Western Thought Needs To Catch Up With Israel

The Regional War Started on 7 October 2023. So far, Israel is winning.

The international community, if such a thing exists, the UN and the UK are making fools of themselves by suggesting that the solution to the wars in, on and around Israel are an immediate 21 day ceasefire and diplomatic talks to deliver “the two state solution”.

Until 7 October 2023 there was a de facto two state solution for much of the time. Sure, in the West Bank the Israelis occupy more than was envisaged in the Oslo Accords, but then many Palestinians (including all the terrorists apart from Arafat’s PLO ) didn’t support them. That’s not the point – there were two states with the Palestinians running Gaza and parts of the West bank.

Courtesy of the Iron Dome system there was also a de facto ceasefire.  In 2022 Hamas fired some 1,100 rockets at Israel which killed zero Israelis. In January to October 2023 they launched over 1,600 rockets which killed one Israeli and one Palestinian labourer in Israel. The Israelis retaliated when a target appeared and there were occasional ceasefire agreements. It wasn’t peace, but it was endurable.

That ended on 7^th October 2023, when Iran’s proxies attacked.

The size, brutality and effectiveness of this assault (some of the 6,000 Hamas fighters got as far as 30 kilometres into Israel) shattered any delusions that the status quo was acceptable. The Israelis resolved to destroy Hamas and recover the hostages.

Conventional military wisdom was that it isn’t possible to defeat terrorism or insurgency by military power alone, so many western military theorists and diplomats considered the Israeli’s aim unachievable. They overlooked two things.  Firstly Israel is not facing an insurgency; it’s facing an existential threat. Secondly,  whereas western generals read about urban battles of Basra, Falluja and earlier the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have been fighting and militarily defeating Palestinian terrorists in Gaza city for decades.

So while the world’s leaders urged a ceasefire and lefties marched in the UK’s cities chanting “From the river to the sea”, the IDF simply got on with it. In doing so they have (again)reshaped military thought. The Gaza operation may not (yet) have been a total success, but it is far from a military or humanitarian disaster. Hamas no longer exists as an effective force.  Its underground logistics and movement tunnels have been severed.  10,000 of its fighters are dead and 117 of the 239 hostages taken in October 2023 have been recovered by the IDF. (109 remain in Gaza, of whom 79 are thought to be alive.)

There has, of course, been a heavy humanitarian price – some 20,000 civilians have been killed and much of Gaza City devastated. The IDF has achieved what military experts hitherto thought impossible; it has destroyed a terrorist capability without having to negotiate a settlement. While the IDF continues to scour Gaza and the tunnels for the remaining hostages, Israel has been able to redeploy forces from Gaza to Lebanon to remove the rocket and attack threat to North Israel. This is not a two front war; Israel has won in Gaza. Now it’s dealing with Hezbollah.

The Israeli’s  literal decapitation of Hezbollah’s command structure some two weeks before the invasion was brilliant by any measure. The IDF incursions on to Lebanese soil combined with deeper precision air strikes on Hezbollah infrastructure seem to be working well. This operation will not be quick and it will not be casualty free. (The IDF suffered around 720 killed and 10,000 wounded in Gaza).  Cleansing Lebanon of Hezbollah is going to be more of a challenge than the destruction of Hamas capability in Gaza. Hezbollah has some 40,000 fighters; Hamas had about 20,000. Lebanon south of the Awali river is an area of about 800 square kilometres, the Gaza strip is just 360.

The IDF has warned civilians to evacuate 24 towns and to move north of the Awali River, some 50 kilometres north of the Israeli border and 20 kilometres south of Beirut. The 24 towns are presumably centres of Hezbollah control and activity and thus targets for ground attack. Such operations are going to take time. The Israelis describe the operation as a series of raids, which it may well be but the duration of the raids will probably be measured in weeks, not hours. Some parts of the IDF will probably be in some parts of the Lebanon for months.

While Israel was, and is, able to almost completely isolate Gaza it can’t do the same in South Lebanon although it can constrain access – as it demonstrated at the Masnaa crossing.  There is little doubt that the IDF will be able to destroy every Hezbollah installation, and fighter who stands to fight, in their target areas. The more important question for Israel’s long term security is who will occupy the power vacuum that the destruction of Hezbollah will leave? Will the Lebanese state step up, or will it allow some other militia to usurp it? Might the UN deliver a more effective peace keeping force than it has hitherto? Will the Arab world step forward?

Meanwhile, of course, there is the missile war. Both Hamas and Hezbollah fired lots of (short range) rockets into Israel.  The Iron Dome system usually destroyed those rockets heading for population centres, as evidenced by the remarkably low Israeli casualties. The IDF were also sometime able to destroy the launchers. The Iranian and Houthi missiles are longer range and mostly outside of Iron Dome’s designed capability envelope. There are three generic types of Iranian missiles that threaten Israel.

Firstly cruise missiles and drones, which fly low and relatively slowly – certainly below the speed of sound. When they were conceived in the 1970s fighter jet radars struggled  to lock on to  targets shielded in ground clutter – the reflection of radar from the ground. All modern fighters have a “look down, shoot down capability.” A cruise missile’s flight time from Iran to Israel is about two hours, which gives plenty of time, as we saw in April when the American, British, Jordanian and Egyptian air forces all joined forces with Israel to shoot the missiles down. (Iran is not thought to have hypersonic cruise missiles, such as the Russian Zircon, which travel at five to ten times the speed of sound, reducing the time of flight to perhaps 12 to 15 minutes. Zircons have been used in Ukraine and it is claimed some have been shot down by Patriot missiles, which Israel has.)

