The drums of war are beating in the Middle East. Proponents of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities have intensified their campaign in recent weeks, arguing the military option is the only way to ensure the country does not build a nuclear weapon.

But the obstacles to conducting a successful strike remain immense, making it a last, improbable resort. It is such a bad option that it is no option at all. 

That said, by raising the spectre of a destabilising military strike, Israel’s government and hardliners in the west have successfully pushed western governments into taking a much tougher line on economic sanctions than seemed possible a year ago. And this may be their real tactical objective. 

An aerial strike has been talked about openly for some time. Israel’s then-Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz caused a storm last summer by noting in an interview with the mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper “If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The [current] sanctions are ineffective…Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.” A spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert subsequently said that “all options must remain on the table”. 

The template for action would be the hugely successful aerial strike by the Israeli Air Force on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981. More recently an unidentified party (assumed to be Israel) launched a successful strike against a military facility in Syria that may (or may not) have been a small reactor for producing nuclear material being built with assistance from North Korea. 

No doubt both Israel and the United States have drawn up contingency plans for striking at Iran’s nuclear network (war planning is what an army’s general staff is paid to do). But the practical obstacles remain immense. 
    
DISPERSED AND HARDENED TARGETS 

Iran’s nuclear facilities have been widely dispersed and the principal facility at Natanz has been buried deep underground beneath a reinforced shield. It is widely believed Iran has developed a second “shadow” system that duplicates the facilities at Natanz to preserve its capabilities in the event of an air strike — something which seems to have been confirmed by the revelation the country has constructed a second enrichment facility near Qom. 

So the attack on Osirak is a poor precedent. Any attempt to cripple Iran’s nuclear facilities could not be surgical strike in the night, changing facts on the ground before Iran, or the rest of the world, has chance to respond. It would require multiple sorties by a large number of aircraft flying against a large number of targets and might need many hours or even days to be effective. Only the United States has the aerial forces needed to provide theatre-wide air cover for a sustained period and keep Iran’s air force and air defences out of action. 

Because the facilities have been buried deep underground and targets have been hardened, military planners would probably conclude the only way to guarantee their destruction would be using a tactical nuclear warhead. The Bush administration sought congressional approval to develop “sub-critical” bunker busting nuclear weapons for use against hardened targets such as Natanz and al-Qaeda’s Tora Bora hideout in Afghanistan. 

The argument has always been that such weapons should not be thought of as “nuclear” weapons at all, and the threshold for using them should be correspondingly lower, with fewer moral and emotional issues. So far Congress has balked at the position. 

But the idea of either Israel or the United States dropping tactical nuclear weapons into the middle of the Islamic Republic (using the bomb to prevent the bomb) then pretending the status quo ante can be restored minus Iran’s nuclear programme is implausible. It would, to put it mildly, make it hard to refute the argument Iran needs nuclear weapons to defend itself, and undercut the global non-proliferation effort. The United States and/or Israel would find themselves isolated — not just in the Middle East but across developing countries and throughout much of Europe and Asia. 
    
HALTING THE ESCALATION CYCLE 

The bigger problem is containing Iran’s reaction the “day after” a strike. The risk is that a strike that destroyed some or even all of Iran’s nuclear facilities but left the regime and its military and civilian infrastructure intact would leave an angry Iran bent on revenge. The United States has troops in Iraq and Afghanistan; extensive fleets in the Persian Gulf; and the Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s principal oil routes. So Iran has plenty of retaliation options. 

There are two military strategies to deal with the retaliation problem (neither particularly attractive): 

(1) A massive sustained attack on Iran’s command, control and communications system designed to destabilise Iran’s government and degrade its military ability to retaliate. But this would require a sustained aerial campaign involving thousands of sorties. It would be impossible for Israel to carry out, and the United States could only mount it over a period of several days. The resulting instability would be enormous. 

With American military forces heavily committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is not obvious the U.S. Department of Defense would want to mount such an action now. U.S. combatant commanders and the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have all highlighted the costs of the military option. 

(2) The alternative is to maintain a “second strike” capability in reserve. The aim would be to hit Iranian facilities at Natanz, Arak and elsewhere hard — but hold enough firepower in reserve so the attacker can threaten an overwhelming second strike against the Iranian government and military in the event there is any retaliation against the first strike. 

The aim would be to threaten such a strong second strike that the escalation ladder is broken after the first rung (after an attack on Natanz but before Iran responds). Israel does not have that capability, and the United States is stretched fairly thin at present with major operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But without a clear ability to deter Iranian retaliation and escalation, there is a substantial risk that any confrontation could quickly spiral out of control. 
    
STIFFENING DIPLOMATIC RESOLVE 

There are no good military options for dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions (which is why all the movement so far has been towards isolating the government in Tehran diplomatically and economically). 

For its backers, though, the prospect of a military confrontation has served a useful purpose, stiffening western resolve to take tough action, including the threat of “crippling” economic sanctions, to head off the risk of an air strike. 

Israel and the sanctions lobby have used strategic ambiguity about Israel’s military intentions to push western, especially European governments, into taking a harder line, with serious talk now about targeting Iran’s imports of refined oil products to exploit the country’s reliance on imported gasoline. Even in the absence of a tough UN-authorised sanctions regime, the United States and the EU now seem prepared to impose stringent sanctions unilaterally (targeting not only the gasoline imports themselves but the network of banks, insurers and shippers facilitating them). 

While sanctions would not be water-tight (Iran has already started to boost its gasoline imports from China to reduce dependence on firms linked to western insurers and banks) they would impose real costs on Iran’s already-fragile economy and probably exacerbate the split within Iran’s ruling elite about whether to confront or engage the west. 

In that sense the drums of war are aimed at western audiences rather than Iran. The aim is to create a sense of urgency among policymakers and a determination to move onto tough economic sanctions rather than resign themselves to Iran’s nuclear programme and risk a destabilising Israeli air strike. So far it is working.