that are part of the Hezbollah–Iran weapons program. But these same strike capabilities can be activated on a grand scale. The same air power can also be directed against the Assad regime, which the Iranian axis has fought for years to rescue and preserve.
In theory, Israel could inform Iran that its treasured Assad regime would be in jeopardy if Israel’s red lines are crossed in Syria.
Needless to say, any major escalation in Syria would almost certainly draw in Hezbollah in Lebanon as well, as the two fronts are interlinked. The Syrian-Lebanese border has become more of an imaginary line on a map than a real international boundary, as Hezbollah moves weapons and fighters across it on a regular basis. Any escalation on the Syrian front could easily activate the Lebanese front.
The stakes in Syria are very high, and Israel remains committed to the objective of preventing conflict on its northern fronts. So far, it has succeeded in this goal.
Russia has thus far appeared to help restrain its radical allies in Syria, but its role in any potential escalation remains unclear.
But should Iran ignore all of Israel’s warnings, Israel’s new air power will likely prove decisive to the outcome of military action in this arena.
This article was published by i24NEWS on November 14, 2017.
Yaakov Lappin is a Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, where he recently published the study The Low-Profile War Between Israel and Hezbollah. He specializes in Israel’s defense establishment, military affairs, and the Middle Eastern strategic environment.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Masochism, Thanatos the Freudian Death Drive, and whatever makes people submit to the Stockholm syndrome. It is a universal, not necessarily Jewish phenomenon.
I wonder what made the ‘deep state in making’ back in 1948 think they would need to volunteer the dearly captured weapons to the UN.
Yossi Hamburger (later Harel) the commander of Exodus, ran the operation. At some point he was instructed unequivocally to let go of the shipment. To unlock the impasse and facing what they felt a catastrophic outcome, they mobilized one of Ben Gurion’s inner circle comrades, rushed him over to Jerusalem where he broke into one of those nightly meetings and got the Prime Minister’s approval.
There must have been inexperience in the bureaucracy, estrangement of Realpolitik, the desire to please the gentiles, prove that this new nation abides by the rules, a love of legalism above reality, and yes self-hate.
But not to forget that a fair share of the movers and shakers had been active fellow travelers of the British. They cooperated intensively with the powers to be and would continue to do so in the new state.
Same as many politicians today are dancing to the tunes blowing over from the EU or from the US, even when that implies going against Israel’s interests.
@ adamdalgliesh:
“Everything is justiciable”…..
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer: Thanks for informing us about this disturbing historical background to Israel’s present day bureaucracy and lawyerarchy, Hugo. Apparently self-sabotage by Israel’s civil service and “legal” establishments goes back a very long time. I knew of the hijacking of the Syrian ship and the capture of its arms cargo before, from reading several hisoties of the War of Independence. But this is the first I have heard about the efforts of the Foreign Ministry and the Legal Affairs ministry to block the operation. I just don’t understand why we Jews are so self-destructive and inclined to self-sabotage. A penny for your thoughts on this subject, Hugo.
adamdalgliesh Said:
Suicidal self-hating destructive misbehaving of the judiciary has been typical of Israeli politics since its inception.
In August 21st, 1948, an Italian ship the ‘Argiero’ was intercepted at high sea by two Israeli Navy corvettes, the ‘Haganah’ and ‘Wedgewood’. Argiero had left Italy on its way to a Lebanese port, heavily loaded with weapons to be used by the Arab Liberation Army, the ALA from Syria against Israel.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry immediately sought to veto the Argiero operation, and insisted that “weapons seized in an act of piracy”, must be handed over to the UN which was entrusted with the Mid-East arms embargo.
At that time, the fledgling Israeli people’s army was barely armed. Maybe one in ten fighters carried a gun, and ammunition was in desperate need. Truman, running counter to wishful American myths and lore, had condemned the Israeli enterprise to defeat and its citizens to cruel death, by imposing a strict arms embargo on the Jewish State.
The Argiero carrying some 8’000 guns with rounds of ammunition, was a big deal in those days. At the outset of the war for Israel’s survival, the Haganah had about 10’000 guns and rifles. An earlier ship the Nora had broken the embargo carrying 4’500 guns. It is credited with saving Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, the British had set up, trained and equipped a Jordanian army to be unleashed on the Jewish nation without constraints of a weapons boycott. Regular armies of 5 Arab States, in addition to contingents from Saudi Arabia and Yemen as well as local insurgents and the Arab League’s ALA were converging on Israel in order to slaughter its Jewish population.
The Holocaust horrors were still fresh in everybody’s mind. Yet Israel’s Minister of Legal Affairs in the constituting interim government, objected to the Navy’s seizing the weapons because a sovereign nation must not seize a ship at high sea.
Fortunately, sanity prevailed. Blocked by the bureaucracy of two ministries, heads of Israel’s security establishment finally secured Ben Gurion’s personal last minute intervention.
Battle hardened troops wept openly when the Etzioni Brigade finally received the long awaited arms a few days later.
@ adamdalgliesh:
I believe there is consensus in both the military and political class that a war the Hezis given their missile power can not be waged cautiously but with all out power and rapidly.
The current strategy you are watching unfold is knock out key missiles or technology when found, reducing their potential power. The tunnels have been diminished but the work is likely not done.
Good God, Bear, let us hope that Netanyahu has the guts to overule the lawyers and do what you say. Since the Israeli press says the Attorney General is planning to indict him anyway (on trumped-up, politically motivated false charges), he should tell himself–“Vat have I got to lose?” (a line from a 1930s film by German-born, anti-Nazi Hollywood movie star Marlene Dietrich. Irrelevant, but Dietrich showed great courage as a USO girl in Bastogne when American troops were beseiged there during the Battle of the Bulge, even though Goebbels had vowed to have her killed if the German captured her. Probably Bibi never heard of her, but if he has, I hope she will be an inspiration to him).
The danger from the North with more than 100,000 missiles requires Israel to completely ignore lawyers and destroy Lebanese infrastructure nearly completely including the dual civilian-military homes in Southern Lebanon.
Israel has put Lebanon on notice about this more than once. Just like in 2006 when the Hezbollah stronghold of in South Beruit was smashed.
There should not be any more warnings but rapid over powering force. Otherwise Israelis will be in serious danger. Even with a rapid response Israel will have significant damage and deaths in a full war.
Israel at the appropriate time should launch a pre-emptive war so as to have the least amount damage to it and destroy known missile storage sites.
Israel has the military capability to destroy its enemies in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. But internally, Israel and the IDF are run by pro-Arab lawyers appointed directly or indirectly by Israel’s pro-Arab, anti-Zionist Supreme Court. The High Court of “Justice” usurped absolute power in a “constitutional coup” engineered by Chief Justice Aharon Barak in the 1990s, who proclaimed that “everything is justifiable”, and should be judged not according to the laws of Israel, but according to the ethical values of the most “enlightened sections of Israeli society, which were embodied by the Supreme Court. As a result of Barak’s coup, every batallion of the Israeli army has a lawyer attached to it to make sure that the unit does not committ any “war crimes” by killing any Arabs. Under these conditions and this political system of a secret unelected government, Israe l’s technological superiority is useless.