Iran game plan Israel unlikely to achieve strategic objectives even with US help, say experts

Israel's assault on Iran, including its nuclear and ballistic weapons programme, is unlikely to secure its long-term strategic objectives even if Benjamin Netanyahu manages to persuade the Trump administration into joining the conflict, experts have suggested.

- Peter Beaumont

According to diplomats, military specialists and security analysts, Israel – and its prime minister – is likely to face increasing headwinds in the campaign amid warnings that it risks dangerously destabilising the region.

There is mounting scepticism over whether the US air force's massive "bunker buster" bombs would be able to knock out Iran's Fordow uranium enrichment facility, which is buried deep beneath a mountain. Questions have also emerged about Israel's ability to sustain a long-range offensive that has exposed its cities to counterattack by Iranian ballistic missiles.

Experts make the distinction between Israel's operational success in targeting strategic Iranian sites and individuals and its strategic objectives, which appear to have expanded to regime change in Tehran on top of destroying its nuclear programme.

"There is a dominant trend in Israel going back to the formation of the state that has suggested to politicians that violence will deliver a solution to what are political problems," said Toby Dodge, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics.

"My gut feeling is the Iranian regime is more stable than has been suggested. And because Iran has a long history of commitment to technological modernisation and proliferation, well, that's something you can't simply remove with a bomb."

Analysts are also puzzled by an Israeli strategy that appears to have gambled on triggering a conflict in the hope of pushing a highly erratic US president to join the war, supplying the firepower that Israel lacks in terms of bunker buster bombs.