An ISR viewpoint which opens up possibilities

Submitted by Michel C. Zala (Switzerland), Mar 2, 2012 at 15:11

Amos Yadlin, a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, is the director of Israel's Institute for National Security Studies.

He published the following article in the NY Times

Israel's last chance to strike Iran

In a nutshell: it will depend on Obama next week to issue some form of pre-emptive Holocaust Declaration to prevent ISR from being forced into a pre-emptive strike. Considering that it is highly unlikely that the Obama administration will be willing to issue such a red line statement (The USA will not accept or allow Iran developing nuclear weapons and will by military means prevent any further progress in that direction) - in other words, if the US guarantees that they will take military action, if the Iranian regime does not compromise, only then may ISR abstain from unilateral action.

Since I do not foresee that to happen (due to ideology, election and domestic frame conditions) my viewpoint and projections seem to be confirmed again by a member of the team which struck Osirak in 1987 and became a high ranking member of the ISR intelligence community. Where he evidently differs from my perception is, that he does not seem to acknhowledge any need for tactical nukes and only speaks of a conventional strike.

He makes a very strong argument, that a delay of a few years is the best case scenario for ISR, as the Iranian installations cannot be fully destroyed and the mentioned delay offer, as historically seen (Osirak, Syria) enough "incentive for the Iranian regime to be sufficiently deterred from resuming the development of nukes alltogether.

I have to say that I buy his rationale, as it offers ISR options and room to manoeuvre (escalate, if need be). Forgoing my assumed mission objective of highest possible to utter annihilation of the program in lieu of hampering, delaying, slowing down the progress for just a few years (which may be enough for sanctions and parallel actions to kick in) and hoping for a strong demonstration of the cost and consequences of non-compliance with the option of further escalation to tactical nukes to the Iranian Regime, his vision and perspective make a lot of sense (and isolate ISR a lot less in the world, reducing the risk potential of scenario 1 a great deal), which is why I now came to the conclusion that the pre-emptive strike will likely happen, however not (yet) deploying nuclear weaponry.

Quite actually, my scenario 1, with this new subscenario may well open up additional options and outcomes for stage II, which is why I believe that this will be the logical ISR path to confront this threat.

Inasmuch, as I feel that the next conflict is inevitable and forthcoming soon, which saddens and disquiets me greatly, to some extent I feel a bit better now, as I now too do no longer believe in an immediate nuclear deployment with all those dire consequences it would entail - not to speak about the many variables and uncertainties possibly leading to a regional catastrophy, if not a global conflict.

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