Yves here. Simon Watkins is a hard-core neocon, so his posts need to be taken with an ample dose of salt. Nevertheless, he raises an option for Israel in attacking Iran that I have not seen mentioned before, that of operating out of Azerbaijan. I hope I can get Conor to opine. As you can see from the map below, Israel could fly into Azerbaijan through Turkiye and Armenian or Georgian airspace. Watkins reduces his credibility by (without naming them) by claiming that their is a flight path to Azerbaijan through NATO airspace, when neither Georgia or Armenia are members (both are in the half-pregnant friends of NATO status; Armenia is an Associate Member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and has an Permanent Mission to NATO; Georgia like Ukraine has been invited to join NATO and Russia fought a war to prevent Georgia’s NATO entry).
A separate reason to question this piece is it depicts Iran as receiving Russian assistance with a nuclear program. Scott Ritter, who knows a thing or two about nuclear programs, opined today on Judge Napolitano that it would now take Iran only 2 to 3 days to complete developing a nuclear weapon.
So would either state accommodate Israel, and risk some sort of retaliation by Russia (which needless to say does not have to be military)? And what about Turkiye? Erdogan has been all hat, no cattle in terms of fiercely criticizing Israel’s genocide but doing virtually nada to stop it (its import and export ban did not extend to what really could have hurt, trans-shipped gas; Conor, in a must-read post yesterday, has more detail as to how Turkiye’s actions against Israel don’t even rise to the level of a wet noodle lashing). His citizens are very upset with his inaction. Could he afford to allow Israel to overfly Turkiye to pre-position an attack on Iran from Azerbaijan?
And I to implement this scheme assume Israel would have to move a fair bit of kit over too, which would be visible to Iran and to Russia. Could Israel realistically set up the needed logistics support and comms out of a base presumably not set up for US/NATO use? Reader sanity checks encouraged.
By Simon Watkins, a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author. He was Head of Forex Institutional Sales and Trading for Credit Lyonnais, and later Director of Forex at Bank of Montreal. He was then Head of Weekly Publications and Chief Writer for Business Monitor International, Head of Fuel Oil Products for Platts, and Global Managing Editor of Research for Renaissance Capital in Moscow. Originally published at OilPrice.com
- srael faces mounting pressure to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities amid escalating missile attacks, with Tehran now reportedly possessing enough material for three nuclear warheads.
- Discussions at high levels suggest that Russia may be assisting Iran in nuclear technology in exchange for missile support in the Ukraine war.
- A full-scale Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, while technically feasible, risks severe retaliatory missile attacks.
As Tel Aviv continues to trade attacks and counterattacks with Tehran and its proxies – the latest being the 1 October firing of 181 missiles by Iran on targets inside Israel — the obvious question to many dedicated Middle East watchers is why Israel does not just take out all Iran’s nuclear facilities in the process, as these are the greatest danger to it and its allies? There may well also be an even more immediate danger than many think as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned in May that Iran possesses enough material to produce at least three nuclear warheads. The only previous saving grace in this fact was that the Islamic Republic was further away than that from having finalised the designs for key technology elements of such a weapon — around nine months, according to a senior security source close to the U.S. Presidential Administration and a counterpart close to the European Commission exclusively spoken to over the past month by OilPrice.com. However, this has now changed, as very recent discussions at the highest levels of G7 governments highlight that Russia may now be assisting Iran in this respect, in exchange for the missiles and drones Tehran supplies Moscow for its ongoing war on Ukraine.
Certainly, there is no stumbling block to Israel hitting Iran’s key nuclear sites through lack of intelligence on the subject – Tel Aviv and Washington have long known exactly where all the major elements in Iran’s nuclear development programme are. It is reasonable to assume that the primary targets would include the big nuclear facilities in Natanz, Fordow, Esfahan, Arak, Parchin, Qom, and Bushehr, and the major uranium mines in Saghand and Qchine. Overall, Iran disclosed 21 sites related to its nuclear programme to the IAEA during the period it was monitored, and there were further sites at which the Agency detected the presence of highly enriched uranium. Several additional sites that remained undisclosed to the IAEA by Iran have since been uncovered by various intelligence sources, it is believed. This a lot of sites for Israel’s air force to attack, particularly given the 900 miles or so from their key operational airports to the furthest of these Iranian targets they are, compounded by how deep underground several of the sites have been located. But could Israel successfully strike a handful of the biggest sites, which would at least significantly set back Iran’s nuclear development timetable? According to a U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) Report from 28 September 2012 (‘Israel: Possible Military Strike Against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities’) the answer may be ‘yes’.
Firstly, the air strike force would need to take off from a position that allowed it the optimal air route from Israel to Iran. Top of the list of such candidates would appear to be Azerbaijan, with which Israel has notably developed much closer relations in the past few years, including supplying it with weapons to recapture Nagorno-Karabakh last year. Up to and after that, according to the U.S. and E.U. sources spoken to by OilPrice.com, Israel’s military presence in the country has dramatically increased, although further additions to Israel’s force there could be made by overflying the airspace of several NATO countries. This would avoid the more problematic routes involving Jordan and then Iraq, or via Saudi Arabia. Second, it would need the right bombs to penetrate the defences of deep underground facilities. Several of these sites are believed to be at least 300 feet down, compared to the 100 feet of the bunker in which Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah was neutralised on 27 September by the U.S.-made 2,000-pound BLU-109 penetrator bombs, so a more powerful weapon would be needed. Back at the time of the CRS’ 2012 report, it highlighted that the U.S. had already sold Israel Guided Bomb Units (GBU) of the ‘27’ 2000-lb class and the ‘28’ 5000-lb class. Crucially, though, it added that, “the U.S. may have quietly given Israel much more sophisticated systems or Israel may have developed its own.” Over and above any further logistical considerations in such a major operation is the telling fact that Iran clearly thinks Israel could pull it off, as in April — shortly after the Iranian missile attack on Israel — Tehran closed its nuclear facilities.