Secondly, Iran has a range of ballistic missiles. Unlike cruise missiles, these fly on a high trajectory. The longer the range, the higher the trajectory and the faster the missile. Once launched ballistic missiles are easily visible to radar and their track is easily predictable, meaning that they can be intercepted. Long range ballistic missiles are very fast moving; in the final stages of their flight they reach speeds of the order of 10 to 20 times the speed of sound (7,000 to 14,000 mph). That makes them a tough target and one best engaged before it reaches top speed, which means at or close to its apogee, which is often in space.

Iran’s older ballistic missiles are liquid fuelled. They’re fuelled immediately before launch and that complex, time consuming process is obvious to any satellite watching, and thus gives about an hour’s warning. Iran’s later missiles are solid fuelled – the first warning is their launch. With a flight time of about 15 minutes there is still time for an interception, not least because the trajectory is predictable. In the recent attacks the Israeli Arrow missile system successfully destroyed several Iranian missiles, as did the David’s Sling missile, which is designed to engage shorter range (i.e. lower and slower) ballistic missiles.

Finally there are “hypersonic” missiles. While conventional ballistic missiles follow a predictable, physics driven trajectory (often at great speed) more modern ones manoeuvre, possibly altering their trajectory several times thereby both complicating the interceptor’s task and reducing the time it has calculate its best route. There are also hypersonic glide bodies. These are launched like a normal ballistic missile, but they separate from the missile early in the trajectory, while the missile is still in the earth’s atmosphere.  They then glide towards the target on a lower trajectory. This keeps them under the radar horizon for longer, reducing the response time for any interceptor. Iran’s Fattah-1 and Fattah-2 missiles have such a capability. Iran may have launched Fattah missiles on 1^st October; if they did the missiles were either intercepted or went rogue.

So far Israeli air defences have destroyed everything Iran has thrown at it. However at some stage a missile will get through. The warhead of a Fattah missile is thought to be no more than 500kg – about twice the size of the ubiquitous US Mk 82 aircraft bomb or a major car bomb. Such explosions were common in the second world war – they may demolish a street or city block, but they don’t destroy a city. Living under that threat is possible. The Israelis are doing it now and have been for years, as did the population of the UK and Germany for much of the second world war. It’s endurable but it’s not peace.

If the incoming missile had a nuclear warhead the effect would be devastating. While Israel’s allies might or might not join Israel in exacting a terrible retaliatory price on the Iranian regime that would be scant comfort to those at ground zero, or indeed the rest of the world. Whether the Mullahs heed such a threat is unknowable and without that knowledge deterrence is impossible. Israel’s peace and security requires more concrete foundations.

The first Israeli option is the destruction of the Iranian nuclear programme. It is thought that this is deep underground, which means a direct hit on it is impossible as conventional bombs won’t penetrate deep enough. While it might be possible to block all the entrances to underground complexes with missiles and bombs, keeping them blocked would require repeated attacks. Leaving any entrance open would negate the effect. A land raid might be more thorough although the numbers required on the ground (and the amount of kit they need to carry) is probably very substantial. The attacking force will need to be extracted from Iranian territory, which is probably an even bigger challenge than getting them there in the first place.

The second option is to destroy the missile facilities. Launch sites, storage locations and manufacturing plants could, in theory, be wrecked by air strikes.  Israel has and has been publicising its ability to operate aircraft a long way from Israel recently. Long range bombing attacks are complex. While Iran does not have much of an air force it does have capable anti-aircraft missiles, which would need to be suppressed. Israel has a finite number of F-35s and F-15s. An Israeli jet attacking Iran is not available to shoot down incoming Iranian cruise missiles, the launch of which would be the obvious Iranian riposte to any Israeli air attack.

The third option, and one being discussed in the press, is to destroy Iranian oil infrastructure, a much easier target. Removing Iran’s oil income would further damage Iran’s wretched economy which in turn might at last yield the conditions necessary to overthrow the Mullah’s tyranny. But then again it might not – the Iranian people have endured the mullahs since they overthrew the Shah’s in 1979. Most Iranians have known nothing else.

Meanwhile the Iranian missile threat remains. This threat is really one of probability and of logistics. As long as Israel can restock its Arrow, David’s Sling and Iron Dome systems at least as quickly as Iran can build or buy missiles the probability of any one Iranian missile penetrating the Israeli missile defence belt remains low. Low is not zero though.

Any mullah hoping to get lucky by firing lots of missiles should consider the IRA. After the IRA’s 1984 Brighton bombing, which nearly killed Margaret Thatcher, Gerry Adams, the political leader of the IRA, announced that while the British government had to be lucky all the time, the IRA only had to get lucky once. Yet just 14 years later the IRA disarmed as part of the Good Friday Agreement, with Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK. By that time the IRA was so thoroughly penetrated by British Intelligence and so riddled with informers that its leadership were in disarray and its ability to attack severely restricted. It’s not inconceivable that the Israelis have similarly penetrated the Iranian regime.

So far Netanyahu’s Israel has achieved a military victory over Hamas, just as it said it would. It annihilated much of Hezbollah’s command structure at a stroke and is now consolidating its northern security, in accordance with its war aims. Israel can reach and destroy its enemies throughout the Middle East and has done so - even in downtown Tehran.

When Netanyahu said that the Iranian people will be free of the mullahs sooner than people think I’m inclined to believe him.

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