You know, I really think that a lot of people in the US don't get it when they read about how mad Israel is over Iran's nuclear program. Sure, we read all the statements made by there prime minister, and we sometimes hear a sound byte from him, but how many people in the United Stats remember that Israel was the nation that launched an Operation Opera back in the eighties that took out there French-supplied nuclear reactor program?
Israel doesn't play by other people's rules, and with enemies on three sides (and Hamas making trouble for them from within) I really don't see them being overly diplomatic with the prospect of a nuclear attack looming large in the near future. I'm supremely confident that if you were to ask ten thousand Iranians to name a single city that Iran should attack with a nuclear weapon, Tel aviv would make the short list in a real hurry.
The IDF is a tough military, and they are well equipped and well trained, to be sure. With the lessons learned in the 80s about small facilities and the power of precisions air strikes, what intelligence the public does have points to large and well defended facilities in Iran that wont be taken out by a single squadron of aircraft. As a point of fact, if Israel does make a military play to take Iran's nuclear research capability, it will likely involve a healthy (but still small) fraction of the Israeli Air Force. Not only are we considering the craft needed to get the bombs to the target, but they are going to need fighter escorts, and defense suppression escorts to cut a path to the target.
And that is assuming that they go in from the air. The original draft plan of Operation Opera, before Israel was handed 8 American-made F-16, called for several battalions of infantry to fly into Baghdad and demolish the reactor with demolitions charges and then fight there way to an extraction point. It would have been a bloodbath to be sure, something reminiscent of the British experience during their airborne phase of Market Garden in World War Two.
Under the current circumstances, I honestly can't see the prospect of a high causality mission deterring Israel from action if they think that Iran is within months of activating a nuclear weapon. More to the point, Israel has his own nuclear arsenal, and while I know they would pay dearly for it, one can not dismiss the possibility of a preemptive first strike against Iran.
