When Israel prepares more waves of attack for Iran, of which Donald Trump warned, “even more brutal”, the leaders of the Islamic Republic have sworn to return.
Major General Mohammad Pakpour, the Iranian commander of the Revolutionary Guard, who took office on Friday hours after the murder of his predecessor, swore “to open the doors of hell”.
But what can? Iran do to prevent Israel? Tehran – strangled by years Fight against A regional power that is proven by the recent western military set and the plenty of support from the United States.
“The Iranians will have difficulty raising a meaningful answer,” said Dan Shapiro, former deputy Defense Minister for the Middle East in the Pentagon.
The first salvo of the drones of Iran was successfully intercepted. On Friday evening, Iran started dozens of ballistic rockets, some of which had penetrated Israel’s defense to meet buildings in urban areas. The ratings were injured and some killed.
The majority of the rockets were intercepted and the closures were smaller than two Iranian retaliation last year in relation to the figures last year. But it seemed that Iran had postponed its tactics, started all night and the early morning in consecutive waves, which mainly aimed at Tel Aviv and became more destructive.
Instead of changing the calculation of the conflict or holding further strikes, the attack of Israel prompted to promise a further escalation.
“The real dilemma for Iran will be whether it will sprint to a nuclear outbreak,” said Shapiro, who is also a former US ambassador of Israel. “You can calculate that give you the deterrence to ensure the survival of the regime – but that also exists the risk of drawing in the USA.”
UN inspectors have been diligently trying to monitor Iran for years Nuclear program And in particular the enrichment of uranium, which can generate both fuel and weapons material. Iran has expanded its uranium stock of the almost weapon crate enriched in recent years.
Experts say that it has the ability to produce sufficiently splitting material for a nuclear weapon in less than two weeks.
The monitoring efforts make it unlikely – but not impossible – that Iran has already separated enough fissile material for a single, simple bomb that would require less than 15 kg enriched uranium. The uranium on an explosive head and the development of the rocket capacity are further challenges, but with sufficient foldable material, Tehran could theoretically produce a so -called “dirty bomb”.
Such drastic steps would have parallels to develop a secret nuclear arsenal of Israel, a “Doomsday Operation” that developed into the nuclear doctrine that the Samson option.
During the 1967 war, the Israeli officials had approved a plan of the last way out to detonate a hastily assembled nuclear device in the Sinai desert to freeze the conflict before the Arab armies crossed the Israeli borders. (In this case that Israel won the war – the plan was only public in 2001.)
Other options are more traditional: attack on Israeli military facilities and diplomatic missions or the implementation of the threat, which some commanders expressed to make the US military goals in the Middle East.
The Iranian armed forces were also able to turn to asymmetrical warfare and try to switch off or disturb the street of Hormuz, an important waterway that separates Iran from the Gulf States through which almost a third of all global sea oil exports flow.
Everyone has great risks for Iran, including the potential for a spectacular failure or Further escalationWhen the United States mainly occurs to help Israel, a former Israeli official, who has worked on similar assessments in the past.
Analysts and people who are familiar with the defense plans of Israel expect Iran to continue to try to overwhelm Israel’s multi -layered air defenses with a massive wave of drones and rockets. Such attacks could target Israeli nuclear facilities, air base and other critical infrastructures such as ports and the airport in Tel Aviv.
This would force Israel to ration his limited supply of interceptor rockets, many of which after 20 months of war against Hamas in Gaza, Hisbollah in Lebanon in Lebanon and two closures from Iran in April and October 2024 urgently had to be filled.
On Friday and these two previous attacks showed that the best rockets of Iran were able to steer Israeli air defense, even if they were strengthened by an emergency use by us and other combat aircraft that intercept the rockets and drones far away from Israeli airspace.
Around two dozen rockets landed in the Nevatim air base in the south of Israel, as satellite images later showed. One landed near the Mossad headquarters in North Tel Aviv. Others met a second air base.
However, two people familiar with this attack said that it also showed the limits of Iranian skills. The damage to the air bases was quickly repaired, no aircraft were damaged and the Israeli radar operator trained their algorithms on the rich of data collected during the attack.
An Iranian rocket fire fired in Israel in October was the first time that the country’s air defense was tested so thoroughly by a regional power instead of Hamas rockets that can easily be intercepted by the iron dome system. However, this attack was telegraphed at a time when Iran had tried to avoid the full -grown conflict with Israel in which it is now located. And in both attacks of the past year, Tehran aimed at military sites, while this time the goals are wider and in several cities and cities.
One of the goals of Iran last year was an analysis that was carried out after the event of the Israel military secret director, see how successfully a “quick saturation event” could overwhelm the defense systems of Israel.
The military teaching of Israel on rationing interceptors – how many it is at all times a national secret – takes into account the type of attack and the goal.
If you run the rockets low, the protection of military goals is considered, for example, more important to protect the ability to counterattack. FOX News on Friday reported that the USA had replaced a considerable amount of the Tamir interceptors used Israel, some of which were produced in the United States.
Another factor has also restricted Iran: the disturbance of the first wave of Israeli strikes according to Israel. The Israeli Air Force on Friday evening met the rocket arrays of the Iranian surface to surfaces and aimed to nudge a possible counterattack.
Sima Shine, a former official of the Israel Mossad secret service agency, who concentrated on Iran, said that this would have affected the size in which Iran has an immediate counterattack.
Iran also had to take time to take an inventory after the murder of high -ranking Iranian officials who are responsible for the military strategy. The military officers were “very important, very knowledgeable and in their work for many years,” she said.
The destruction of rocket systems is not as complicated as the destruction of Iranian underground nuclear facilities, said a former Air Force pilot, who had been trained for similar missions about a decade ago.
“Raket systems require very complex mechanisms to work together,” he said. “To deactivate the system, you don’t have to destroy it and only range to a single (decisive) component – the radar, the transport system, even the mechanical systems that position the rocket.”
It is much more useful than the type of weapons used, he said.
The Israeli Air Force is expected to carry out repeated bombing in the coming days and have destroyed the air defense of the Iranian air – some of them on site, others from allies such as Russia – to maintain air superiority.
This would force Iran to defensively assign its limited rocket systems, said the former pilot instead of using them to punish Israel.
“It is now clear that our (pilots) in Iran can strike at will,” he said. “It was not always true and completely changed the equation.”
Graphical illustrations by Ian Bott and Steven Bernard
