GUNTER: Israel attack on Iran trades short-term instability for long-term security

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Two hundred jets. Two hundred! That’s how many warplanes Israel sent to Iran to attack nuclear and military command sites on Thursday night and Friday morning.

I was once a guest at Operation Maple Flag, an annual multinational jet fighter training exercise at the Cold Lake air force base in northern Alberta. I witnessed a 90-fighter launch which was remarkable for its organizational co-ordination. And all the pilots were going to do was fly over and around Canada’s largest weapons range practising attacks.

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It’s hard to conceive of the complexity of launching more than twice that many planes from multiple locations, flying them in a cohesive manner, more than 1,600 kilometres, over at least two other countries, without being detected, to make synchronized attacks on nearly 100 targets, inflicting debilitating damage, then returning to base unharmed.

The intelligence, planning and execution are staggering.

It puts me in mind of Ukraine’s Operation Spider’s Web on June 1. In that attack, over 100 Ukrainian drones smuggled into Russia over a year-and-a-half’s time were launched without detection from the backs of transport trucks on five Russia air force bases, one as far as 4,000 kilometres from the Ukraine-Russia border, taking out at least 10 per cent of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet.

(Score two for the good guys.)

Friday’s Operation Rising Lion is also reminiscent of Israel’s 1981 destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In that strike, jets from the Israeli Air Force flew low over the desert for hundreds of kilometres to a site near Baghdad. They suddenly popped up at the last minute so they could gain enough altitude to dive-bomb the reactor’s hardened dome before Iraq (and several French technicians) could activate the nuclear facility. The attack set back Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, as it turned out, forever.

This may sound counterintuitive, but Israel’s attacks Friday on Iran’s nuclear program may actually have made the world a safer place.

Oh, sure, initially there will be attempts by Iran to retaliate. Even on Friday, Iran launched dozens of missiles at Israel. However, as with previous missile attacks from Iran, there was little damage in Israel. Many of the missiles were intercepted in flight by Israel’s air defences.

But Iran lacks the capacity for a direct retaliatory airstrike on Israel (hence the missile and drone strikes). And the Tehran regime is not very popular with the other nations in the region.

Saudi Arabia and others may have condemned Israel’s attack, but they’re mostly just going through the motions. The Saudis, who are Arabs (and Sunni Muslims), for instance, dislike and distrust the Iranians, who are Persians (and Shia Muslims) almost as much as the Israelis and Americans do.

There will also, undoubtedly, be future (near future?) terrorist attacks on Israeli, Jewish and American targets co-ordinated and funded by Tehran in reaction to Friday’s attack. So it may, for a while, appear as though Israel’s airstrike has made the world more dangerous.

But in the mid- to long-term, Israel has eliminated a lot of dangerous Iranian military commanders and some of its key nuclear scientists, as well as degrading the facilities Iran has been using to enrich uranium and get ready to build nuclear bombs.

That has not only made Israel safer, but the whole world safer.

The aspect of these attacks, though, that will most scare the Iranians (and other enemies of Israel) is the precision of it all.

Friday’s airstrikes show just how detailed Israel’s knowledge is of the Iranian nuclear program and its sites, plus the locations of Iranian leaders. The attack’s subtle message is, “We know where you are and can take you out whenever it suits our purposes. If you threaten us, you are not safe.”

Undoubtedly, the world will condemn Israel’s actions. That’s what other nations are expected to do. But quietly, there are likely a lot of governments who are grateful and relieved.