Israel weighs options on nuclear Iran

October 23, 2004

Increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear program, Israel is weighing its options and has not ruled out a military strike to prevent the Islamic republic from gaining the capability to build atomic weapons, officials and analysts say.

Israel would much prefer a diplomatic agreement to shut down Iran's uranium-enrichment program, they said, but if it concluded that Tehran was approaching a "point of no return" it would not be deterred by the difficulty of a military operation, the prospect of retaliation or the international reaction.

French, British and German officials met Iranian representatives in Vienna this week with an offer to support the building of light-water reactor systems - less suited for developing fissile material for nuclear weapons - if Iran would scrap its uranium enrichment program. But an Iranian official said a deal was yet to be reached.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, and his top aides have been asserting for months that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose a clear threat to Israel's existence. They have repeatedly threatened, in elliptical but unmistakable terms, to use force if diplomacy and the threat of sanctions fail.

The Defence Minister, Shaul Mofaz, told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot last month that "all options" were being weighed to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. The army chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, declared: "We will not rely on others."

Iran presented "a combination of factors that rise to the highest level of Israeli threat perception", said Gerald Steinberg, an analyst at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies.

"Nuclear weapons in a country with a fundamentalist regime, a government with which we have no diplomatic contact, a known sponsor of terrorist groups like Hezbollah and which wants to wipe Israel off the map - that makes stable deterrence extremely difficult, if not impossible."

Israel's concerns are magnified by the fact that Iran already has the Shahab-3 missile, capable of reaching Israel with a conventional or non-conventional warhead. Iran said this week that it had test-fired an upgraded, more accurate, version of the missile.

Pre-emptive strikes have always been an element of Israel's military doctrine. However, experts are divided on whether the precedent of the air raid that destroyed Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981 should be viewed as a window into Israel's thinking on Iran.

"The comparison to 1981 is of the utmost relevance, because the decision making is based on the same factors," said Danny Shoham, a former military intelligence officer who is a researcher at Bar-Ilan University. "Those are: What is the reliability of the intelligence picture? What would be the response of the opponent? What is the point of no return in terms of nuclear development, and what would be the international response?"

He and others noted that Iran's nuclear sites were widely scattered, in many cases hidden underground and heavily fortified, so there would be less opportunity to deal the Iranian program a single devastating blow.

"In order to undermine or disrupt the Iranian nuclear program you would have to strike at least three or four sites," said Ephraim Kam, of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "Otherwise the damage would be too limited, and it would not postpone the program by more than a year or two, and this could, in the end, be worse than doing nothing."

However, few say they believe logistical challenges alone would hold Israel back.

"The Israeli Air Force is extremely, extremely creative in its problem-solving approach," said Dan Schueftan, of the National Security Studies Centre at Haifa University and the Shalem Centre.

Reuters, Los Angeles Times

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