Israel Matzav

Another sign the attack on Iran is coming

Here's another sign that Israel is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities: France's L'Express is reporting that Israeli aircraft practiced refueling in mid-air recently.

Here's the translation of the L'Express report:

Aircraft of the Israeli air force had recently conducted exercises in the air refueling between Israel and Gibraltar. The magnitude -3,800 kilometers of this field maneuvers confirms that the IDF is preparing concrete praperations for air strikes on Iran if Tehran continues to refuse to negotiate with the international community on the nuclear issue.

Something tells me that Iran's agreeing to 'negotiate' isn't going to be enough to stop this attack from coming.

UPDATE 12:00 PM

Haaretz, YNet and Arutz Sheva have all picked up on this report.

Haaretz connects it to the story in the Times of London two weeks ago that indicated that Israel is preparing to be able to attack Iran within a matter of hours of a government decision to do so. Defense Minister Barak's office denied that story, but I suspect there is more truth to the story than to its denial.

YNet connected the story to both the Times of London story as well as to last summer's story about the IAF carrying out maneuvers over Greece, a story that has not been denied. In that exercise, the IAF practiced against the Russian S-300 radar that it fears will be supplied to Iran.

But Arutz Sheva points out the most important thing about this story: The distance to Gibraltar (in one direction) is 3,800 kilometers (2,361 miles) and the IAF did that distance round trip. The exercise to Greece last summer was 900 miles in each direction - a distance that would approximate the distance to Iran if Israel were granted rights to overfly Iraq. The mission carried out in Sudan in January was a similar distance.

But flying to Gibraltar is a much greater distance than anything Israel has undertaken before. And while I have not done the numbers, I would bet that 2,361 miles is about the distance from the Palmahim Air Force base to Iran if the IAF has to get there without flying over Jordan or Iraq. And now the IAF has proven that it can get there and back.

Heh.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:08 AM