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By Edward N. Luttwak
Many commentators argue that a preemptive air attack
against Iran's nuclear installations is unfeasible. It would not
be swift or surgical, they say, because it would require
thousands of strike and defense-suppression sorties. And it is
likely to fail even then because some facilities might be too
well hidden or too strongly protected. There may well be other,
perfectly valid reasons to oppose an attack on Iran's nuclear
sites. But let's not pretend that such an attack has no chance
of success. In fact, the odds are rather good.
The
skeptics begin sensibly enough by rejecting any direct
comparison with Israel's 1981 air attack that incapacitated the
Osirak reactor, stopping Saddam Hussein's first try at producing
plutonium bombs. Iran is evidently following a different and
much larger-scale path to nuclear weapons, by the centrifuge
"enrichment" of uranium hexafluoride gas to increase the
proportion of fissile uranium 235. It requires a number of
different plants operating in series to go from natural uranium
to highly enriched uranium formed in the specific shapes needed
to obtain an explosive chain reaction. Some of these plants,
notably the Natanz centrifuge plant, are both very large and
built below ground with thick overhead protection.
It is at
this point that the argument breaks down. Yes, Iraq's weapon
program of 1981 was stopped by a single air strike carried out
by less than a squadron of fighter-bombers because it was
centered in a single large reactor building. Once it was
destroyed, the mission was accomplished. To do the same to
Iran's 100-odd facilities would require almost a hundred times
as many sorties as the Israelis flew in 1981, which would strain
even the U.S. Air Force. Some would even add many more sorties
to carry out a preliminary suppression campaign against Iran's
air defenses (a collection of inoperable anti-aircraft weapons
and obsolete fighters with outdated missiles). But the claim
that to stop Iran's program all of its nuclear sites must be
destroyed is simply wrong.
An air attack is not a Las Vegas demolitions contract,
where nothing must be left but well-flattened ground for the new
casino to be built. Iran might need 100 buildings in good
working order to make its bomb, but it is enough to demolish a
few critical installations to delay its program for years - and
perhaps longer because it would become harder or impossible for
Iran to buy the materials it bought when its efforts were still
secret. Some of these installations may be thickly protected
against air attack, but it seems that their architecture has not
kept up with the performance of the latest penetration bombs.
Nor could
destroyed items be easily replaced by domestic production. In
spite of all the claims of technological self-sufficiency by its
engineer-president, not even metal parts of any complexity can
be successfully machined in Iran. More than 35 percent of Iran's
gasoline must now be imported because the capacity of its
foreign-built refineries cannot be expanded without components
currently under U.S. embargo, and which the locals cannot copy.
Aircraft regularly fall out of the sky because Iranians are
unable to reverse-engineer spare parts.
The bombing
of Iran's nuclear installations may still be a bad idea for
other reasons, but not because it would require a huge air
offensive. On the contrary, it could all be done in a single
night. One may hope that Iran's rulers will therefore accept a
diplomatic solution rather than gamble all on wildly exaggerated
calculations.
Edward N. Luttwak is a senior fellow at the Center for
Strategic & International Studies in Washington. The article was
originally published in The Wall Street Journal.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/686984.html
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