Saturday, 23 November, 2024
With Israel poised to launch an attack on Iran after having caught both allies and adversaries off guard with its blitz against Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, discussions abound about an inevitable descent into a new, pan-Middle Eastern war.
However, experts in intelligence and military decision-making suggest that there are still mechanisms in place to prevent a broader regional conflict that could ensnare both Israel and Tehran and draw in other nations.
Political analysts indicate that Israel is unlikely to hesitate in executing an aerial assault on Iran, potentially within the next few days, in retaliation for Tehran's recent launch of approximately 180 ballistic missiles aimed at Israel on Tuesday.
"Whoever attacks us, we will retaliate," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated to his security cabinet on Tuesday night, encapsulating his doctrine of deterrence.
Despite this firm stance, Israeli officials have conveyed to their U.S. counterparts that their response to Iran's assault will be "calibrated." However, they have not yet disclosed a final list of potential targets, according to a source in Washington familiar with the discussions, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the security matters.
"I believe that the selected targets will be meticulously and thoughtfully chosen," stated Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and negotiator during the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 2000s. He noted that sites of military significance to Iran, such as missile infrastructure, communication centers, and power plants, are likely to be among the targets.
Many experts, including over half a dozen former military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials from the United States and the Middle East, agree that Israel is unlikely to strike Iran's oil facilities, which are vital to its economy, or its nuclear sites.
Attacking these highly sensitive targets would likely provoke a heightened Iranian response, including potential retaliation against the oil production facilities of U.S. allies in the region, particularly Gulf Arab states, they cautioned.
U.S. President Joe Biden stated on Thursday that he would not negotiate in public when asked if he had urged Israel to refrain from attacking Iran's oil facilities. This remark came just hours after he contributed to a spike in global oil prices by revealing that Washington was discussing potential Israeli strikes.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets after Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, Oct 1, 2024
Israel has taken much of the world by surprise with the scale of its offensive against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. This includes actions such as the detonation of thousands of militants' pagers and walkie-talkies, the assassination of leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut airstrike, and a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.
"It would be unwise for outsiders to attempt to predict Israel's attack plan," said Norman Roule, a former senior CIA officer who served as the U.S. intelligence community's top manager for Iran from 2008 to 2017.
IRAN: A CAUTIOUS ADVERSARY
Any wider Middle Eastern conflict is unlikely to resemble the grinding ground wars of past decades between opposing armies.
Only two sovereign states, Israel and Iran, have so far militarily locked horns over the past year, and they are separated by two other countries and vast tracts of desert. The distance has limited their exchanges to strikes by air, covert operations or the use of proxy militias such as Hezbollah.
Iran has long vowed to destroy the state of Israel, yet has proven to be a cautious adversary in this crisis, carefully calibrating its two aerial attacks on Israel, the first in April - after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing several commanders - and the second this week after Nasrallah's killing.
The only reported death from Iran's two attacks was a luckless Palestinian hit by a missile casing that fell from the sky into the West Bank on Tuesday.
Egypt, which fought wars with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and signed a peace treaty in 1979, is widely thought to have little interest in getting pulled into the conflict. Syria, an Iranian ally which has also battled Israel in the past, is sunk in economic collapse after a decade of civil war.
The wealthy Gulf states, close US security partners, want to steer clear too. Two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters that Gulf ministers held talks with Iran on the sidelines of a conference in Qatar on Thursday, seeking to reassure Tehran of their neutrality in any escalation that could engulf their oil production sites.
The United States says it will defend Israel to the hilt against their common foe, Iran and its proxies, but no one thinks it will put boots on the ground like it did in the two Gulf wars in 1990 and 2003 when it went to war against Iraq.
NUCLEAR SITES INSIGHTS?
War is already a grim reality for many in the region.
The Oct 7 attack on Israel by fighters from Palestinian group Hamas killed 1,200 people, while the ensuing Israeli battering of Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 people and displaced almost all the enclave's 2.3 million population, according to local officials and UN figures. Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have also forced thousands of families in northern Israel and southern Lebanon from their homes.
