This is just a bluff to try to ward of the coming US attack. Israel will be a fool to let Iran get the nukes.
A assuming they wouldnt want to ditch their planes in the sea, and opt to pick those pilots up. It would be worth 10 f16, just to knock out those plants, B we are assuming they are going to bomb using planes and not some type of covert military action with special forces, C) luanch missles, D) use navy vessals to launch missles, their is any number of options that isreal can use.
You need to look at a map and see how big iran is, how far away israel is and the flying range/striking distance of a F 16. Now, re-fueling is another issue. Covert teams will do nothing to a nuke site, well, besides maybe spray painting the sign outside it!
Sure he's serious, and the Israeli navy is capable of launching pinpoint cruise missile strikes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Navy
<b>The F-16 solution.</b> By George F. Will Thursday, November 1, 2001 Washington Post On the afternoon of June 7, 1981, Jordan's King Hussein, yachting in the Gulf of Aqaba, saw eight low-flying Israeli F-16s roar eastward. He called military headquarters in Amman for information, but got none. The aircraft had flown below Jordanian radar. So far, so good for Ivry's mission, code-named Opera. Ivry, a short, balding grandfatherly figure with a gray mustache, was then commander of Israel's air force, which had acquired some of the 75 F-16s ordered by Iran from the United States but not delivered because of the 1979 revolution that toppled the shah. The F-16s were to be tested to their limits when Israel learned that Iraq was about to receive a shipment of <b>enriched uranium</b> for its reactor near Baghdad -- enough to build four or five Hiroshima-size bombs. The reactor was 600 miles from Israel. Ensuring that the F-16s had the range to return to base required the dangerous expedient of topping off the fuel tanks on the runway, while the engines were running. Measures were taken to reduce the air drag of the planes' communications pods and munitions racks. Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the attack to occur before the uranium arrived and the reactor went "hot," at which point bombing would have scattered radioactive waste over Baghdad. The raid was scheduled for a Sunday, to minimize casualties. It was executed perfectly. Aren't we glad. Now. The raid probably was not Israel's first preemptive act against Iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons. In April 1979 unidentified saboteurs blew up reactor parts at a French port, parts awaiting shipment to Iraq. In August 1980 an Egyptian-born nuclear physicist important to Iraq's nuclear program was killed in Paris. The U.S. State Department said Israel's destruction of the reactor jeopardized the "peace process" of the day, said relations with Israel were being "reassessed," canceled meetings with Israeli officials and suspended deliveries of military equipment, including F-16s, pending a decision about whether Israel had violated the restriction that weapons obtained from America could be used only for defensive purposes. The New York Times said Israel had embraced "the code of terror" and that the raid was "inexcusable and short-sighted aggression." The Times added this remarkable thought: "Even assuming that Iraq was hellbent to divert enriched uranium for the manufacture of nuclear weapons, it would have been working toward a capacity that Israel itself acquired long ago. Contrary to its official assertion, therefore, Israel was not in 'mortal danger' of being outgunned. It faced a potential danger of losing its Middle East nuclear monopoly, of being deterred one day from the use of atomic weapons in war." The Times was sarcastic about fear of Saddam Hussein ("even assuming . . . hellbent") and sanguine about his acquiring nuclear weapons that would deter Israel from using such weapons. But 10 years later Americans had reason to be thankful for Israel's muscular unilateralism in 1981. Today on Ivry's embassy office wall is a large black-and-white photograph taken by satellite 10 years after the raid, at the time of the Gulf War. It shows the wreckage of the reactor complex, which is still surrounded by a high, thick wall that was supposed to protect it. Trees are growing where the reactor dome had been. The picture has this handwritten inscription. "For Gen. David Ivry, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 -- which made our job much easier in Desert Storm." The author of the inscription signed it: "Dick Cheney, Sec. of Defense 1989-93." Were it not for Israel's raid, Iraq probably would have had nuclear weapons in 1991 and there would have been no Desert Storm. The fact that Bush and Cheney are keenly appreciative of what Ivry and Israel's air force accomplished is welcome evidence of two things: In spite of the secretary of state's coalition fetish, the administration understands the role of robust unilateralism. And neither lawyers citing "international law" nor diplomats invoking "world opinion" will prevent America from acting as Israel did, pre-emptively in self-defense. http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A21270-2001Oct31¬Found=true
Anyone who is actually dumb enough to begin to advocate some sort of tactical or strategic strike should go rent ⦠http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090163/ ⦠Watch it and then watch it again. Ahmadinejad, Olmert and Bush, would be assassinated in the name of humanity before it came to that madness. (just kidding E*C*H*E*L*O*N)