Such attacks by Israel on Iran’s key nuclear facilities is only one part of the equation, of course, with the other being what Iran and its allies might do in retaliation. It is this that appears to form the dividing line between the views of current U.S. President, Joe Biden, and his predecessor and current presidential candidate, Donald Trump. And although Israel could carry off the nuclear site attack without the U.S., handling the consequences on its own would be difficult. Most notably in the context, repeated barrages of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at a broad selection of targets across Israel would be extremely difficult for Tel Aviv to defend without air support from the U.S. and U.K., despite its Iron Dome missile defence system. According to a recent news report, satellite and social media footage has shown that multiple Iranian missiles were able to penetrate the defensive shield and hit Israel’s Nevatim airbase in the Negev desert, among other targets, in its previous missile attack on 13 April. Any idea that Israel would be able to take out these missile sites at the same time as Iran’s nuclear ones looks highly unrealistic, given not only that many are also buried deep underground but also that many of the missiles are launched from highly mobile launchers. It may be that Israel decides to take its chance in this regard in order to setback Iran’s nuclear programme without the full backing of the U.S., but this is clearly the less preferable option.
Biden last week made it clear that he is not in favour of Israel attacking Iran’s nuclear sites and the key reasons appear to be the same as they were when President Barack Obama refused to countenance such calls from Israel as well. Then-Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, said back in 2011 that in such an event the U.S. would be blamed and could also be the target of retaliation from Iran through strikes against its military bases or navy in the Middle East. There could also be actions by Iran and its proxies to cause economic hardship for the Western Allies through attacks taken against key oil sector sites, as analysed recently by OilPrice.com. It could further be expected that Iran pushes its supporters around the world to launch terrorist attacks on wider targets associated with the U.S. in the West and East. This is why Biden’s team continues to focus on tightening sanctions as the principal response to any increase in the scale of Iranian actions against Israel. This is also the view of the doves in Israel’s cabinet. Conversely, the hawks take the view of Donald Trump, who said last week (in response to Biden’s flat ‘no’ on Israel striking Iran’s nuclear facilities): “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s the biggest risk we have. The biggest risk we have is nuclear … Soon they’re going to have nuclear weapons. And then you’re going to have problems.” Given this, Israel may be waiting to make the big push against Iran if and when Trump is elected president.
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I think Azerbaijan would have to be crazy to assist Israel against Iran, for many reasons:
– fellow feeling / ethnic “hostages”: Azerbaijan is an historic region of Iran, only independent for the 20th century, and there are ethnic ties in the bordering province of Iran.
– geostrategic goals: Israel cannot help the Azeris balance between Iran and Russia and Turkey, they are too far away (and only help themselves anyway) and they definitely cannot solve the problem of the Zanzegur corridor to connect the Nakichevan exclave to Azerbaijan proper. Attacking Iran would kill the North-South corridor that Russia is working to build.
– escalation dominance: the entire country is dependent on oil revenue from the Caspian but the oil market is not dependent on Azerbaijan. Iran could take out the Azeri energy economy in a day and the oil market would not blink.
I think Simon Watkins’s idea is nonsense!
However, he is technically right about a NATO flight route into Azerbaijan, if you consider the Nakichevan exclave. It has a very narrow border with Turkey which could permit overflight. Whether Nakichevan is a sensible place to strike from is another matter entirely!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakhchivan_Autonomous_Republic#/media/File:265nakhichevan-assr.gif
Finally, there was a typical Western thinktank article in the last couple of days claiming that Iran needed months to compete a Bomb. This strikes me as wishful thinking for public consumption: it may be technically true, by the definition they chose to use of essentialy having a fully deployed nuclear strategic force, but that’s not the point. It’s been understood for years that Iran could run a nuclear test in a matter of days and, once you prove you are in the nuclear club, your opponents are left guessing how much the rest you have done.
In Iran’s case, its ability to hit Israel through the Carboard Dome defence shield is fully proven. Israel would be betting that Iran did not have also have a few warheads prepared – and only an idiot would develop hypersonic missiles and not in parallel develop the potential warhead packaging required to cross the nuclear threshold.
Frankly, they would be betting Iran doesn’t even have some prototype “Fat Man” / “Little Boy” bombs, that could be lobbed in on big-ass ballistic or cruise missiles after a massive initial salvo of hypersonics takes out / drains Israel’s missile defences.
After that ambiguous “earthquake” seismic reading in the Pars desert, I think Iran going to be treated as a member of the big boys’ club from now on, like North Korea.
Thanks for the helpful detail.
I infer Watkins relied on maps as imprecise as the one I found on a fast pass. A search does confirm your observation, that there is an 11 mile Turkiye-Azerbaijan border. But Watkins nevertheless posited that Israel could overfly several NATO countries, not, say, “NATO airspace”.
Regarding your last point, Scott Ritter said on Judge Napolitano yesterday that the seismic reading in Iran was not a nuclear test. It was > 10 miles down. No drilling equipment goes deep enough to plant a weapon that far underground.
I don’t know how to insert a link using my phone as I am, but googling “usgs why do so many earthquakes occur at a depth” I find a USGS faq discussion which indicates 10 km is a nominal depth assigned for earthquakes too shallow for a precise depth to be calculated.
