From time to time I take a few minutes and read The Jerusalem Post on the Internet. It is easy to learn what is going on in Israel and what the leaders are thinking. During the past couple of readings I have tried to find out what Israel is considering relative to a possible attack from Iran or an attack by Israel on Iran.

A few days ago there was an interview with Prime Minister Netanyahu in which he said that Israel is prepared to make a surgical strike on Iran in order to destroy their nuclear facilities. Israel’s intelligence unit (Mossad) has all of the facilities located and knows what is going on in each of them.

Mr. Netanyahu is aware that Iran has a missile defense unit coming from the Russians that can shoot the Israeli missiles from the air in flight which might make an early strike advantageous. He stated that the Iran facilities were not developed to the point of making the strike effective. Too many of the buildings are empty and waiting on new equipment to arrive. To draw the ire of the world to destroy these buildings would not be advantageous for Israel in the long run.

When Israel destroyed the nuclear facility in Iraq a few years ago, all of the equipment was on the premises. Part of it was in trailers waiting to be unloaded. The Israeli Mossad Intelligence Service had tracked the trailers from their source and the strike took place the night after the trailers arrived in their Iraq location. They made the strike at night so that they would cause a minimum number of civilian and military deaths. The world did not raise significant objections against Israel to this strike.

The United States has eight Patriot Missile batteries between Iran and Israel that are capable of shooting Iranian missiles out of the air. They observe Iran from satellites and if a rocket is fired it sends the location, path and speed to a computer in the United States. The computer computes an intercepting path and programs the best Patriot missile to knock the Iranian missile out of the air. This takes place within seconds of the firing of the Iranian missile and will fire automatically if it is not stopped by the battery commander. These Patriot missile batteries are located in four different countries. Two of these countries are Kuwait and Israel but the other locations are kept as secret as possible. President Obama has also moved naval worships with nuclear rocket capabilities into the Persian Gulf adjoining Iran. If there was an attempt to send a rocket from Iran to Israel today it would not make it to its destination.

One of the tools that the world tries to use against Iran is an embargo. They try to stop necessary supplies and materials from getting to Iran. Even though Iran is an oil producing country they have very little refining capacity and gasoline and fuel oil are two of the products that are part of any embargo. Iran’s solution to this is to build new refineries. They have seven new refineries under construction and within three or four years will be able to supply all of their own fuel and even begin to export refined oil products that will compete with the U S Refineries.

Israel is concerned that the first nuclear strike from Iran could come from one of the close neighbors of Israel even though the bombs and rockets will be made in Iran. The Iranians could claim that they did not have anything to do with the attack and that it was a conventional weapon that happened to hit a nuclear storage facility in Israel. They could claim that Israel was destroyed by their own weapons. If the leadership of Israel was destroyed in this first attack there would be no one to order the Israeli rockets to be fired at Iran. If Israel responds by firing nuclear missiles at Iran, both nations would be destroyed and many innocent people killed.

Although firing a nuclear missile from a neighboring country could be done, the Israelis believe that a first strike would come directly from Iran because of the big ego of Prime Minister Ahmadinejad. He will wish to brag about his accomplishment to the rest of the Islamic world.

Israel reflects on the Cold War between the United States and Russia where both countries had nuclear missiles aimed at each other for many years. Reason finally prevailed and both countries realized what the dangers of nuclear war would be. They negotiated peace and the world is now a safer place.

Unless there is a change in leadership in Iran, there can be no negotiated peace. The radical Iran Prime Minister Ahmadinejad is certain that his god Allah wants the Jews destroyed and that he will be rewarded in heaven for performing the task regardless of the consequences to Iran. He appears to believe that Allah will protect Iran from the attack by Israel and that there will be no consequences. Many of the citizens of Iran oppose the prime minister and voted against him in the last election. He appeared to have lost the election but the Ayatollah Khomeini declared him the winner. The people of Iran have no method to challenge the Ayatollah of Allah who is the leader of all Shiite Muslims of the world.

Unless Iran is prevented by the powers of the world from getting nuclear weapons a conflict with Israel appears to be inevitable.