When writing about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, many analysts and journalists seem to forget that, although not of the type one might expect, the attack against Tehran nuke sites has already kicked off. Many still believe that a conventional military action against Iran is a future possibility forgetting that a long lasting hi-tech war in the region is (most probably) already in progress.
Last October, about 20 military personnel were killed in a blast at a Revolutionary Guards annunition depot. On Nov. 12, an explosion at Bid Ganeh, a military base located in the outskirs of Tehran killed General Hassan Tehrani Moqaddam, head of Iran’s missile defense program along with 30 other people. Few days ago, another blast in Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city, could have hit a uranium conversion site.
Israel is also widely held as responsible for using the Stuxnet virus to target Iran’s nuclear plants.
There also have been many other mysterious episodes: home and abroad assassinations and plane accidents as the one involving the Tupolev 134 that crashed near Petrozavodsk on June 21 while carrying five Russian scientists who assisted in the design of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Even if some of these incidents have been denied by the ayatollahs’ regime, their frequency and effectiveness is causing frustration among Iranians, appearantly unable to react to an invisible, unknown and sophisticated multi-directional and multi-dimensional attack. Hence, the new kind of war is also having the same psychological effects of a complex PSYOPS mission.
Israel has never confirmed its direct involvement in it but it is quite likely that the hi-tech stealth war is the only way to sabotage Ahmadinejad’s program preventing Iran’s “fierce, protracted and multi-pronged” retaliation.
Still, what tech was used to attack the nuclear plants remains an unanswered question. An intriguing theory (no more than that, please!) that was inspired by a talk with Giuliano Ranieri is that some killer Micro Air Vehicles, or MAVs, known to be under development by Israel for counter-terrorism activities could have been developed and used against the Iranian sites, even if such drones are not be capable to perform long range missions and could not be used for this kind of covert ops unless they are launched from the vicinity of the target or from a sort of “mothership” (another larger drone). By the way, did you know that Israeli UAVs can be remotely controlled by flying F-15s or AH-64 Apaches?
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It is also possible that the recent attacks involved one or more Dolphin Class submarines in the Red Sea (or Persian Gulf) capable of launching Popeye Turbo cruise missiles at 1,500 km from underwater.
Anyway the use of Israeli combat planes, “normal” drones and so on, is probably a “last resort” option, not only because it would cause an almost certain retaliatory attack using medium-range ballistic missiles, possibly armed with chemical, biological or radiological warheads, but also because it would be an extremely complex operation to plan and execute, even for a combat proven air force, with past experience on long range raids.
Too many combat aircraft, too many air-to-air refueling planes and support planes to go unnoticed.
And what about the route? Even if the US withdrawal from Iraq would give clearance to a raid on that direction, it’s hard to believe that a strike package would pass undetected by an air defense on a heightned readiness status during ingress and egress from their targets. Unless the Israeli have improved their already effective EW capabilities, the same that during Operation Orchard, on Sept. 6, 2007, let the 10 F-15Is attack a nuclear facility being built in Syria completely undetected.
An attack that Israel has never publicly confirmed.