If I understood the explanation correctly the crude rule of thumb here is that “too shallow” means the depth is less than the distance to the nearest seismograph station.
I’m out of my depth in this, no pun intended, and only stumbled on it via a Will Shreyver tweet, he being someone I don’t know anything about.
The depth was not 10 km. It was 10 miles.
Yes, I noted that. The use of miles seems odd in this context.
Ten miles would be about 16 km. Personally I’ve seen the figures 10 km and 12 km repeatedly, but nothing close to 10 miles.
That aside, what I’m curious about is how one arrives at a depth assessment for a disturbance in an isolated area that’s seemingly not part of a well-understood geological structure that could account for it. The fact that USGS simply uses nominal figures for such events makes me wonder if any of the numbers being bandied about are the result of actual analysis.
He’s American and was speaking to an American audience on Judge Nap. We do miles.
I listened to Ritter’s statement on Judge Napolitano’s show, he first asserts 10 km, then corrects to 10 miles. Sure wish I knew why.
However his main argument against Iran having conducted such a test is the unliklihood of Iran being able to squirrel away the necessary fissile materials without IAEA noticing. I certainly defer to his expertise there.
Thanks for listening again. The press reports do seem to say 10 km, and he does clearly mean 10 miles, he mentions the depth of the deepest oil drilling, which is 7 miles v. the 10 km, which is shy of that.
The IAEA point does contradict his 2-3 day claim for completing a weapon. I don’t recall if he tried to square that. Maybe an itty bitty nuke :-)?
Saying an earthquake is 10km deep, is a bit of a shorthand for saying the earthquake was very shallow, they just don’t have enough instruments close by to know just how shallow. 10km is around the shallowest you’ll usually get the epicentre of a major earthquake (although the physical displacement can go up to the surface). Most are much deeper. Iran has a notoriously complex seismic structure, and a lot is unknown about it as the Iranians don’t always publish their knowledge for a variety of reasons.
I very much doubt that if it was a nuclear device, it would have been let off at that depth. Drilling that deep is very difficult, the pressures are extremely high. The deepest known tests were around 2-3km deep back before the test ban. And that was specifically intended to open up oil and gas beds.
I think this is mostly right, but I also do remember reading during the Artsakh conflict that Azerbaijan buys a lot of its weapons from Israel. Hence, I point out that there are probably more defense ties between Azerbaijan and Israel than Revenant acknowledges. Another thing to point out is that Azeri nationalism is anti-Iranian; in other words, the right nut in Azerbaijan would see attacking Iran as an opportunity for national liberation, not a bad thing because of the presence of the Azeri minority. I have the impression that Azeris in Iran mostly don’t share these sentiments, and I have no reason to think that the right kind of nut is actually in charge in Azerbaijan. Nevertheless, I just wanted to point out these caveats to Revenant’s post.
Completing a usable nuclear device does take time though. The last IAEA report earlier this year apparently credited Iran with nearly 150kg of uranium enriched to 60%. I understand that technically it’s not that hard to further refine it to the 90% you need for a weapon, but you can’t do it overnight. The IAEA estimates also that Iran already has enough enriched uranium to make perhaps two warheads once it’s at 90%.
But that’s a long way from a nuclear weapon. Making something go bang is one thing, turning that into a functioning warhead that goes bang exactly when you want it to is another, marrying that with a reliable and accurate delivery system is another, and combining it with a reliable guidance system still another. It’s worth noting that the established nuclear powers no longer use uranium for warheads, so technical expertise and knowledge is limited. The North Koreans apparently do, and there have been technology exchanges between the two countries for a long time. Whether NK has a reliable guidance system I don’t think anybody knows.
But if the Iranians are going this way, I suspect it’s much more in the service of strategic ambiguity and deterrence, rather than developing offensive weapons. The classic argument against Iran actually using nuclear weapons against Israel is that very large numbers of Muslims would be at risk, even if the accuracy is spot on, and of course the impacts in terms of fallout, especially from the kind of crude system we are probably talking about here, would be felt all over a predominantly Muslim region. Likewise, I’ve heard it suggested that the best use for such a weapon would be an explosion in the high atmosphere, which would wreak havoc with the electronics of any attacking force, since in general military equipment is not EMP-hardened these days. And there would be no deliberate human casualties. So the overall message of any development programme might be: leave us alone, you don’t know what we can do.
With all due respect, you appear not to appreciate that Iran is one of the top four countries in the world in missile technology, confirmed by the fact that they have hypersonic missiles and the US does not. The missile part is generally considered to be the harder part of this drill than the “make a nuke” part.
Blinken said about a month ago that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in a week or two. I tended to discount that as scaremongering. But Ritter has done nuclear weapons inspections, as in including the delivery systems, for a big swathe of his career and can be assumed to have kept himself pretty current (he is very detailed on weapons porn).
I don’t see what basis you have as a non-expert for discounting him. I have seen you exhibit prejudice against the capabilities and character of non-Westerners and you appear to be defaulting to that again.
No, that’s not the point I was making. The issue is not whether the Iranians are capable of building a nuclear warhead and integrating it with a missile and guidance system, because it’s fairly clear that they are. The issue is whether they have actually done so yet. The context is important here, because we have been threatened with Iranian missiles carrying nuclear warheads for something like twenty-five years now (I was involved professionally with these questions at one point), and indeed the US Missile Defence programme was predicated in part on the idea that the Iranians were well on the way to such a capability twenty years ago.
