There Is No Good Reason for the U.S. to Join Israel’s War on Iran

The following passage is from a May 28 article in a magazine called Mosaic, which is funded by a conservative, self-described Zionist foundation called the Tikvah Fund, which has on its board, among others, Elliott Abrams, who helped fund Central American terrorist death squads in the 1980s and was criminally complicit in the Iran-Contra scandal (Abrams also writes a lot for Mosaic). It describes an Israeli special forces operation that took place last September on an Iranian underground missile factory in Syria:

In an era of subterranean warfare and dispersed threats, the IDF didn’t just eliminate a missile factory. It demonstrated that no target is beyond reach. This raid will be remembered as one of the most significant military operations in modern Israeli history—an assertion of capability, a recalibration of deterrence, and a signal to every adversary in the region that Israel’s reach is not limited by geography, and its resolve is not constrained by risk. Future adversaries will now think twice about burying threats underground—because Israel has proven it can bury them deeper.

The whole piece leading up to that climactic final paragraph is filled with the kinds of nouns and adjectives that stimulate a kind of almost sexual arousal from a certain type of militarily-enamored reader: “deep-penetration commando raid,” “physically breaching,” “hardened underground target,” “joint-force synchronization,” “strategic threat,” “doctrinal inflection point,” “battlefield logic,” “assault force,” “complexity and risk,” “rapid and lethal neutralization,” “clinical precision,” “tactical prowess,” “exfiltration,” “boots on the ground,” “expeditionary resolve.” The message it conveys is impossible to ignore: The IDF are a bunch of bad-ass motherfuckers, and Israel’s enemies best think twice about testing them.

The other message is that Israel is fully capable of dealing with Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, like Fordow and Natanz, all by itself:

Fordow, carved directly into a mountainside, is likely buried at a similar or even greater depth. Airstrikes alone may not suffice. If Israel assesses that Iran is on the brink of weaponizing its nuclear program, it may ultimately require a ground-based, deep-penetration operation akin to what was done at Deep Layer—one capable of physically breaching and disabling the hardened components of Iran’s nuclear apparatus. That would entail extraordinary risks, but, after the success of Many Ways, it is no longer beyond the realm of operational possibility. Israel has shown it can operate beneath hardened concrete and across sovereign boundaries alike.

Other close observers agree. Michael Weiss at New Lines Magazine writes that Israel can destroy Fordow on its own, though the effort would be “far more daring and complex” than the operation carried out in Syria.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be. This is from an interview with former International Atomic Energy Agency inspector David Albright in Tablet Magazine, another unapologetically Zionist publication (which I’ve written for).

Can Israel destroy Fordow without American help?

Yeah, I think so. They could mine it during a commando raid. They could potentially crack the ceiling or undermine the support structure of the halls. They can make it very difficult to get into. Effectively that’s destroying it, if you can’t get in without months and months of work. Then when you get in, it’s more than likely most of the centrifuges are going to be broken.

. . .

Can Israel disable Fordow without destroying it, and without the use of large bunker-busters?

They could take out the electricity. They could destroy the ventilation system. They can easily destroy the pedestrian entrance. They can destroy the main entrances. There’s two, and they can even use more powerful armaments to work their way back to the tunnel entrances. They can’t get to the [centrifuge] hall perhaps, but they can get a good way there. It would be inaccessible for months. And then they can always go back if there’s some sign of the Iranians trying to dig out new tunnel entrances, but I think it would be tough for them.

Blowing up pedestrian entrances isn’t as thrilling or cathartic as death-defying underground commando raids, but it’s a lot easier. Albright seems perplexed that Israel hasn’t done these things already. “It’s possible the Israelis aren’t that worried about Fordow and have some information that says, no, Iran’s not making weapon-grade uranium at Fordow,” he says, “and it’s on a list, and they’ll eventually get to [attacking it]. But it is a mystery to me.”

So what we can learn from these three reports, two of them from avidly pro-Israel outlets, is that the IDF can take out Fordow on its own, that it can in fact do so “easily” and without a risky special forces operation, and that it’s possible Fordow isn’t even an important target anyway.

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