It has been said in the past that Israel won't let Iran attain a nuclear ability along with a delivery system to reach Israel. This seems to be the excuse they need and take those targets out. The problem is distance and those locations would be heavily defended.
Iran's oil export infrastructure seems closer with less defenses to negotiate.
Decapitating the leadership may not be easy. Iran is so different from a Russia, China, North Korea as leadership is easily filled with new Mullah's.
I am curious your thoughts on these targets, or would Israel look for targets that would not lead to a massive escalation.
Great question and I have my doubts with respect to Iran's nuclear program. I obviously am somewhat dated, but the math and kinetic challenge hasn't changed. Unlike Iraq and Syria which essentially had single point of attack nuclear plants for enrichment, Iran has spread its program over a number of facilities. Secondly, the Iraqi and Syrian plants, though well defended, were susceptible to catastrophic damage if struck.
Open source material notes that the two major Iranian sites are buried. Site Fordo, which is often pointed at as the primary enrichment location, is inside a mountain under at least 80 meters of solid rock. That is a Cheyenne Mountain sort of construction. The site is also over a thousand miles from Israel. Any ordinance capable of having any hope of penetrating that deeply would have to be very heavy.
The largest open source US developed bomb is the GPU 57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) built by Northrop Grumman. Its capabilities are largely classified,
but it weighs 40,000 lbs and requires a B2 to launch it at a target. The Israelis have no means to deliver such a weapon if they had it.
The MOP was developed because of the lack of effectiveness against many Iraqi targets by the 5,000 penetrator that was created following the first Gulf War. In that conflict, improvised penetrators were employed.
So, with respect to the nuclear targets, the Israeli Air Force would struggle to reach them with their current aircraft, and if they were successful, it would be a huge challenge to inflict any meaningful damage with their current ordnance. I should also note that while the Iranian Air Force is distinctly third world, it has a sophisticated air defense network with a version of the Russian S300 as its centerpiece.
An intermediate staging base would solve some of the range and fuel problems, but which Arab country would offer that scale of support to an Israeli strike package - particularly if a sustained attack were required. No one in the region likes the Iranians, but almost all deal with large Shia populations that are capable of causing enormous domestic instability.
One would assume SOF is also an option. But trying to infiltrate a large enough force to take out a huge underground facility would seem daunting. As we saw at Entebbe, Israel is willing to take such risks with its special operators, but this would be into the teeth of a well defended target facility, not a civilian airport.
The oil industry, on the other hand, is a much softer target, but range is again the hurdle. For instance, the distance from Israel to Bandar Abas is nearly 1400 miles meaning a strike mission of 2800 miles. Some airman should check my math, but the base F-16 has a combat radius of around 750 miles. That can be extended with external and conformal fuel tanks. The math remains inexorable however. For every pound of fuel, a pound of ordnance has to be removed. It is why mid-air refueling is so critical to US operations.