According to the IAEA the Iranians had not, as of May this year, enriched the uranium to weapons-grade level. If they have since done so, they would need to then physically manufacture the warhead and be reasonably sure it worked (there are mathematical modelling techniques to help here) as well as integrate it with the missile and guidance system. Maybe they have done all that, in which case, the dire warnings we are receiving from Washington may this time be justified. But as I say there are also strong reasons to suppose that the Iranians are not actually interested in attacking Israel with nuclear weapons.
The two or three days that Ritter was talking about isn’t to do with developing a weapon as such. I assume it refers to already having a dormant or breakout capability, and reflects the time needed to actually assemble a weapon from the parts and deploy it. A number of countries are believed to have this capability (Germany, Japan and South Korea have been mentioned) although in their case it’s usually assumed that it would take months, since they have to respect the letter of the NPT. If Ritter is correct it means that the Iranians have finished enriching the uranium, and manufactured a warhead and integrated it, such that they can deploy it operationally in a couple of days. I have no idea whether that is so.
Just to give some examples, it took China at least 2 years to go from its first nuclear test to developing a viable weapon (i.e. one that could survive the stresses of a ballistic missile launch and re entry). It took India well over a decade to achieve the same aim. Pakistan also took at least a decade, and some think they still don’t have viable tactical or strategic devices. Similarly with North Korea. Making a nuclear device go bang is the easy part of the problem. The US could avoid this problem in WWII only because it had complete control of Japanese airspace and aircraft big enough to carry monster devices.
The other issue for Iran is that only a limited number of its missiles would likely be capable of carrying the ‘relatively’ crude and large uranium warhead they would build, and these would be detectable at launch as distinct from the usual Fateh missiles that make up most of their conventional rocket force. So Israel would have a better chance of intercepting them.
Using, or even threatening to use, a nuclear weapon is the very definition of the ‘if you take a shot at the King, you’d better not miss’ problem. For Iran, a genuine nuclear deterrent would require dozens of warheads. Having a handful and using them or even overtly threatening to use them is to invite a massive first or second strike retaliation.
So it seems to me that from a game theory perspective, if Iran decides to go nuclear it needs to cool things down and keep its mouth shut until it has enough reliable viable devices to ensure a first strike against it is impossible. That would take much more than 6 months.
Even then, B29 was a hideously expensive project: by some accounting (doubtlessly creative ones, I’d think), as expensive or even more so than the Manhattan Project. I think the logic still applies, to a degree.
Yes, the B-29 was staggeringly expensive – I can’t recall the figures, but it was by some measure the biggest single weapons project of the entire war.
Off topic, but I’ve often thought that the ‘real’ reason Japan was nuked was that the decision was essentially made when they decided to go all in with the B-29 back in 1942. When you have a multi billion dollar hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
All good points, PK, but if I have seen further than others, it is because I have stolen the shoulders of giants. :-) China, Pakistan, North Korea have all been there, done that and there will be people happy to advise Iran.
Plus Iran has solved these problems for conventional warheads on hypersonic missiles, not merely ballistic missiles, and the sensitive part of a nuclear weapon is the conventional explosive rigged to explode with exquisite timing and force the subcritical uranium hollow sphere together. The fission warhead is a big bundle of wiring and krytrons etc. (A fusion device is much more complicated and involves shielding and fusion materials plus the fission element and all sorts of dialable yield bells and whistles). I imagine Iran has tested plenty of dry implosion charge warheads as part of its missile programme….
But I agree with your main point, until Iran has a first-strike-surviving nuclear capability, its best position is ambiguity.
I don’t know if I can find a middle ground but I think, Yves and Aurelien, are all in agreement that:
– Iran is a nuclear threshold state;
– if it has developed hypersonic missiles, has probably developed its nuclear weapons programme in tandem with warhead designs etc.; and,
– if we believe the IAEA inspection process and Shiite doctrinal ejection of weapons of mass destruction, it had not actually at the date of last active JCPOA inspections (some time now) overtly diverted sufficient uranium into weapons grade enrichment that it had a device let alone warhead ready to go.
Clearly, though, to keep the US and Israel from attempting some decapitator y strike, Iran needs to walk a path of strategic ambiguity as Aurelien states.
Now, Iran could have already crossed the threshold clandestinely by enriching uranium somehow out of sight of the IAEA (within Iran or even in Kazakhstan, a major uranium producer) or by just acquiring uranium or plutonium from Russia, Pakistan, India, Korea etc. (or whole warheads / weapons for that matter – who knows what Russia has shipped to them).
In fact, I don’t see how Iran can cross the threshold in 2-3 days per Scott Ritter if it has not already enriched uranium to weapons grade. If it hasn’t done one of the things above, it would need to go from partly enriched uranium hexafluoride gas through centrifugation to enrich it further, reduction to uranium metal, melting and casting the metal, working the metal and so on.
So I think Iran is either 2-3 days away or 2-3 weeks / months, depending on whether it has clandestinely produced weapons grade uranium already or not. As Aurelien says, we don’t know what they have done yet (or been given recently) and even Israel cannot be sure. So I think they will be given the nuclear benefit of the doubt in private, particularly because Israel has no effective means of striking them (if it had, it would have done so already – the JCPOA was ripped up years ago) and the US will not throw its lot in with them.
Good points Revenant. My two cents: There have long been rumors, accusations, denials about secret Israeli bases in Azerbaijan and using the country to attack Iran. US Neocons have also long dreamed of using Azerbaijan to destabilize Iran by stoking ethnic divisions as there are millions of ethnic Azerbaijanis that live in the Iran
None of it has ever happened and it would be shocking if it did despite Azerbaijan’s very close economic and military ties with Israel (its kamikazee drones were big piece in Azerbaijan victory in 2020 war against Armenia, which happens to be very close to Iran, although the ongoing US takeover of Armenia is changing that).
