Israeli Attack Destroyed Iranian Nuclear Plant’s Air Defenses NY TImes report claims Israel defeated Iranian air defense measures, destroyed Iran S-300 battery

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UPDATE: I did an interview for WORT (Madison) radio’s Public Affair. Listen to it here.

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After Iran’s missile barrage targeting Israel, the world awaited Israel’s response.  Experts debated when the retaliatory strike would happen and how intense it would be.  The US lobbied for a subdued response in order not to plunge the region into full-scale war. The Israeli war cabinet debated the whether to launch an all-out attack or one that merely sent a message.

The answer finally came last Sunday, when Israel fired missiles, and drones attacked sites in Isfahan, Iran’s third-largest city.  It houses a light water nuclear reactor and the Natanz nuclear plant is nearby.  Iran claimed only a few missiles were fired and little damage was caused.

Ronen Bergman, a journalist close to the Mossad, co-authored a story in the NY Times. It was undoubtedly sourced to the Mossad. Though the Times also cited anonymous “Iranian officials” as key sources for the account of the attack.

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Despite multiple bylines, the portion of the article concerning Israel’s attack was undoubtedly written by Bergman.  Here he writes:

An Israeli airstrike on Iran on Friday damaged an air defense system, according to Western and Iranian officials, in an attack calculated to deliver a message that Israel could bypass Iran’s defensive systems undetected and paralyze them.  The strike damaged a defensive battery near Natanz, a city in central Iran that is critical to the country’s nuclear weapons program, according to two Western officials and two Iranian officials.

…The two Iranian officials who discussed the Israeli attack said that Israel had struck an S-300 antiaircraft system at a military base in the province of Isfahan. The officials’ account was supported by satellite imagery analyzed by The New York Times, which showed damage to the radar of an S-300 system at the Eighth Shekari Air Base in Isfahan.

It was unclear precisely what sort of weapon struck the S-300 system. Three Western and two Iranian officials confirmed on Friday that Israel had deployed aerial drones and at least one missile fired from a warplane.

One of the byline reporters is Iranian-American and has lived in, and reported from Iran  Her bio indicates she has cultivated numerous Iranian government sources, I find it difficult to believe an official would leak information to any western reporter which reflected badly on Iranian military operations, as this story does. Her source would have to be a senior military or intelligence official, whose job would be to protect Iranian security and project its military strength. Precisely the opposite of what this purported leak represents.

However, Bergman’s close ties with the Mossad would give it, and the Times mutual benefits.  The Israeli spy agency and IDF’s SIGINT Unit 8200 would certainly have access to internal Iranian military-intelligence communications.  Israeli satellites beam down upon Iran, while hackers break into security networks and servers to intercept these messages.  Leaking them to Bergman and the Times offers it a front row seat to Israel’s technological prowess and an inside view of the inner deliberations of the Iranian regime.. The leaks also serve Mossad’s interest in denigrating Iran’s military capacity.

Bergman also advances the Mossad’s interests by claiming that Israel had masked its attack, leaving Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities fully exposed.  The claim, if true, would be a further blow to Iran’s pride regarding its defensive capabilities: an army that can’t keep its country safe. Besides, the actual battles being fought, there is also a psychological battle on both sides to humiliate and dishearten the enemy. The Times article aided that effort.

To add insult to injury, Iranian TV aired a surprising claim that Israeli assets may have launched drones used in the attack from inside Iran itself:

…One analyst told Iranian state TV that small drones had been deployed by “infiltrators from inside Iran”.

As a separate Times article noted:

 If the drones were launched within the country, it demonstrates once again Israel’s ability to mount clandestine operations in Iranian territory.

Regarding this, the Mossad clearly has assets inside Iran.  It used MeK assassins to murder several Iranian nuclear scientists.  It also used similar operatives, according to a different Bergman Times report, to drive a pickup truck loaded with an AI-powered machine gun. It was parked on the road traveled by the founder of Iran’s nuclear program. When he passed by, the gun was activated and killed him. Infiltration of such espionage agents who drove the assassination vehicle to the location, further embarrassed its intelligence apparatus.

There is a limit to this game of nuclear chicken, where deterrence stops being effective.  That’s the real danger point beyond which lies full-fledged wars.  By deliberately targeting Isfahan and the air defenses for its nuclear facilities, Israel telegraphed that it could destroy them in a future conflict. It wanted Iran to know it was willing to unleash a nuclear explosion, whose resulting radioactivity which would cost the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions.

The is a sobering thought for the Iranians. At least Israel that’s what Israel intended.  What’s lacking in this calculation is that Iran too has plans to to destroy Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.  While it does not possess the F-35s and precision guided missiles which struck Isfahan, it has hundreds of thousands of cruise and ballistic missiles, and drones.  It’s likely they could overwhelm Israel’s defenses if fired in massive waves. This is how Hamas succeeded in striking Israel on 10/7, launching salvos of hundreds of missiles simultaneously.  Even the most sophisticated air defense cannot intercept everything coming at it all at once.

There is a good chance in such a strike, Iran would hit Dimona. Even though it is undoubtedly a hardened target for just this reason, Iran could do extensive damage. This could conceivably cause a similar nuclear catastrophe to the one planned for Isfahan and Natanz.

There is a blindness in Israeli geo-strategic thinking. It believes in its own invincibility; that its enemies cower in the face of Israeli might; that the threat of overwhelming force will make them think twice before daring to attack it.

Conflicts are between two parties, each capable of damaging the other.  Israel seems to believe it is the only party that matters; that it can destroy Iran, but that the latter can do no serious damage it.  That is a fatal mistake.

The lessons of the 10/7 are lost on the IDF.  It was responsible for several massive intelligence failures. Before that attack, it ignored two warnings by its own intelligence officers that Hamas was planning a major attack.  On the day of the attack, the army was massively overpowered by Hamas’ fighters.  They took 250 hostages, many of them IDF soldiers.  It has succeeded in freeing only a few of them.  It has likely killed most of them in its genocidal assault.  On 10/7 Kibbutzim and villages were overrun for days.  IDF helicopter gunships and tanks killed several hundred Israelis, some deliberately.

I would venture that when Netanyahu approved the destruction of Iran’s consulate in Damascus and the assassination of two IRG generals, he did not anticipate Iran’s massive response.  He probably did not believe Iran dared to do what it did.  This amounts to another failure to understand the enemy.

Given such failures, one would think the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet would possess a bit more humility and caution in calculating its Iranian adversary.  One would hope that they could anticipate a conflict leading to a nuclear catastrophe in both countries.  Israel seems incapable of such thinking.