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Originally Posted by lwarmonger
But Israeli stocks of modern weapons are also limited. 1973 demonstrated the superiority of Western tanks, but also demonstrated the effectiveness of Russian surface to air missiles (at shooting down aircraft from both sides).
The US might allow Israeli air strikes over Iraqi air space... but they won't allow the Iranians to hit back through American defenses.
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Originally Posted by lwarmonger
I agree that it would take more than a few air strikes to destroy Iran's nuclear program. I'm not so sure about 500, but clearly more than Israel is capable of launching at a target that far away.
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I agree. Israeli will need large quantities to bomb Iran. However in my view Iranian SAMs are quite weak and dated to 1970-es. The new Tor-M1s are short range and there are only 30 of them. Air Force.... I have little data about their air force, but assume it weak.
Nonetheless Israel will need large amount of heavy bombs to knock down Iranian nuclear idustry which is spread throughout the country..... Few strategic bombers could have helped
...... but Israel does not have them. They will need many sorties.... which will protract the campaign and may trigger supply of more powerful SAMs
ps. even if USA let Israely pass through Iraq, it may lead to problems in Iraq... as iraqi people might be against that.
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Originally Posted by lwarmonger
Their mobile launchers should tide them over for a while to come. It will take a bit of time before Iran develops counter-force capability, even when they do acquire nukes.
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I suppose that Israel has nukes already. They need to hurry up for a fleet of nuclear capable submarines to threaten Iran with devastating revenge stricke. This can creadibly hold Iran once it gets nukes. From my experience - Iranians even when they play game of fanatics are quite reasonable.