The United States is not pressing Israel to refrain from military retaliation against Iran's latest attack - as it did in April - but encouraging a careful consideration of potential consequences to any response, according to the person in Washington familiar with the discussions.
Washington has proved to have limited influence over Israel though, and Netanyahu has remained implacable about the targeting of his country's enemies since the Hamas attack.
"The Israelis have already blown through any number of red lines that we laid down for them," said Richard Hooker, a retired US Army officer who served in the National Security Council under Republican and Democratic presidents.
The US presidential election on Nov 5 also means Biden's powers of persuasion are limited during his final months in the White House.
Biden told reporters on Wednesday that Israel has a right to respond "proportionally". He has made it clear he does not support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, where Israel and Western states say Iranians have a programme aimed at building nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
Hooker said targeting such sites was possible but not probable "because when you do something like that you put the Iranian leadership in a position to do something pretty dramatic in response".
Israel, which is widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state though neither confirms nor denies that it possesses such weapons, has long considered Tehran's nuclear programme an existential threat. Iran's nuclear sites are spread over many locations, some of them deep underground.
OIL FACILITIES: 'HIT THEM HARD'
In Washington, whose sanctions on Tehran have failed to shut down Iran's oil industry, there are calls for strikes on refineries and other energy facilities.
"These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime," US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement.
For Arab states on the other side of the Gulf, action targeting Iranian oil facilities would set off alarm bells, fearing a vengeful Tehran.
Saudi Arabia, which until the Gaza war was in talks on a US defence pact and a possible normalisation deal with Israel, saw its oil sites come under attack in 2019 from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, where the kingdom was embroiled in conflict for years.
Oil prices have traded in a narrow range of $70-$90 per barrel in recent years despite the war between Russia and Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.
Analysts say OPEC has enough spare capacity to cope even if all Iran's production was knocked out. But it would struggle to compensate if an escalation damaged oil capacity in the producer group's linchpin Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
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With Israel poised to launch an attack on Iran after having caught both allies and adversaries off guard with its blitz against Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, discussions abound about an inevitable descent into a new, pan-Middle Eastern war.
However, experts in intelligence and military decision-making suggest that there are still mechanisms in place to prevent a broader regional conflict that could ensnare both Israel and Tehran and draw in other nations.
Political analysts indicate that Israel is unlikely to hesitate in executing an aerial assault on Iran, potentially within the next few days, in retaliation for Tehran's recent launch of approximately 180 ballistic missiles aimed at Israel on Tuesday.
"Whoever attacks us, we will retaliate," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated to his security cabinet on Tuesday night, encapsulating his doctrine of deterrence.
Despite this firm stance, Israeli officials have conveyed to their U.S. counterparts that their response to Iran's assault will be "calibrated." However, they have not yet disclosed a final list of potential targets, according to a source in Washington familiar with the discussions, who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the security matters.
"I believe that the selected targets will be meticulously and thoughtfully chosen," stated Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official and negotiator during the Palestinian intifadas of the 1980s and 2000s. He noted that sites of military significance to Iran, such as missile infrastructure, communication centers, and power plants, are likely to be among the targets.
Many experts, including over half a dozen former military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials from the United States and the Middle East, agree that Israel is unlikely to strike Iran's oil facilities, which are vital to its economy, or its nuclear sites.
Attacking these highly sensitive targets would likely provoke a heightened Iranian response, including potential retaliation against the oil production facilities of U.S. allies in the region, particularly Gulf Arab states, they cautioned.
U.S. President Joe Biden stated on Thursday that he would not negotiate in public when asked if he had urged Israel to refrain from attacking Iran's oil facilities. This remark came just hours after he contributed to a spike in global oil prices by revealing that Washington was discussing potential Israeli strikes.
Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets after Iran fired a salvo of ballistic missiles, as seen from Ashkelon, Israel, Oct 1, 2024
Israel has taken much of the world by surprise with the scale of its offensive against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah. This includes actions such as the detonation of thousands of militants' pagers and walkie-talkies, the assassination of leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in a Beirut airstrike, and a ground incursion into southern Lebanon.