It would be very out of character for Azerbaijan to allow strike. While it has close ties with Israel to help balance Iranian influence, it is also very close to Moscow and manages to work with Iran despite issues like the potential Zangezur Corridor. Azerbaijan is central to and benefiting from all the trade corridors being developed in region, including N-S ones with Russia and Iran. The last thing country leadership would want would be for Caucasus to get sucked into conflict and destroyed.
I’m sure there’s quite a bit of under the radar stuff Israel does from Azerbaijan but a launching point for major attack is more of the usual neocon fantasies
Must be hard over at the left side of the global map to understand the central area. Why anyone would imagine Azerbaijan is not covered by Russian radar eludes me. Further Aliyev is not suicidal and his father was head of KGB in Azerbaijan – to destroy himself for Israel is a US fantasy too far.
Iran could obtain nuclear warheads from N Korea which hired lots of Soviet specialists left unemployed by Yeltsin cosying up to Clinton
Azerbaijan is the classic case of a family run country – or to be specific ‘family’ as in ‘crime family’. They make alliances with whoever is convenient and are refreshingly non-ideological about it. The people are Turkic speakers and have a joint enemy with Turkey in Armenia, which in turn has tried to look to both Russia and Iran as allies, although wisely both Russia and Iran has tended to stay as uncommitted as possible (at least in overt terms) in the various conflicts in the region. In terms of religion, it is secular, but the population is pretty much split 50:50 between Sunni and Shia Muslims.
At the moment, Azerbaijan seems to be trying to take a leaf out of the Gulf State handbook, in using its oil money to gain influence in as many far away capitals as possible. Although very nominally it ‘leans west’ in terms of its international outlook, it doesn’t push that too hard as it needs good relationships with Iran and Russia because of joint interests in the Caspian Sea (which is where most its natural gas and oil is to be found). All the countries bordering the Caspian have an interest in keeping that region quiet, as they all have oil and gas fields within their respective boundaries. They have interlocking interests, as many of the fields are jointly run. For example, Russian, Iranian and Turkish oil companies have shares in the Shah Deniz offshore field just off the coast from Baku (which may well be one reason why the Russians dumped their Armenian CSTO ally when it came to the crunch in the war with Azerbaijan).
A few weeks ago, a few of us were speculating that Azerbaijan could have been helping Israel in the attacks in Tehran. Israel is Azerbaijans main source of its more high tech weaponry, and it does appear to be a deeper relationship than just buying drones – it seems quite likely that Israel is using it as a test zone. Presumably, what Azerbaijan gets out of this is access to weapons that gives it a bit of an edge over Armenia or anyone else it gets in conflict with. But this is very different from overtly helping Israel with an attack on Iran. Its very unlikely that they’d want to get grabbed into open conflict with Iran, not least because Iran could cripple Azerbaijan’s gas fields with ease. The Shah Deniz gas field is just 250km from the Iranian coastline.
In technical terms, its hard to see what Israel could gain from access to Azerbaijani airfields. They would need full co-operation from Turkey and others to overfly. That is highly unlikely to be forthcoming. It would be a logistically very difficult operation, even aside from the political considerations.
Its far more likely imo that Israel would look to KSA. They have already attacked the Houthi with aircraft which were almost certainly within KSA airspace, which could only happen with overt permission. While KSA would be reluctant to be so obviously in league with Israel against Iran, its not impossible if they think the result could be a severe set back to Iran. After all, the KSA are about as keen about an Iranian nuke as the Israelis. Or more likely, everyone who has an interest in kicking Iran (which in that neighbourhood, is pretty much everyone), would turn a blind eye to Israel using Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, plus using submarines (and possibly surface ships) to launch cruise missiles.
That said, I very much doubt if Israel has the capacity to really hit Iran with the type of very heavy weaponry needed to hit underground facilities at the intensity needed. They would need massive suppression of Iranian air defences to get F-15’s in deep enough to deliver the ordinance (F-35’s can’t carry the really big bunker busters).
While KSA would be reluctant to be so obviously in league with Israel against Iran, its not impossible if they think the result could be a severe set back to Iran.
I have seen some suggestions that Iran has pointed out to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, etc., that any country from the Emirates to Kuwait will have no oil and producing facilities if they side with anti-Iranian forces. I am not sure if they mean all or each separately at an attack on Iran. I am inclined to think all. Closing the Strait of Hormuz, meh.
Agreed…I can’t see either Turkey or Azerbaijan allowing these overflights, because Iran can do far more damage to them than Israel could do to Iran….In fact, with Iran’s possession of top notch Russian air defense technology, I think the whole notion of Israeli planes flying that distance to deliver anything less than nukes is pretty crackpot, and dropping nukes would be suicidal….
Iran does not have a prototype of a nuke. And it won’t happen unless Ali al-Sistani (or one of his successors) issues a new fatwa rescinding the ban on nuclear weapons.
That said you do not really need months to build a prototype for a simple nuke anymore. Heck I could get the materials I need to make a fission nuke by going to the hardware store these days, the only thing I would not have would be the explosives and the pit.
Iran also doesn’t need nukes to effectively destroy Israel as it is now. Worse nuking Israel threatens the Al-Aqsa mosque, which is the third holiest site for Muslims, making using them against Israel a pyrrhic victory at best (even if the nukes or their fallout don’t get close to Jerusalem).
Similarly using nukes against the US is just an elaborate form of suicide, even if Iran had ICBMs to actually get warheads to US territory. And none of the US bases in reach warrant a nuke to be removed, about the only thing that the US has that might warrant a nuke are the aircraft carriers if you want them gone instead of ‘merely’ mission killed. But even using nukes that way will mean the end of Iran as we know it by a true (not one of those vassal call-ups) coalition.
