Cordesman/Wilner, Iran & The Gulf Military Balance
AHC 6/3/12
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mix of several air and ground bursts in an Israeli thermonuclear or high fission yield attack on five key cities -- Tehran (capital) 7.19 million; Mashhad 2.592 million; Esfahan 1.704 million; Karaj 1.531 million; Tabriz 1.459 million – would probably destroy Iran as a nation in anything like its current form.43 The greater metropolitan area of Tehran alone is home to some 8-9 million people. Furthermore, 45% of large Iranian industrial firms are located in Tehran, as is 50% of all Iranian industry. As such, an Israeli nuclear strike on Tehran would have disastrous consequences for the Iranian state and Israel could target every major Iranian city. In actual practice, Israel can already deliver an “existential” nuclear strike on Iran, and will have far more capability to damage Iran than Iran is likely to have against Israel for the next decade. Moreover, Israel has steadily improving missile defenses, and the US has offered “extended deterrence” to Israel and the Arab states. This potentially could mean US retaliation for any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel or an Arab ally of the US. Most of Iran’s major cities are also far enough inland so that Israel could strike them with large numbers of ground and air bursts while doing only limited damage to neighboring states – all which except Turkey and Pakistan are not key political actors. Israel could use airbursts on Iran’s cities near its borders and minimize the risk of major amounts of fall out crossing borders and still inflict catastrophic damage on these cities. Moreover, Israel could selectively target Iran’s Persian population to pose an existential threat using fewer weapons. While such estimates are dated and uncertain, the CIA estimates that Iran’s population has the following ethnic distribution: Persian (official) 53%, Azeri Turkic and Turkic dialects 18%, Kurdish 10%, Gilaki and Mazandarani 7%, Luri 6%, Balochi 2%, Arabic 2%, other 2% (2008 est.). 44 Nuclear targeting could also include key religious cities like Qom and all of Iran’s major shrine cities and those with key theological seminars – effectively destroying the structure of the Shi’ite clergy and possibly much of the support for Iranian Shi’ite practices. It should be noted, however, that as the attack levels rise – and to some degree even during limited attacks – a significant number of the missiles launched would not hit near their target. It is doubtful that either Israel or Iran would take the design risk of trying to create fail-safe arming mechanisms in their nuclear warheads that would keep such missiles from producing nuclear strikes. Given the probable attack vectors, some Arab population centers might be struck by accident and the fall out effects from any such strikes could produce significant longer-term casualties.
The Unknowns in Assessing Israel’s Preventive Attack Options Similarly, there is no practical way to determine exactly how Israel’s senior policymakers and military leaders perceive Israeli ability to identify target, and destroy Iran’s current nuclear and other strike capabilities, or assess the degree to which this would give Israeli security over time vs. provoking Iran into some massive new effort to acquire nuclear weapons. There is no way to determine the degree to which their public statements represent real war plans and threats versus Data based on “Iran”: section of the CIA World Factbook, accessed February 19, 2012, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html. 43
Data based on “Iran”: section of the CIA World Factbook, accessed February 19, 2012, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ir.html. 44
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