The Syrian uprising is an opportunity for the Israeli Air Force

Published: 11:13 EST, 24 August 2012 | Updated: 06:24 EST, 26 August 2012

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It is an ill wind that blows no good, and the mounting storm in Syria may well be providential to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in their planning for the strike on Iranian nuclear sites.

For let us be in no doubt: the IAF will be planning. Planning is what armed forces do – and never more so when there’s a tangible threat.

President Obama has now said that containment isn’t an option: Iran cannot be allowed to acquire a nuclear capability. It follows logically that armed force may have to be used to achieve that policy goal. Indeed, Obama has said explicitly that all options remain on the table.

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Opportunity: The mounting storm in Syria may well be providential to the Israeli Air Force (IAF) in their planning for the strike on Iranian nuclear sites

Strategy: With the Assad regime imploding, Syria's air defences could be seriously degraded, and Southern Syria may well now be the IAF's most feasible route into Iran via Iraq

The question for him is where is the red line: what is the critical point at which military force must be used? It would make a good episode of The West Wing. Seen from Tel Aviv, of course, the red line may be rather closer than seen from Washington.

So how does the turmoil in Syria help the IAF planners?

The IAF has over the past decade purchased 125 advanced F-15I (I for 'Israel' – McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing) and F-16I (Lockheed Martin) strike-fighters. The I variants are equipped with Israeli avionics and additional fuel tanks specifically for long-range strike missions. Indeed, the IAF’s principal strike orientation has for the past ten years been towards Iranian nuclear capability.

It has bought specialised 'bunker-busting' munitions, developed long-endurance unmanned aircraft for target reconnaissance, as well as an air-to-air refuelling capability (ten large tankers based on the commercial Boeing 707).

Its pre-emptive strike in June 1981 against the Osirak reactor near the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, is legendary. Less well known was its strike in September 2007 against a Syrian target believed by Israeli and U.S. Intelligence to be a nuclear reactor under construction. Both strikes stopped the nuclear programmes in their tracks, and then retarded subsequent research and development.

Arsenal: The IAF has over the past decade purchased 125 advanced F-15I (I for 'Israel' - McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing) and F-16I (Lockheed Martin) (pictured) strike-fighters

However, a fully disabling strike against Iran would be far more complex. The Iraqi and Syrian strikes were against single targets located above ground – and they were 'bolts from the blue'.

The Iranian sites are buried deep, there are five that would probably have to be neutralized (Natanz and Fordo, Uranium enrichment plants; Arak, a heavy water plant; Isfahan, a Uranium conversion plant; and Parchin, a military site), and Iranian Air Defence has been put on notice for months.

And the sites are, of course, at greater range than any previous ones. Far greater range. Multiple, deep-buried targets would require a large number of aircraft in a carefully coordinated operation; and access would have to be via other nations’ air space.

Precautions: Israelis are exchanging old gas masks for new amid tensions over the possibility of Israel striking Iran over its nuclear programme

Hitherto it had been supposed that there were three options: via Turkey, Jordan/Iraq, or Saudi Arabia.

Iraq’s air space is virtually undefended, so this would be the place in which command and control (C2) and refueling could be carried out; but transiting Jordanian air space, as well as being politically explosive, could be a hard-fought job.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be even trickier, with the added complication that Turkey is a member of NATO.

Syrian airspace has hitherto been regarded as perhaps the toughest nut to crack, technically, as well as Syria's being, too, the country most likely to share early-warning intelligence with Teheran. But with the Assad regime imploding, its air defences could be seriously degraded, and Southern Syria may well now be the IAF’s most feasible route into Iran via Iraq.

Ironically, this is a window of opportunity that is only likely to open wider in the months to come; so for the time being it may well act as a brake on the IAF strike option. Ultimately, however, the Iranian 'red line' will not be determined by Damascus or the Syrian rebels – or even by the U.S. presidential elections; only by Teheran, as seen from Tel Aviv.

Meanwhile the IAF will continue to do its duty: training and planning to destroy the existential threat to Israel.