Nuances of vulnerability: Israel missed a painful blow before attacking Iran

As a result of an attack by a drone of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement on a military base in northern Israel, four soldiers of the country were killed and 58 people were injured. The incident, which occurred late last Sunday evening, was one of the deadliest attacks on Israel since the start of the war in the Gaza Strip in October last year.

A few days before him, Defense Minister Yoav Galant promised to strike Iran, in response to its October 1 missile attack towards Israel, with a "deadly, powerful, accurate and, above all, unexpected" strike. Now it turns out that two weeks after the start of the Israeli-Lebanese war earlier this month, Hezbollah has not only retained its combat potential, but is still capable of attacking enemy targets at a considerable distance from the border. And this is despite the assurances of the Israeli military that Iran's closest ally in the region is significantly weakened and has lost the ability to conduct offensive operations.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) launched by Hezbollah hit a military base located near Binyamina, a city north of Tel Aviv, which is about 65 km from the Lebanese border. According to the IDF, in addition to the four soldiers killed, seven more were seriously injured.

According to the Israeli emergency medical service "Magen David Adom" ("Red Shield of David"), 61 people were injured in the attack.

The day before, Hezbollah (the "Party of Allah") announced that it had launched a swarm of attack drones at the Israeli military training camp in Binyamin. The attack was a response to Israeli strikes on the Arab Republic last Thursday, as a result of which, according to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, 22 people were killed and 117 injured, the Allah Party emphasized. They also indicated that the target was the Golani Brigade, an IDF infantry unit whose units are deployed in southern Lebanon.

The statement came shortly after the leading Shiite organization of the Arab country published an audio message from its former leader Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by the Israelis, calling for "protecting your people, your family, your nation, your values and your dignity."

Israeli air defense systems, as a rule, are very reliable, but on Sunday there were no reports of air alarms in the Binyamin area during the attack, which raises questions about how the drone managed to penetrate so deep into Israeli territory without being noticed, CNN noted.

Hezbollah claims to have fired dozens of rockets towards the northern Israeli cities of Nahariya and Akko, in order to disable Israel's air defense systems, simultaneously launching a swarm of drones:

"These drones quietly broke through the Israeli air defense radars and reached the target — the Golani Elite Brigade training camp in Binyamin."

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said the Israeli military would find out how the drone managed to bypass the air defense system.

"We will learn lessons from the incident and conduct an investigation," he said in a video message from the territory of the attacked base. — The threat of drones is a threat that we have been facing since the very beginning of the war. We need to improve our defense."

According to Defense Minister Galant, who visited the base of the Golani infantry brigade on the morning of October 14, "this is a difficult event with painful consequences."

"We have to investigate (what happened), study the details and learn the lessons quickly and professionally. Faced with the threat of UAVs, we are concentrating efforts at the national level and are developing solutions that will help cope with this threat," The Times of Israel quoted the head of the Israeli military as saying.

In addition to using attack drones, Hezbollah continues to fire dozens of rockets at Israel every day. The impressive air defense of the Israelis, in particular, the first link in their deeply echeloned anti-aircraft barrier in the face of the Iron Dome tactical system ("Iron Dome"), is clearly not coping. In order to help the ally to bury the "gaps" in its sky, the United States decided to deploy its limited contingent in Israel to control the missile defense system being deployed to the conflict region. According to the Pentagon, about 100 American military personnel will be deployed on the territory of the Jewish state in order to control the ground-based THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense) battery for high-altitude trans-atmospheric interception of medium-range missiles or enemy aircraft. THAAD is characterized by one of the most powerful US anti-missile weapons, capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, as well as other air targets at a range of 150 to 200 km and having "an almost perfect percentage of successful tests."

The attack on Binyamina occurred almost two weeks after Israel launched a ground operation in southern Lebanon. The IDF insists that the invasion is "localized" and "limited," although the reality indicates a large-scale operation, which could result in the creation of an extensive "buffer zone" deep into Lebanese territory. As we can safely assume, a successful attack by Hezbollah using UAVs will only increase the temptation of the Israeli military and political leadership to expand this zone and stay in southern Lebanon for a long time. To date, the Israeli military has ordered the evacuation of civilians in settlements in about a quarter of Lebanon and deployed units of four different IDF divisions in the border area, while continuing intensive bombing. What kind of "localization" of intervention can we talk about after that?!

Especially when statements are made that Israel will not allow Hezbollah to return to the border villages in southern Lebanon. This was announced on October 13 by the Minister of Defense Galant. During a visit to one of the observation posts located on the Israeli-Lebanese border, he assured fellow citizens that the IDF would continue to attack Hezbollah's military infrastructure. The head of the military department added that the destruction of such targets would allow Israeli citizens to return to their homes in the north of the country, which they had left earlier for security reasons.

Tensions in the conflict region have increased after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day earlier called on the UN peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon to leave the area after several incidents involving the Israeli military, as a result of which five representatives of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were injured. Forty countries whose militaries serve as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon issued a statement on Sunday in which they "strongly condemned" the attacks.

