Operation Wrath of God: A hypothetical Israeli strike on Iran - short story

• Published date: 27 January 2023

If, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards. – Former US vice president Dick Cheney on MSNBC

"If, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had a significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards."

Dick Cheney

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The decision had not come easily, nor quickly. For years, warnings had mounted of Iran's determined preparations to become a nuclear power. Efforts by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to uncover the illegal production of fissionable material had been thwarted by the mullahs, who moved some production sites around and buried others deep underground. In desperation, the agency finally gave up the cat and mouse game Iran was forcing it to play and instead referred the issue to the United Nations Security Council. There, however, resolutions sponsored by the United States to impose economic and political sanctions were blocked by vetoes, first by Russia and then by China. The former was Iran's nuclear godfather, supplying reactors and fuel, while China was Iran's major client for cheap oil.

As the UN watched impotently, Iran tested a long-range version of its Shihab-3 ballistic missile, capable of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in Europe. More ominously, it followed this test by defying international law with the underground detonation of its first home-made nuclear bomb. The world was now facing the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran and its Islamist allies in terrorism. In the post-9/11 reality, security authorities worldwide now had to deal with a nuclear-armed terrorist state, in addition to the threat of Islamist terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction that could strike down entire cities, whether by some hideous plague or the detonation of a suitcase-size nuclear device.

When the Iranian regime goes nuclear

Israel was becoming even more worried about the Iranian situation than it had been 25 years before, when it was forced to take the drastic step of bombing Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in Baghdad. At the time, even though Iraq had not quite reached the same stage of nuclear threat as Iran had now attained, Israel saw an Iraqi nuclear bomb as a threat to its survival.

When Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, it spared itself and other countries the possible horrors of dealing with a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. At the time, the righteousness of this act of preemptive self-defense eluded much of the world. It took nearly a generation – and the proliferation of the deadly virus of Islamist terrorism for the world to acknowledge the worth of the first airstrike against a nuclear facility.

Despite the hopeless paralysis of the UN, no one in Israel, of whatever political or religious...