Quick Comment On Israel's Likely Retaliation

A repost from a comment I made at Antiwar.com...and more...

This is what I just posted at Antiwar.com in response to their article “Report: Israel Tells US It Has No Choice But To Respond to Iran”. It’s merely my quick thought on the options Israel has to respond to the recent Iran retaliation for Israel’s attack on the Iranian Consulate in Damascus, Syria, followed by my overview of the situation.

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I would predict that Israel will attack Iran directly in the next round of escalation. The size of the Iranian attack is such that Israel can not restore its "deterrence" by merely bombing Iranian assets in Syria or something similar.

Israel has limited capability to launch a major air offensive in Iran without massive US support. However, it should be able to make some air attacks inside Iran if it wants to.

The problem for an air attack is Iran's air defenses which are quite good, if not up to Russian capability. It's quite possible that Israel will lose aircraft and pilots.

Israel also has the capability to fire missiles at Iran. It doesn't have that many missiles which can reach Iran, however, and those are reserved for Israel's nuclear arsenal, which means if it uses a conventional warhead on the missiles used to attack Iran, then it has that many fewer in case it has to go nuclear in the future. If it uses a nuclear warhead on one or more missiles to hit Iran, then all bets are off and in the classic phase: "The SHTF".

Israel could conceivably launch a missile attack with conventional warheads solely from however many of its five Dolphin-class submarines are at sea. This would eliminate the probability of its losing aircraft, and would demonstrate its second-strike capability. I would give this option a high probability of it being Israel's most likely response.

The other problem for an Israeli attack is that Iran will retaliate even more heavily than the recent mostly performative attack, whether Israel's warheads are conventional or nuclear. But of course this is entirely the point: to enable Israel to start a wider war (which it has essentially already done.)

The other probability is that Israel will invade Lebanon since this is and has been a primary goal since the 2006 debacle. Iran showed Israel with its strike that Israel can't afford to endure an enormous number of missile hits which Hezbollah can provide. So Israel has to take on Hezbollah first before suffering Iran's missile retaliations.

The problem for Israel there, as I've said for 16 years, is that if Israel invades Lebanon, they will be subjected to the same Hezbollah barrage as if Israel or the US attacked Iran. This is a "rock and a hard place" problem that can only be solved with US involvement in the Lebanon invasion - OR a US attack on Iran on behalf of Israel. And the latter is likely to provoke a full-scale Hezbollah attack on Israel, so that will require US intervention anyway.

Let there be no doubt that whatever the Biden White House says about "not supporting an Israel retaliation" is completely meaningless. The US and Israel has planned this wider war and the US will be involved no matter what Israel decides to do.

There is no such thing as "Israel dragging the US" into this war. The US is a full partner in it.

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I’d like to add some additional comments similar to what I’ve posted over the last couple days.

First, note that the Iranian attack was a brilliant display of using drones and ballistic missiles in a coordinated way which played to the strengths and weaknesses of both systems. The slower drones were used to “soak up” Israel’s Iron Dome air defense missiles, thus clearing the way for the fast ballistic missiles.

Second, Scott Ritter believes Iran used a new type of missile which in its terminal phase explodes a sheaf of “bomblets” which in turn also soak up air defense missiles thus allowing the follow-on ballistic missiles to penetrate the defenses.

Ritter also made the following comment on X (Twitter):

The U.S. has an advanced AN/TPY-2 X-band radar stationed at Har Qeren, in the Negev desert.

Its mission is to detect Iranian missile launches, and pass targeting data to Israeli Arrow and David’s Sling and U.S. THAAD ABM batteries deployed to protect sensitive Israeli sites, including Dimona and the Nevatim and Ramon air bases.

Iranian missiles struck both Nevatim and Ramon air bases. The best surveillance radar in the world, working in concert with the most sophisticated anti-missile defenses in the world, were impotent in the face of the Iranian attack.

For all those trying to spin yesterday’s events as an Israeli victory, chew on that fact: The best missile defense system in the world could not protect the sites they were tasked with protecting from attacks by Iranian missiles.

Who has deterrence supremacy?

It ain’t Israel.

Today we have a US assessment of the result:

A senior American official told ABC News that at least nine Iranian missiles penetrated Israeli air defenses and hit two Israeli air bases.

He added that five ballistic missiles hit the Nevatim Air Base, causing damage to a C-130 transport plane, a runway, and storage facilities.

The official said that four additional ballistic missiles hit the Nevatim Air Base.

I want to emphasize the Nevatim Air Base, because that is reportedly where some of Israel’s air-delivered nuclear weapons are stored. It is also reportedly the base from which the Israeli aircraft flew to deliver the Israeli attack on the Iranian Consulate.

But the key point is is that Iran hit a base with part of Israel’s nuclear arsenal. This was a clear signal that Iran can threaten Israel’s nuclear arsenal, or at least part of it.

And this was not the first time…

Israel’s nuclear missile silos - as opposed to its air-delivered nuclear bombs - are reportedly located at a facility called Sdot Micha Airbase near Beit Shemesh in the central part of Israel. On October 7, during Hamas’ attacks, rockets were fired by Hamas at Sdot Micha, causing a fire that burned 40 acres of the base. The Times of Israel report included the following:

Speaking to The New York Times, Hans Kristensen, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project, estimated that there are 25-50 nuclear-capable Jericho missile launchers at the base, which experts believe can carry nuclear warheads.

According to foreign reports, Israel has a small stockpile of nuclear weapons, although the country has never acknowledged this. While Jericho missiles are designed to be equipped with nuclear warheads, the warheads themselves are likely kept at a separate location, Kristensen said.

