NATIONAL
REVIEW
by DANIEL PIPES
by DANIEL PIPES
The Vienna deal has been signed and likely will soon be
ratified, which raises the question: Will any government intervene militarily
to stop the nearly inevitable Iranian nuclear buildup? Obviously it will not be
the American or Russian governments or any of the other four signatories.
Practically speaking, the question comes down to Israel, where a consensus
holds that the Vienna deal makes an Israeli attack more likely. But no one
outside the Israeli security apparatus, including myself, knows its intentions.
That ignorance leaves me free to speculate as follows.
Three scenarios of attack seem possible:
Three scenarios of attack seem possible:
Airplanes. Airplanes crossed international boundaries and
dropped bombs in the 1981 Israeli attack on an Iraqi nuclear installation and
in the 2007 attack on a Syrian one, making this the default assumption for
Iran. Studies show this to be difficult but attainable.
Special ops. These are already underway: computer-virus
attacks on Iranian systems unconnected to the Internet that should be immune,
assassinations of top-ranking Iranian nuclear scientists, and explosions at
nuclear installations. Presumably, Israelis had a hand in at least some of
these attacks and, presumably, they could increase their size and scope,
possibly disrupting the entire nuclear program. Unlike the dispatch of planes
across several countries, special operations have the advantage of reaching
places like Fordow, far from Israel, and of leaving little or no signature.
Nuclear weapons.
This doomsday weapon, which tends to be little discussed, would probably be
launched from submarines. It hugely raises the stakes and so would only be
resorted to, in the spirit of “Never Again,” if the Israelis were desperate.
Of these alternatives, I predict the Netanyahu government
will most likely opt for the second, which is also the most challenging to pull
off (especially now that the great powers promised to help the Iranians protect
their nuclear infrastructure). Were this unsuccessful, it will turn to planes,
with nuclear weapons as a last resort.