“What do you mean?” asked Cohen.
“Can we airlift troops into Iran? Can’t we take Fordow with troops and blow it up? Don’t we need to get creative here?”
All eyes turned to the defense minister. “Well, Mort, this is something I have given a lot of thought to,” Avner replied. “Let me hand out the current strike summary.” Avner opened his manila folder and handed out six pieces of paper, each a copy of the summary page of the current state of planning for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program. “This assumes that we have the GBU-28. But this still doesn’t do anything with Fordow.”
Raibani now offered his opinion. “It seems to me that we have two options. We can go now before they finish Fordow or we can put soldiers on the ground in Iran to seize Fordow and destroy it. There is a large salt lake just north of the site. I’m sure we could land C-130s there. We go in, blow it up and kill everyone we find. Then we get out. It’s Entebbe on a larger scale.”
“We have been racking our brains on this,” Avner replied. “This is very high risk. We know the Persians have thought of this.” In fact, Avner had been expecting this line of discussion and was prepared. “Yavi, please update everyone on the state of Persian ground defenses at Fordow.”
“Sure.” Yavi Aitan leaned forward in his chair as he gathered his thoughts. “Keep in mind that Fordow is an old military base and they have a small number of security troops based there. But that is changing rapidly. The Iranians have moved some command units and advance elements of the Mohammad Rasulollah Corps to Fordow. That is the premier Pasdarin unit, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. It has the best equipment and training and is the largest of the thirty-two Pasdarin corps that are maintained. The Iranians are currently building housing and support facilities for a portion of this unit. The unit has a little over four thousand troops. We don’t yet know how much of the unit will move to Fordow, but we expect at least a full battalion. We think they will keep at least half the unit in Tehran, including its headquarters. But that is just a guess at this point. The Rasulollah Corps also has indigenous armored units, including twenty-eight T-72 tanks and fifty-eight BMP ones and twos. The bad news is that we think all of their armor will be moved to Fordow.
“Also, within three hours notice, the Iranians can deploy a number of first-line Artesh units down from Tehran, including the 65th Airborne Special Forces Brigade. Artesh is regular army. In Qom, which is only an hour away, they have the Ali Ibn Abi Talib Corps, another premier Pasdarin unit, probably second only to the Rasulollah Corps. These units may not be on par with comparable IDF units head to head, but they are highly motivated fighters who will be defending their home turf. To underestimate any of these units would be a dangerous mistake.”
Avner jumped in to hammer home the point. “You don’t have to be a career officer to know that our troops would need to fight their way into Fordow and then fight their way back to any extraction point.” Avner was looking at Avi Gresch and Mort Yaguda. “We would have to figure out how to give our soldiers close air support. My assessment is that, assuming we have tactical surprise, we will probably be able to fight our way in and we might even successfully blow the chamber. But we will never fight our way back out. In my professional opinion, this would be a suicide mission.”
The room was quiet. Eli Cohen extinguished his cigar. This was the moment Avner had been waiting for. The defense minister cleared his throat. “There is a way to make this work,” he said. Cohen knew what was coming next. A week earlier, he and Avner had a heated discussion in private about this issue. Ben Raibani had already guessed Avner’s destination. But no one wanted to touch the topic, so Avner had free rein. “A low yield nuclear warhead could be attached to a GBU-28. We have been working on the design and I…”
“Insanity.” The voice was loud and powerful. Benjamin Raibani stood as he spoke the word. “The State of Israel would come to this? Becoming the first nation in sixty-five years to use a nuclear weapon in anger? If you think we are a pariah nation now, we will be absolutely alone.”
Cohen pondered stepping in but Raibani was saying what needed to be heard. Raibani was exactly the right man to react to Avner’s trial balloon. The Holocaust survivor — the only one in the room — continued. “I will not be party to such a decision. We will be viewed as the new Nazi state. This would galvanize the Arab world and we would lose even our hardcore Jewish support in America. We will have won the war and lost our souls in the process. And the future of Israel will be sealed.” His lips were quivering. It was the level of rage he was known for while he was a general but that had softened in the intervening years.
Raibani started to sit down, confident he had correctly punctuated his points. Half way through the motion, he abruptly stood again and looked down at Cohen to his right. “If you go forward with this, Mister Prime Minister, you will have my resignation in the morning.” He sat down in his chair.
At the far end of the table, Avi Gresch was emboldened by witnessing the side of Raibani he had never seen before. “And mine as well,” he stated, looking at Avner not Cohen.
These types of threats were not unusual in politics and Cohen was not surprised. But he wanted to stop this thought process before emotion became the only deciding force in the room. As he had done earlier, he raised his left hand and motioned, palm down, for everyone to relax. His voice was calm. “I appreciate your views, Ben. But I am not sure I agree with your conclusions. You are free to follow your conscience and I respect that. Of course, if you choose to resign, we will need to devise an appropriate cover story.” The prime minister was calling Raibani’s bluff. He knew the man, and he knew that Benjamin Raibani had to be in this room and in the middle of this process while the State of Israel was discussing its very survival. As for Avi Gresch, Cohen didn’t care what he did and never gave him a thought.
“But before any decision is made,” Cohen continued, “what I want now is to have a rational discussion among this group of the pros and cons of this path. I will start. Ben, you have passionately stated the downside. I cannot deny that this would galvanize the Arab street and severely hurt us with our allies. But I make the following points in favor: First, we need to strike every target on that list and destroy each one, especially Isfahan, Natanz, Arak and Fordow. Second, we have a high chance of evading Iranian air defenses on the first strike, but every return visit will put us at higher risk and we will suffer ever greater losses. And that is not to mention the political issues of overflight.” He gave a nod toward his defense minister. “Third, it appears to me that to destroy Natanz and Isfahan with its tunnel complex will require most, if not all, of our Ra’ams. So if we need to use GBU-28s elsewhere, it will be difficult. Fourth, we don’t have a weapon to destroy Fordow. Even if we can get one or two of this new bomb — what was it, the mop?” Avner nodded. “We don’t have a plane that can deliver it. Fifth, we could probably get troops into Fordow — I was thinking along the lines of a commando team infiltrated in — but I have to agree with Zvi. The odds of getting them home afterwards are very low. Sixth, when we go, we will face a massive barrage of rockets from Lebanon and from Gaza. So the army will need to be ready and it will need the IAF to support it. Seventh, the worst thing that can happen is to go and to fail to destroy their nuclear program. Eighth, using tactical nuclear weapons ensures that we will obliterate the primary targets. Ninth, we have the total support of every Arab leader other than Assad. Tenth, we will suffer losses in the retaliation. Our cities will be hit and our civilians will be killed. This will create sympathy. If we have a PR campaign ready to go, we will survive the initial onslaught of bad press.”