What is known about Israel’s nuclear capabilities is detailed in a report from The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 2022 entitled : “Israeli nuclear weapons, 2021.”

The other important point about the Iran strike on Israel is that it seriously undercut the Israeli population concept that “the IDF will protect us”, which was already seriously undercut by the Hamas attack on October 7.

This is why Israel has literally no choice in whether to respond to the Iran attack. The Iran attack was qualitatively superior to the Israel attack on Iran’s Consulate. It was much larger and much more sophisticated than a simple missile attack by air on a single building. It totally destroys the myth that Israel’s Iron Dome is sufficient to defend Israel from Iran, let alone Hezbollah which has over 100,000 rockets, drones and missiles which, depending on how many are launched at once, can completely overwhelm the Israeli air defenses - even with help from the US and Jordan - and completely expose the Israeli population.

There are numerous videos online showing the panicked Israel population during the Iran attack. Imagine the effect if Hezbollah began showering Israel, not with 100-200 drones and missiles, but 1,000 per day. A report from The International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (a conservative Israeli think tank at Reichman University, in Herzliya, Israel) suggested that Hezbollah could fire as many as 2,500-3,000 missiles and drones per day in a hypothetical war between Israel and Hezbollah. The report has the ludicrous notion that “The barrage will continue day after day until the end of the war, likely three weeks after its outbreak.” If they think a war with Hezbollah will last only three weeks, they are delusional.

As I’ve been saying, again for the last sixteen years, a war between Israel and Hezbollah would result in the Israeli population residing in bomb shelters almost literally 24x7. This would end the Israeli economy which is already hurting badly from the effects of the Hamas war, the Hezbollah conflict in the north, and the Red Sea blockade by Ansarallah (“the Houthis”). This would likely result in the Israeli electorate, a portion of which is already enraged against the corrupt Netanyahu regime, turning on the Israeli government in the next elections (assuming Israel as a state survived, which is problematic) and voting out the regime in preference to a less warlike government. This would be a disaster for the hardline Zionists.

Again repeating my predictions over sixteen years, the only “solution” to this problem for the Israeli regime - in their minds, at least - is for the US to assist Israel in the invasion of Lebanon. This would at the very least require US Air Force and Navy air power to conduct a continuous and large-scale bombing campaign in southern Lebanon, the stronghold of Hezbollah. This would result in the deaths of thousands of civilian Lebanese similar to the deaths being caused in Gaza by the Israeli campaign as well as the deaths caused by the US in Iraq during the 2003 conflict and indeed going back to Vietnam itself. In other words, the US itself will be conducting what is essentially a campaign of genocide. Let there be no doubt - the US would do it.

Unfortunately for Israel, it also would not defeat Hezbollah. This is because Hezbollah, like Hamas in Gaza, have long ago realized the problem of air bombardment. While historically air campaigns have been mostly ineffective at crippling an enemy army, they are very effective at destroying civilian infrastructure, which can’t move and can’t hide. But an enemy which has burrowed into the ground, in bunkers and tunnels up to sixty meters below ground as is the case in Gaza and southern Lebanon, is mostly invulnerable to air strikes even by so-called “bunker buster” bombs. Besides the depth of the structures, the first problem is finding them which is extremely difficult from the air and sometimes even from the ground. This was a major problem for the US in Vietnam fifty years ago and has only gotten worse since.

From these bunkers and tunnels, as Hezbollah demonstrated in 2006 and Hamas is demonstrating now - there are tons of videos released by Hamas and the other militias in Gaza you can watch on Telegram, Youtube and other social media; the Electronic Intifida’s Jon Elmer analyzes these periodically - the insurgents can pop up almost anywhere outside or inside the lines of their enemy, and conduct very effective attacks against their enemy, resulting in significant casualty rates while minimizing their own. It is well known that Israel is concealing the extent of its casualty rates in Gaza while it is also asserting casualty rates for the Palestinian insurgents and making claims of having “eliminated” insurgent groups in specific areas in Gaza which are clearly overstated and even ludicrous. Watch Jon Elmer’s analyses linked above.

Scott Ritter has said very simply, “Israel has lost the war.” And so it has.

So it has no choice but to expand it. And the US has no choice but to go along.

This insurgent capability is why we haven’t had an Iran war up until now. It was delayed while Israel and the US searched for a solution to how to start the war without 1) being BLAMED for starting it - every war has to be started with at least a nominal “reason” which can be put on the enemy, and 2) without suffering an immediate disastrous impact on the economy, either the Israeli economy or the US economy as a result of a spiking oil price.

It has also waited for both the craziest government in Israel and the craziest government in the US to be elected. Which has now happened.

One additional point: A lot of analysts seem to have a major “wish fulfillment” thing going on where they constantly suggest that this conflict will somehow “wind down” or that various parties will “refrain” from escalating further. You see the same effect in the Ukraine conflict: everyone talks about “negotiated settlements” and the like. Even worse, people keep talking about “Biden should do this” and “Biden should do that” - when it’s painfully clear to anyone with an IQ over the temperature of freezing that Biden isn’t going to do any of those things. So why keep repeating them? Answer: Because these people don’t live in the real world any more than Biden and the US neocons or the Israeli crazies do.

Face facts, folks! As I said above, we have the craziest regimes in power in both Israel and the US. You all know my opinion of the human race: whenever humans are given the choice between a bad option and a good option, they will unfailingly choose the bad option.

This ain’t over. The Iran attack is just the beginning.