Despite Israel’s top-notch air force, launching a long-range strike against a multitude of hidden targets in Iran entails huge risks and uncertain rewards. At most, say Israeli intelligence sources, an attack — which Israel would only undertake with a nod and perhaps logistical support from the U.S. — is likely to stall Iran’s program by [...]

read more....

What would happen to the world economy?
Quite simply the economic consequences of such a raid would be cataclysmic.
It isn’t just that Iran is the world’s second largest oil producer, with the third largest global reserves of oil and the second largest of natural gas. The truly significant part is where Iran actually is. Even assuming [...]

read more....

U.S. President George W. Bush has given Israel an “amber light” to begin preparations for a military attack on Iran, a Pentagon official told The Sunday Times this week.
“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said.
The official told the Times that Bush [...]

read more....

An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be far more extensive than the 1980 raid. Some of the would-be targets for the Israeli Air Force (IAF) are hardened with concrete coverings and underground rooms. Dozens of planes would have to dodge radar and antiaircraft missile batteries to deliver multiple payloads of penetrating warheads—bought from the [...]

read more....

Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities
Orginally published in April 2006.
This paper will attempt to fill this gap in the existing literature by providing a rough net assessment of an Israeli strike on known Iranian nuclear facilities. It will do so by taking the strike on Osirak as a generic template for the strike [...]

read more....

The truth is that Israel might invade Iran, but only when there is no other alternative, only if the international community falls down on its job and allows Iran to achieve independent nuclear capability. That time is not now. And should that time come, Israel will not announce it anywhere, not in the Israeli press, [...]

read more....

Will Israel attack Iran? I see the probability of an Israeli attack at less than 50% with the Olmert government.
Olmert knows he needs to stop Iran from producing nuclear weapons, but he just doesn’t have the will to pull off an attack on Iran.
The bottom line - we need to wait for a new Israeli [...]

read more....

DEBKAfile’s Western military sources do not believe that if Israel does attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will resort to the old-fashioned aerial blitz tactic employed in 1981 for bombing Iraq’s Osirak reactor. They therefore challenge the US officials’ conclusion that Israel’s aerial exercise in conjunction with the Greek Air Force over Crete in early June [...]

read more....

Israel has mounted a major long-range military air exercise – involving more than 100 F15 and F16 fighters – as a rehearsal for a potential strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, American officials have indicated.
The fighters, along with refuelling tankers and helicopters able to rescue downed pilots, were mobilised during the first week of June over [...]

read more....

DEBKAfile: Our Washington sources report that president George W. Bush is closer than ever before to ordering a limited missile-air bombardment of the IRGC-al Qods Brigade’s installations in Iran. It is planned to target training camps and the munitions factories pumping fighters, missiles and roadside bombs to the Iraqi insurgency, Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian terrorist [...]

read more....