Correct. However, my understanding was that only the 25 F-15I variants operated by Israel have the necessary range to reach eastern Iran and return without inflight refuelling (and only then through the use of droptanks). The other F-15s and F-16s would require such inflight refuelling, and Israel only has half a dozen or so refuelling aircraft, correct or not?

If this is so, the scale of an Israeli attack would be limited not by overall available aircraft numbers, but by support capability for those undertaking the attack.

Add in the fact that the Israeli aircraft would have to avoid hostile or denied airspace for the entire duration of the mission (they cannot overfly Iraqi, Saudi etc airspace), this causes immense logistical problems for any such attack.



Correct, and if the comparison was the entire Israeli airforce versus the entire Iranian airforce, Iran would lose badly.

If we're talking 25 F-15Is versus 35 MiG-29s, the numbers turn out rather differently. Israel would win through (somewhat) superior technology and much greater combat experience, but the difference in capability is not as vast. This is where your knowledge if the other Israeli aircraft have the range to join the attack would be extremely useful.

In addition, any air-to-air hardware the Israelis mount to defend against Iranian aircraft is less air-to-ground missiles needed for the actual strike, correct? That means multiple sorties.



Politically, Israel cannot confirm the existence of its nuclear capability, nor can it become the first country in 65 years to deploy nuclear weapons in offensive strikes without facing massive international condemnation. If Israel's existence is threatened, Israel will use nukes without a second thought, granted, but in a conventional missile attack by Iran, especially if limited in scope and if many of those missiles were shot down by Arrows, Israel would not be able to respond realistically with the nuclear option.

This of course could trigger a domino effect where neither country can back down and it could go nuclear, but it's not something to be taken lightly.



By the USA's assessment, Iran has the most powerful armed forces in the Middle East after Israel with an active military force of half a million and another half million reservists, with a further several million militia (likely to be discountable in any major conflict, however).

In addition, Iran's AA network has not been degraded or destroyed over the course of twelve years of airstrikes as Iraq's was. It is not very impressive, and I believe the Russians turned down Iran's attempts to update their AAs some years ago (to the same standard as the Serbian AAs that did shoot down an F-117A in 1999, although that was almost certainly a fault with the stealth bomber), but Iran's AA network does remain extant and a potential threat.

Do F-15Is and Israel's other combat aircraft possess the ability to carry out ground attacks whilst under attack from even Iran's inferior AA batteries in complete safety? If the answer is no, then Israel faces the problem of having to clear AA corridors to its targets beforehand, which is rather dubious without stealth capability, and again would require multiple sorties.



Production facilities are vulnerable to attack, but since Iran's facilities have been put together with the help of outside contractors (most notably the Russians), those production facilities can also be put back together again fairly straightforwardly.

However, I was under the impression that the biggest headache in the air strike scenario was the existence of unknown 'hardened' storage facilities (if not particularly hardened by our standards) in remote and possibly underground locations? Is this not a realistic problem then?



Given that Israel deployed 14 aircraft to target one Iraqi nuclear reactor by itself, it would appear that a significantly larger force would be required to attack numerous targets across Iran simultaneously.



But then if Iran ever did anything to overtly threaten Israel, then the USA and NATO would likely get involved anyway, making the whole discussion moot?

The scenario I thought we were talking about is if Israel decided that Iran's nuclear ambitions are a threat and decided to attack tomorrow. If Iran starts dropping chemical weapon-tipped Shahab-3s on downtown Tel Aviv, no country in the world is going to deny Israel's right to retaliate massively.