"It would be unwise for outsiders to attempt to predict Israel's attack plan," said Norman Roule, a former senior CIA officer who served as the U.S. intelligence community's top manager for Iran from 2008 to 2017.
IRAN: A CAUTIOUS ADVERSARY
Any wider Middle Eastern conflict is unlikely to resemble the grinding ground wars of past decades between opposing armies.
Only two sovereign states, Israel and Iran, have so far militarily locked horns over the past year, and they are separated by two other countries and vast tracts of desert. The distance has limited their exchanges to strikes by air, covert operations or the use of proxy militias such as Hezbollah.
Iran has long vowed to destroy the state of Israel, yet has proven to be a cautious adversary in this crisis, carefully calibrating its two aerial attacks on Israel, the first in April - after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Syria, killing several commanders - and the second this week after Nasrallah's killing.
The only reported death from Iran's two attacks was a luckless Palestinian hit by a missile casing that fell from the sky into the West Bank on Tuesday.
Egypt, which fought wars with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and signed a peace treaty in 1979, is widely thought to have little interest in getting pulled into the conflict. Syria, an Iranian ally which has also battled Israel in the past, is sunk in economic collapse after a decade of civil war.
The wealthy Gulf states, close US security partners, want to steer clear too. Two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters that Gulf ministers held talks with Iran on the sidelines of a conference in Qatar on Thursday, seeking to reassure Tehran of their neutrality in any escalation that could engulf their oil production sites.
The United States says it will defend Israel to the hilt against their common foe, Iran and its proxies, but no one thinks it will put boots on the ground like it did in the two Gulf wars in 1990 and 2003 when it went to war against Iraq.
NUCLEAR SITES INSIGHTS?
War is already a grim reality for many in the region.
The Oct 7 attack on Israel by fighters from Palestinian group Hamas killed 1,200 people, while the ensuing Israeli battering of Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 people and displaced almost all the enclave's 2.3 million population, according to local officials and UN figures. Clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have also forced thousands of families in northern Israel and southern Lebanon from their homes.
The United States is not pressing Israel to refrain from military retaliation against Iran's latest attack - as it did in April - but encouraging a careful consideration of potential consequences to any response, according to the person in Washington familiar with the discussions.
Washington has proved to have limited influence over Israel though, and Netanyahu has remained implacable about the targeting of his country's enemies since the Hamas attack.
"The Israelis have already blown through any number of red lines that we laid down for them," said Richard Hooker, a retired US Army officer who served in the National Security Council under Republican and Democratic presidents.
The US presidential election on Nov 5 also means Biden's powers of persuasion are limited during his final months in the White House.
Biden told reporters on Wednesday that Israel has a right to respond "proportionally". He has made it clear he does not support an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, where Israel and Western states say Iranians have a programme aimed at building nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.
Hooker said targeting such sites was possible but not probable "because when you do something like that you put the Iranian leadership in a position to do something pretty dramatic in response".
Israel, which is widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state though neither confirms nor denies that it possesses such weapons, has long considered Tehran's nuclear programme an existential threat. Iran's nuclear sites are spread over many locations, some of them deep underground.
OIL FACILITIES: 'HIT THEM HARD'
In Washington, whose sanctions on Tehran have failed to shut down Iran's oil industry, there are calls for strikes on refineries and other energy facilities.
"These oil refineries need to be hit and hit hard because that is the source of cash for the regime," US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said in a statement.
For Arab states on the other side of the Gulf, action targeting Iranian oil facilities would set off alarm bells, fearing a vengeful Tehran.
Saudi Arabia, which until the Gaza war was in talks on a US defence pact and a possible normalisation deal with Israel, saw its oil sites come under attack in 2019 from the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, where the kingdom was embroiled in conflict for years.
Oil prices have traded in a narrow range of $70-$90 per barrel in recent years despite the war between Russia and Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.
Analysts say OPEC has enough spare capacity to cope even if all Iran's production was knocked out. But it would struggle to compensate if an escalation damaged oil capacity in the producer group's linchpin Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates.
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