Experts: Israel can destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities without the US
While the world is now waiting for US President Trump to decide whether to join forces with Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, some experts believe that Israel can accomplish this task on its own.
Bloomberg News reported that in order to destroy the key Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility, the Israeli army is believed to lack the heavy bombs and B-2 stealth bombers owned by the US military, but Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi said in a radio interview this week that Israel can and will complete this task alone.
Some outside experts agree with this, one of whom is David Albright, founder and director of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington.
Asked by Tablet magazine this week whether Israel could accomplish this goal alone, he said: “Yes, I think it could. They could blow it up in a raid. They could destroy the ceiling or the support structure of the facility, making it very difficult to enter the facility. In fact, if it takes months to get into the facility, it would be equivalent to destroying it. Because by the time you can get in, most of the centrifuges may have been damaged.”
The raid he mentioned is also the focus of other experts, including Kenneth Pollack, deputy director of policy at the Middle East Institute. They mentioned an operation launched by the Israeli army in Syria last September before former Syrian President Assad was ousted. The raid was not made public until four months later.
When the Israeli army spokesman made it public at the time, he said that 120 special forces members, under the cover of dozens of warplanes, raided deep into Syria and destroyed what they said was an Iranian missile production base located in the mountains. The raid was later widely praised within Israel, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and was suggested as a model for attacking the Fordow nuclear facility.
In addition to the raid, another possibility is to first destroy the Iranian air defense system around Fordow, so that Israeli warplanes can carry bombs to carry out multiple strikes on the facility, eventually penetrating the facility.
Bloomberg analysts believe that even if the United States chooses not to intervene in the conflict, Israel may still choose to launch a high-risk ground operation to break through and destroy the Fordow nuclear facility from the inside, even though such an operation will face huge challenges.
