'Iron Dome doesn’t answer threats'

Military analyst says claims of effectiveness are disingenuous.


Ben Hartman
JPost
09 May '10

Tel Aviv University professor and noted military analyst Reuven Pedatzur on Saturday strongly criticized a ballistic missile defense conference and exhibition held in Tel Aviv last week, calling the organizers’ and speakers’ claims that current defense systems can protect Israel from missile and rocket threats false and disingenuous.

Pedatzur’s harshest criticisms were reserved for the Arrow missile defense system, which, he said, does not present a defense against a possible nuclear strike from an Iranian ballistic missile. He said that since the system is not sure to work every time, and because a single atomic bomb can constitute an existential threat to Israel, the system is pointless.

He added that it didn’t matter if the system worked 99 percent of the time, and called its developers’ claims of such success rates “absurd and ridiculous.”

Pedatzur, who spent decades as an IAF fighter pilot, said “there are enough simple countermeasures that can be deployed to make the effectiveness of the Arrow basically zero.”

When asked why he thought such a conference would be held if the ineffectiveness of these programs is well known, Pedatzur replied that “for the aeronautics and defense industries, it’s a matter of money; and for politicians, supporting such projects allows them to tell the public that they’re doing something, they’re trying to find answers to the threats we face.”

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A Nuclear Iran and the Futility of Sanctions

Graphic: Steve Hughes

Louis René Beres
Frontpagemag.com
07 April '10

In the matter of Iranian nuclearization, U.S. President Barack Obama still doesn’t get it. Economic sanctions will never work. In Tehran’s national decision-making circles, absolutely nothing can compare to the immense power and status that would come with membership in the Nuclear Club. Indeed, if President Ahmadinejad and his clerical masters truly believe in the Shiite apocalypse, the inevitable final battle against “unbelievers,” they would be most willing to accept even corollary military sanctions.

From the standpoint of the United States, a nuclear Iran would pose an unprecedented risk of mass-destruction terrorism. For much smaller Israel, of course, the security risk would be existential.

Legal issues are linked here to various strategic considerations. Supported by international law, specifically by the incontestable right of anticipatory self-defense, Prime Minister Netanyahu understands that any preemptive destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructures would involve enormous operational and political difficulties. True, Israel has deployed elements of the “Arrow” system of ballistic missile defense, but even the Arrow could not achieve a sufficiently high probability of intercept to protect civilian populations. Further, now that Obama has backed away from America’s previously-planned missile shield deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, Israel has no good reason to place its security hopes in any combined systems of active defense.

Even a single incoming nuclear missile that would manage to penetrate Arrow defenses could kill very large numbers of Israelis. Iran, moreover, could decide to share its developing nuclear assets with assorted terror groups, sworn enemies of Israel that would launch using automobiles and ships rather than missiles. These very same groups might seek “soft” targets in selected American or European cities – schools, universities, hospitals, hotels, sports stadiums, subways, etc.

While Obama and the “international community” still fiddles, Iran is plainly augmenting its incendiary intent toward Israel with a corresponding military capacity. Left to violate non-proliferation treaty (NPT) rules with impunity, Iran’s leaders might ultimately be undeterred by any threats of an Israeli and/or American retaliation. Such a possible failure of nuclear deterrence could be the result of a presumed lack of threat credibility, or even of a genuine Iranian disregard for expected harms. In the worst-case scenario, Iran, animated by certain Shiite visions of inevitable conflict, could become the individual suicide bomber writ large. Such a dire prospect is improbable, but it is not unimaginable.

(Read full article)
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