All Posts Tagged With: "ISIS"

Israel Could Almost Certainly Devastate Iran’s Nuke Program But It Would Need Help to Keep It That Way

A new report titled “Can Military Strikes Destroy Iran’s Gas Centrifuge Program? Probably Not,” by The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) says the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program would require a sustained air combat campaign by the United States presumably because Israel couldn’t sustain it after its initial attacks. .

ISIS’s premise is that Iran’s nuclear program has been dispersed, concealed, and protected and this would rule out a limited air strike on Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities. Destruction it says “would need multiple strikes against many sites.”

ISIS said because Teheran’s uranium enrichment program is based on gas centrifuges, they could be dispersed throughout Iran. Conversely Iraq and Syria had sought to develop nuclear weapons based on reactors it made both vulnerable to pinpoint strikes.

ISIS thinks that “Following an attack, Iran could quickly rebuild its centrifuge program in small, easily hidden facilities focused on making weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons,” the report, dated Aug. 7, said.

The two leading Iranian nuclear facilities were identified as Isfahan and Natanz. ISIS said the destruction of these two facilities would require “far more military ordinance than that used” to bomb Iraq’s Osirak reactor or Syria’s Al Kibar. Israel destroyed Osirak in 1981 and Al Kibar in 2007. ISIS does not describe how or if Israel could wipeout Isfahan and Natanz.

Absent ISIS opinion on that subjects it is very likely that Israel has sophisticated ordinance that it could almost certainly deliver spot on target with devastating results.

Further ISIS infers that Israel has likely mapped Iran’s nuclear facilities in detail it, most probably with on-ground agents as it did in Syria last fall. It does not discuss what would be “ball bearing plant equivalent” for Iran’s or where it is making precision centrifuge parts. Once know that becomes equivalent to destroying Nazi Germanys ability to make ball bearings for it was those steel balls that literally propelled Hitler’s war machines - so it is with the centrifuge parts factories.

The report says Isfahan was said to contain more than 300 tons of uranium hexafluoride, or UF6, a feeder gas that could facilitate the production of more than 30 nuclear weapons. Clearly destroying that would create a significant contamination problem for Iran and set Iran back many months and it a priority.

ISIS’s contention that Iran can somehow establish a cottage industry of thousands of centrifuges and effectively serialize the sequential refinement of purer and purer uranium 235 feels far fetched.

Whether ISIS’s report is spot on, flawed or of limited efficacy it does underscore the complexities involved.

ISIS said Western intelligence remains uncertain of the precise locations and vulnerabilities of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Personally I have little doubt Israel has and can apply the tactics necessary to badly damage Iran nuclear ambitions, and unless Iran suddenly shows a hitherto unseen willingness to be reasonable it is going to be proved, and sooner than later.