The only risk factor here is the Israeli nukes. If Netanyahu pushes Iran to the point where Iran feels it has to cripple Israel there is a fairly decent chance the madman will order the nukes to be launched as a final fuck you. As it wouldn’t be Netanyahu or Israel to take the backlash but the US (and the US vassals).
I agree that Iran does not need to deploy a nuclear weapon to flatten Israel. It has demonstrated it can do so with less than its best missiles.
However, the Iran Foreign Minister and another top official (forgive me for not tracking down who) have said in a not terribly coded manner that it might change the fatwa if threatened. I would take that as directed at the US.
The US has been way underestimating the capacity and will of its geopolitical adversaries, Iran even more so than Russia.
So it does matter if Iran can deliver on a change in what would amount to its nuclear doctrine, and quickly, for the purpose of dealing with possible very stoopid US moves. The US still seems not to have processed that a well-stockpiled missile and drone arsenal is the weaponry of today, and our lovely over-designed fussy planes are going the way of the cavalry. It make take worrying that Iran really can quickly get a nuke to focus a few minds, even if to your point that is far from their most effective capability.
BTW I have neglected to mention (admittedly as many have, including Ritter) is the highest and best use for Iran’s limited amount of possible nuke material (if I heard Ritter correctly, it = 2-3 15-20 kiloton bombs, which the US would put on the small end of tactical nuke territory) could be to use it in an atmospheric explosion, as an EMP, to fry electronics, rather than a ground blast, where you correctly point out that Iran can do far more damage to Israel than it would ever need to (as in completely flatten the country) with its conventional arsenal.
An EMP could be less of a doctrinal problem too, since based on a quick skim of an academic paper, the general prohibition in Shia is against WMD. An EMP might arguably not be that by not targeting people.
I have no idea if Ritter’s “gun design” bomb + delivery system would be fit for that purpose.
Mahmoud Alavi, The Iranian minister of intelligence is the other who mentioned in 2021 that if Iran gets cornered the fatwa can be altered. And IIRC there is an explicit ruling by Khomeini that the survival of the state takes precedence, if that requires ignoring religious principles that is allowed.
That said something a lot of people seem to miss is that the “no WMD” fatwa(s) at most prohibit production, storage, and/or use (The most widely circulated written fatwa prohibits only use, there are equally strong verbal fatwas also prohibiting production & storage). Research and component production is, when you go ruleslawyer, not prohibited.
The most likely rescinding of the fatwa will be if/when the US declares war on Iran or assemble a ‘coalition’ to deal with Iran. At which point Iran will still have months if not years to develop a warhead (and people seem to agree will take at most weeks if not days). The question is what to hit with it. Even if they repurpose their space bound rockets as ICBMs they will at most be able to nuke Europe and South Korea (these are LEO orbit rockets so the range caps at around 6k).
Yes. The biggest hurdle would be getting the height correctly and that problem was already solved with Little Boy, which was an air burst at around 600 meters to maximize the damage done by overpressure.
Gawd. I sometimes think that neocons all suffer a sever case of mapisitis. So they will look over a map, sees that North Korea borders Russia and then come up with the bright idea to let the Ukrainians attack Vladivostok by flying out of North Korea and in return the North Koreans would get a promise of lifting some sanction or something. So here they have the bright idea of how Israel could fly into Azerbaijan through Turkiye and attack Iran. Now this would burn Azerbaijan’s relations with all their neighbours but if it did happen, then Iran would declare Azerbaijan to be a party to this war and do a counter strike, say, on Azerbaijan’s oil infrastructure heading west. Not only would this be a catastrophic blow to Azerbaijan’s revenue, but that oil west goes to Israel so bonus points. EU countries that take that oil like Italy, Spain and Croatia would also be in the crapper but Iran would reckon that to be the EU’s problem. Turkiye would freak as they get a lot of revenues from letting that oil go through their country and so would not let Azerbaijan do something so stupid. And there is one final factor. Since Israel would be attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, then that gives Iran the right to do the same to Israel. I wonder what the effect of about 20 ballistic missiles slamming into the Negev Nuclear Research Center (NRCN) near Dimona would be. Does Israel really want to find out?
Iran and others have tried to hit Dimona. They may even have cut the power to it once. I’m kind of wondering what would happen with a loss of containment.
Of course, it might do damage to Jordan if the radiation release goes the wrong way, and it might give Ukraine ideas…
The Ukraine does not need such ideas as a lot of people are saying that the real target for the Kursk invasion was the Kursk nuclear power plant. Trying to bomb it at least twice kinda gives the game away.
That is false. I am not tolerating hasbara. You are no longer welcome here.
Iran NEVER attacked Israel before April 13. It struck ONLY pre-negotiated targets then and at a pre-set date and time too. It even broadcast the launch of its 300 drones, which would take 6 hours to get to Israel, on TV.
Baku, or the Map Game
Its jolly to look at the map, and finish the foe in a day.
It’s not easy to get at the chap; these neutrals are so in the way.
But if you say ‘what would you do to fill the aggressor with gloom?’
Well, we might drop a bomb on Baku. Or what about bombs on Batum?
Other methods, of course, may be found. We might send a fleet up the Inn.
We might burrow far underground and come up in the heart of Berlin.
But I think a more promising clue to the totalitarian doom
Is the dropping of bombs on Baku. And perhaps a few bombs on Batum.
The scale of the map should be small if you’re winning the war in a day.
It mustn’t show mountains at all, for mountains may be in the way.
