Dan Sabbagh
The Guardian / October 3, 2024
Israel has several possible targets including military, economic or even nuclear sites, but all come with caveats.
Israel has several options if its leaders want to launch retaliatory strikes against Iran, and while western leaders have urged restraint, a significant assault is expected. Possibilities could include strikes against military, economic or even nuclear targets, although Joe Biden said he had told Benjamin Netanyahu’s government the US would not support the last option.
Iran has relatively weak air defences and it is expected it would struggle to prevent Israeli missiles or an air force bombing run, as was revealed on 19 April. Then, Israel, responding to Iran’s previous missile barrage, damaged part of Iran’s best air defence system, a Russian S-300, in the military-industrial city of Isfahan. It was a strike intended to showcase to Iran what Israel was capable of.
“If attacking nuclear sites is off the table, the two big options for Israel are whether it wants to attack military or economic targets,” said Fabian Hinz, a Middle East expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Military targets
The most direct response would be for Israel to try to strike Iran’s cluster of missile and drone bases, which are located, according to Hinz, underground and in some cases “deep under mountains”. Though it may be possible to bomb and seal off entrances, the bases are designed to resist all the largest conventional explosives, and striking them may not prevent future attacks, he added.
Alternatives could be to repeat the targeting of Iranian air defence bases – this time on a larger scale – which cover Tehran, Isfahan and ports on the Persian gulf. Or a more complex attack could target military-industrial production, such as a more overt repeat of the drone attack on a weapons factory in Isfahan in January 2023. However, all such attacks carry the possibility of miscalculation and risk unanticipated casualties.
Oil terminals, refineries and economic infrastructure
An attack on Iran’s oil infrastructure has been touted as a likely response to Tuesday’s ballistic missile assault on Israel, with Biden indicating the issue was under discussion on Thursday. The most cited target is Kharg oil terminal, which handles, on some estimates, 90% of crude oil exports, most of which are destined for China. Other key facilities include the Abadan refinery, near the border with Iraq, which handles a significant proportion of Iran’s domestic oil needs.
“Iran’s oil industry is quite exposed,” said Hinz, adding that attacking economic targets could have a longer-term impact. “Iran’s economy is struggling and the regime always wants sanctions relief,” he said, noting that Israel’s bombing of the Houthis in Yemen at the end of last month was focused on fuel, power and port facilities at Ras Issa and Hodeidah.
A question is whether an economic attack as a direct response to Iran’s on Tuesday is proportionate. Iran said it had selected military targets, and its missiles targeted Israeli airbases, causing light damage to the Nevatim facility and the headquarters of the Mossad spy agency. But a school east of Ashkelon was struck, causing extensive damage to a classroom.
It is also more likely to lead to an Iranian retaliation than if Israel carried out a more narrowly focused military attack. Maj Gen Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s military chief of staff, said, if attacked, Tehran would respond with another larger, and more wide-ranging, missile barrage. Tuesday’s attack “will be repeated with bigger intensity and all infrastructure of the regime will be targeted”, he said.
Targeted killings and other covert methods
Israel could take a different tack, expanding its programme of targeted killings further in Iran. It has already shown it is able to carry out assassinations in Tehran, having killed the Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh at the end of July. It detonated an explosive device that had been secretly placed two months earlier in the guesthouse where he was staying, according to a report in the New York Times.
Several top Iranian nuclear scientists are believed to have been killed by Israel, including Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, said to have been murdered in November 2020 by a remote-controlled machine gun. Israel, however, does not appear to be considering a low-key response to what was an overt missile attack, with the prime minister insisting Iran would “pay for it”.
Nuclear targets
Military experts believe it would be impossible for Israel to mount a disruptive strike on Iran’s network of nuclear sites without direct military help from the US. The key sites where Iran is enriching uranium up to 60% purity, Natanz and Fordow, are both underground, below several dozen metres of rock and concrete.
A paper by Darya Dolzikova and Matthew Savill, originally published in April by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, says: “The only conventional weapon that could plausibly achieve this is the American GBU-57A/B massive ordnance penetrator, which – with over 12 tonnes and 6 metres long – can only be carried by large US bombers like the B-2 Spirit.”
Though it may be possible for Israel to attack lesser sites and set back the programme by targeting facilities for the production of centrifuges used in the enrichment process or other such sites, there is a risk that an attack on its nuclear programme could prompt Tehran to speed up its efforts to obtain an atomic bomb.
“Tehran may see the actual weaponization of its nuclear programme as the only option left that can guarantee the security of the Iranian regime,” the authors conclude.
Dan Sabbagh is The Guardian’s defence and security editor
