NEW STUDY SAYS IAF COULD DESTROY IRANIAN NUKE FACILITIES

This Defense Tech post is one of the most heartening things we've read in a while. And it's about the inevitable eruption of war in the Middle East might not be all that bad. Thus does Middle East blogging proceed:

Some of the good folks at MIT have just figured how many bombs it would take for the Israeli Air Force to blow up Iran's entire nuclear weapons infrastructure. Apparently, it isn't so hard after all... But, according to the MIT report, there is one major catch: the air strike on Natanz could fail if Iran's air defenses succeed in downing only two of the IAF's strike package of 24 F-15Is if each is loaded with a single BLU-113. MIT concludes, however:... the IAF, after years of modernization, now possesses the capability to destroy even well-hardened targets in Iran with some degree of confidence.

The entire study is here (PDF warning). We haven't read over the whole thing, so we're not sure if it addresses the IFF issue. We also don't know if they assume that an Israeli strike might involve cruise missiles as well as air assets. If fighters get downed before they can drop their payload, one certainly assumes that Israel would launch cruise missiles to finish the job - it's try or die at that point. Here's what we don't get: if Israel can do it, then the US can certainly do it. And a US strike would have a higher probability of success (closer target, better tech, less logistical problems, etc). And it's not like Iranian nukes won't find their way into the heart of a US city eventually - the US doesn't have existential stakes in play, but they've certainly got a lot to lose. It just sounds like the US is hanging Israel out to dry because Iran has promised to nuke Israel first.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]