But, taking a statesmanlike view, and sitting at home in a room,
I’m all for some bombs on Baku. And, of course, a few bombs on Batum.
Sometimes I invade the dear Dutch. Sometimes I descend on the Danes.
They oughtn’t to mind very much, and they don’t seem to have any planes.
I slip through the Swiss and say ‘Boo!’. I pop over the Alps and say ‘Boom!’.
But I still drop a few bombs on Baku. And I always drop bombs on Batum.
Vladivostok is not very far. Sometimes I attack him from there.
With the troops in a rather fast car, I am on him before he’s aware.
And then, it’s so hard to say who, is fighting, precisely, with whom,
That I know about bombing Baku, I insist upon bombing Batum.
— A P Herbert, 1940
Brilliant!
Precisely, it would be an easy way to finish off Israel’s viability for oil and present a relatively low risk opportunity to demonstrate Iranian determination, without the gnarly fallout that striking Gulf Arab territory or Cyprus can bring up.
I hope that the Azeris are truly stupid enough to try. They need to be taken out sooner or later and now is an excellent time.
Reminds me of a quote about Churchill by C.P. Snow:
“The trouble with Winston” was that he would “insist on getting out his maps. In 1914 he got out his maps of the Dardanelles, and think where that landed us.” And after the Armistice, ‘before I could look round, he’d got out maps of Russia and we were making fools of ourselves in the Civil War.”
The latter comment is about the North Russian Intervention, by far the most foolish military project of the 20th century (worse than Gallipoli, at least Gallipoli had nice weather).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Russia_intervention
Didn’t we read recently that the US was meddling in Armenia, causing that country’s president to try to bring Armenia into the Western orbit, which then pushed Azerbaijan toward Russia? Do these crazy people really think Russia wouldn’t notice something like this? After seeing what happened to Ukraine, one would think these countries just outside Russia would be a little skeptical being used as proxies against the West’s perceived enemies. But I thought Ukraine might be smart enough not to let their country be depopulated and turned to rubble and it turns out I was wrong about that.
What part of K.I.S.S. does Watkins not understand?
Yeah, I guess he’s got a slight bit of a point that Azerbaijan is perhaps the Islamic country most in bed with the Israelis.
Otherwise, I’m not impressed much. Even an article this short is riddled with lots of wording that shows the author is stuck in a rigid worldview, i.e. he “knows” lots of things that are clearly not certain. And it’s a “my dad could beat up your dad” worldview too. Maybe that’s the secret to the neocons? They’re all really permanent 8-year-olds with daddy-issues?
That question is only obvious to someone that won’t consider the obvious answer: Israel is a spoiled satrapy of a declining US, not a comic-book demigod. The odds of them succeeding in a raid are so low, and however it turns out, the likely response Iran would dish out is so severe, that nobody doing actual military planning wants to try it.
“Certainly”, “long known exactly”, this guy should go to Vegas or get into zero-day options.
The author may know how to read maps, but apparently calendars are outside of his wheelhouse.
There are several more passages like this, but ultimately, it sounds like a courtier, whose worldview is based only on info from other courtiers, debating with other courtiers why the new king will just subjugate the “barbarians” next door. Meanwhile, all the kings are incompetent, the peasants & knights are in open revolt, and the “barbarians” are actually a better organized great power.
At least he didn´t try to sell us his latest book this time.
“…We have already told representatives of other countries that we will consider [an enemy] anyone who provides their airspace to Israel. But I hope that no one will give such permission,” Iranian news agency SNN quoted Araghchi as saying.
https://sputnikglobe.com/20241003/iran-will-consider-any-state-providing-airspace-to-israel-as-enemy–foreign-minister-1120393797.html
What do the Turks have to lose?
“Scott Ritter, who knows a thing or two about nuclear programs, opined today on Judge Napolitano that it would now take Iran only 2 to 3 days to complete developing a nuclear weapon.”
Two things: 1.) Scott has apparently been standing in the special weapons bay watching the technicians at work, or 2.) he is engaging in hyperbole.
Back in the day I was an MOS 436 Special Weapons Assembly, Disassembly and Repair in the US Army. People talking about days, weeks or hours to build a nuclear weapon should be discounted out of hand. Clearly in the process of building such a weapon from scratch there is a planning timeline with all of it’s associated breakthroughs and setbacks. That ignoring the delivery system. Witness the film Oppenheimer. I’m guessing that Klaus Fuchs did not report to Stalin, “Mr. General Secretary, the Americans are two or three days from completing the atom bomb!” But, he was in the weapons bay, so maybe he did.
Do you have a reading comprehension problem? I said that Ritter said 2-3 days away, not having spent 2-3 days total. He is not in Iran and so must be reciting views of others he trusts or extrapolating from various informational tidbits. You are assuming Ritter is making an independent assessment, as opposed to getting input from people in the region. He spent a lot of time in the Middle East, as you surely must know.
Iran has long been depicted as bringing its nuclear weapons program to the verge of completion. I had been inclined to discount that as anti-Iran propaganda, but given 10/7, it would make perfect sense for Iran to have started double pronto as of then to do whatever it did have to do to finish the remaining steps for completing a weapon.
See Aurelien above. He says in a longer form manner that Ritter’s 2-3 day estimate could be correct and why.
He finishes with, “I have no idea whether (Ritter is correct).” Lot’s of speculation it seems to me.
Again, you are exhibiting a reading comprehension problem. Saying he does not know if Ritter is correct is consistent with my statement, that Ritter could be correct.