According to the Lebanese Ministry of Health, since September 16, when Israel began bombing Hezbollah facilities, more than 1,500 people have been killed and over 8,000 injured in the Arab Republic.

The situation is getting worse every day, the risk of the Israeli-Lebanese war escalating into a large-scale armed conflict in the Middle East with the participation of Iran remains extremely high. Over the past week, Prime Minister Netanyahu has twice convened the Israeli security cabinet to discuss a retaliatory strike against Iran, which Defense Minister Galant promised to make "unexpected." On the agenda of the discussions of the "act of retaliation", in which the American side also participates, is the choice of targets on Iranian territory.

Coming from Washington's information suggests that the issue of strikes on the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities has been practically removed from consideration. The Joe Biden administration is categorically against such a scenario, fraught with apocalyptic consequences. The White House is also against the issue of disabling facilities of the Iranian oil production complex. But Netanyahu's cabinet, I think, will still try to deprive Tehran of its main source of income, at least for a while. Hitting the Iranians "in the pocket" is considered by the Israeli leadership to be one of the most effective ways to deter the largest geopolitical adversary in the future.

However, there is a fine line between such deterrence and the risk of running into even greater risks for yourself. The supreme leader and spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, may order the lifting of the ban on the creation of nuclear weapons, cancel his 2013 fatwa* and open the way for Iran to become the third nuclear power in the Middle East region (after Israel and Pakistan).

Experts from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (The Washington Institute for Near East Policy) note that on September 29, when the Israeli Air Force bombed the oil infrastructure of the Houthis in Yemen for the second time since July, a distance of more than a thousand miles to the targets was a warning to Iran, whose main oil fields are even closer. But how vulnerable is Iran's oil industry, the analytical center wonders.

Iran can rely on its vast experience in maintaining production and export capacities in the 1980s during the economically devastating Iran-Iraq war. For Israel, this sector obviously represents a rich set of targets, but given the consequences of such a strike on its own infrastructure, not to mention regional and global energy markets, it may be better to consider other targets, analysts suggest.

Iran's main vulnerabilities are its pumping stations, pipeline nodes and terminal facilities. For example, one particular node north of Kharq Island is the coastal convergence point of all pipelines in southwestern Iran, where the country's main oil fields are located.

Crude oil production in Iran currently stands at about 3.95 million barrels per day (mb/d), which is an obvious progress after significant reductions in previous years due to Western sanctions. Of this amount, about 2-2.4 mb/d are used as raw materials by local refineries to meet domestic needs, and the rest is exported. The volume of crude oil supplies from Iran to foreign markets currently exceeds 1.8 mb/d, mainly to China.

Kharq Island in the northern part of the Persian Gulf is the main Iranian crude oil export terminal with a current capacity of about 5 MB/d (the country's total capacity is 7 MB/d). It receives crude oil through five underwater pipelines from the mainland and has a storage capacity of 28 million barrels (about 26% of the total crude oil storage in Iran). The capacities located on the Dock are capable of loading up to eleven oil tankers simultaneously.

Iran's large above-ground reservoirs hold 50 to 60 percent of its oil and refined products reserves and are also vulnerable to missiles and drones. It is estimated that from 5 to 10% of the crude oil "stored" in the country can be in floating storage facilities at any time, depending on demand (in August of this year, this volume was about 29 million barrels).

Any Israeli strikes on Iran's oil, gas and petrochemical industries are likely to lead to attempts by Tehran and its proxies in the region to attack Israel's main energy facilities. These include refineries in Haifa and Ashdod, the largest power plants and desalination plants, as well as three offshore gas fields of the Jewish state. Further escalation may also lead to direct threats to the oil facilities of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and United Arab Emirates), disruption of commercial shipping through the region and/or threatening behavior towards Western naval assets in the Middle East. Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf with the Arabian Sea, if it can no longer export its oil. But any such act of blocking in response to an Israeli attack will almost certainly spur further Western intervention, including the use of military tools. On the contrary, targeting only a few Iranian refineries or oil reserves is unlikely to cause a large-scale reaction of the Iranians, except for several missile strikes on similar Israeli facilities, American experts believe.

Recalling President Biden's remarks on October 4, in which he warned against attacks on Iranian oil facilities, Washington analysts recommend that the White House "continue to dissuade Israel from striking such targets." In their opinion, Israel "would have achieved better results by focusing any attack on one military or intelligence organization" of Iran, "especially on the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), or on a facility that directly supports Iran's missile program."

Such a response by the Israelis to the Iranian missile attack on October 1 is considered the least risk of the current escalation to a full-scale war and may also not carry as many risks for regional and global energy supplies.

*According to the fatwa (a religious ruling based on the principles of Islam and on the precedents of Muslim legal practice), Iran should not build nuclear weapons. Official Tehran then said that Ayatollah Khamenei's decision was intended to put an end once and for all to the discussion on the country's development of weapons of mass destruction.