“And what about Turkiye? Erdogan has been all hat, no cattle in terms of fiercely criticizing Israel’s genocide but doing virtually nada to stop it”
Doesn’t Azerbaijan ship their oil through Turkiye (at a price, on would assume), to Israel? Turkiye could probably shut down much of the Israeli onslaught by denying them this oil.
Strange bedfellows, indeed.
The point that all of this speculation drives home is that neither Israel or the USA can make the moves they are currently making without the cooperation of other countries or regimes in the mid-east.
Same as it ever was with imperial moves into other territories.
The nuclear program seems like a useful honeypot. Iran can already inflict real harm on Israel with its various missiles and drones. An attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely trigger a response, and would not hamper that response from being carried out.
Various experts (Arab-Iran world connected, not Western) all say Iran’s nuclear program is VERY VERY deeply bunkered. The most an attack might get is very peripheral operations, nothing that could not be readily replicated. I agree with you that the symbolism is way out of line with current importance.
However, Iran does have one commercial nuclear reactor: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/iran
Since Israel depicts everything civilian as military, including actual civilian people, expect them to target that if it’s within viable flight range.
I listened to Ritter’s statement on Judge Napolitano’s show, he first asserts 10 km, then corrects to 10 miles. Sure wish I knew why.
However his main argument against Iran having conducted such a test is the unliklihood of Iran being able to squirrel away the necessary fissile materials without IAEA noticing. I certainly defer to his expertise there.
Whoops, somehow posted this twice.
This crackpot scheme is an exemplar of the illusion of control at work, something the neocons have given us many opportunities to observe.
This tendency of theirs is why I’d want nukes if I were Iranian – you need them to deter crazy Israeli attempts to keep you from getting them.
On top of all the other issues with this article, the author trots out the MSM favorite ‘Iron Dome’ trope when discussing ballistic missiles fired from Iran, demonstrating his shallow understanding of the physics involved. A military expert he isn’t.
Watkins bases his entire thesis of the possibility of taking out Iranian assets on a report from 2012. Perhaps he needs to update the possible success rate of such an attack (from any air route) taking into account the S400s (officially crewed by Russian technicians), SU 35s (believed to have been delivered) and other advances Iran has (probably) made since then …
What if Israel attacks and most of their force is wiped out and/or no bombs hit target?
I see Simon Watkins has a degree in English Lit from Oxford and appears to have been in publishing in effect for various financial and oil groups in terms of newsletters and reports.
I surmise he has no primary sourced knowledge of anything Aliyev or even Iran have in mind and I somehow thinking is stuck in a „US wins in any event“ mindset to please his readers
it seems we have a problem in 2 parts: One, does Iran have, or be days away from having, a nuclear bomb and, two, does Iran have a delivery system for such a bomb?
I’ve no idea what the answer to part one is, but the assumption made with regard to part 2 is that the necessary delivery system is a missile. Why? I believe the powers who have such missiles have agreements and treaties against putting a nuclear bomb on a truck and simply driving it to its target. It so obvious, and easy, that the only way you can stop your enemy doing it is to agree with them that you won’t if they won’t – and hope they stick to it.
I don’t know if Iran is a party to any such treaty or agreement – not being seen as a member of the nuclear club I can’t imagine they would be – or whether anyone would consider themselves bound by such an agreement given Israel’s clear distain for international perceptions, institutions and even minimal rules of civilised warfare, but I would hope even a hint that Iran had trucked a viable nuclear bomb or two into Israel – which I very much doubt its borders are set up to watch for – would have sufficient deterrent effect.
Not, in any case, do I think it necessary. A commentator on one of the many blogs or talk-shows I’m currently following in an attempt to get some reasonable idea of what’s going on – I forget who, unfortunately – observed that Israel isn’t very big and suggested that Iran already has so many conventional missiles primed and aimed on a ‘dead-hand trigger’ that the response to any nuclear attack on it by Israel would invoke an automatic response that would wipe the latter off the map. Hopefully Israel thinks that too.
The timing of Israel’s retaliation against Iran is probably stuck for now on two incompatible timing wishes: first, to hit Iran before the Oct. 22-24 BRICS meeting in Kazan, where Iran might pick up additional security commitments from other BRICS members, and second, to wait for the sake of its US cronies until after the Nov. 5 elections, so as not to cause an unwanted conflict with its financial sponsors (by being blamed for contributing to a “wrong” result) in the period between the election and the next President’s inauguration.
But given the history of Israel’s decisions about enacting vengeance, a retaliation before Kazan seems like the more likely outcome. Maybe they’ll be able to sell Biden’s minders on an earlier, and most assuredly winning, attack being a pick-me-up for Kamala’s electoral prospects. If the situation deteriorates into a not totally successful attack being reciprocated with a massive destruction of Israeli infrastructure and US military bases in the region, of course that would reflect negatively on the incumbent party and its officials, so they will undoubtedly need to happy talk themselves into excluding such a possibility from any likelihood of occurring.
Another line of reasoning is that Iran will be hit before the elections to increase the chance of Trump being elected. The reasoning being that the Trump tried to get Iran to submit and failed, he doesn’t tolerate not succeeding, thus he’ll back anything that he thinks has a chance to get Iran to submit and as such will back Israel even more then Biden is doing now as long as they (pretend to) fight Iran.
The thing about being a small country with a hypersonic missile and a nuke is… modern conventional explosives are so very powerful that “small” battlefield nukes are passe. You don’t need fission any more to take a out a city block. Thowing a nuke, and dumping fallout everywhere, is a massive red line to cross, and you don’t need to.
Yes, an ICBM can carry a huge nuke that’s much more powerful than any non-nuclear explosive, but everything is scaled down when you’re talking about a regional conflict.