1991 - Israel retaliates - but what to bomb?

Ah, yes: The Saudi society is a 'pressure cooker'. Internal problems could easily get out of hand due to be seen as supporting Israel.

Saudi has a huge influx of Palestinians (as far as I know) and that is only one factor in the mix.

Agree. The target book got a bit thin towards the end of it.

It only emphasise the question: what could Israel realistically go and bomb?

Ivan
 
All,

1991: Gulf War.

Somehow, Bush managed to keep Israel out of it - stroke of genius really.

But .. what if he had failed?

This is focused on two areas, not the fall-out of Israel getting into it in itself:

1) What would Israel bomb? The coalition did a reasonable good job after all

2) Without being in on the ATO there is a good chance that they could get shot down or cause mid-air collisions

In essence, the air-space was packed and having people to just fly around would cause havoc. General Horner's book has a couple of those incidents (Marine pilots, if my memory serves me well).

Ivan

I disagree it was Bush's "genius" that kept Israel out of the war, Israel was always very adamant that if Iraq hit them with a SCUD that had chemical or biological weapons they would retaliate "with the strongest weapon in their arsenal", I must assume they meant a nuclear weapon. The only thing that kept Israel out of messing with Iraq during Operation Desert Storm was Hussein himself. Israel had no other reason to attack Iraq, Israel doesn't care if one Arab country invades another unless that Arab country being attacked is along its border and uses it as a base to attack Israel (eg- Lebanon). It's ASB to consider that Israel just simply decides to involve itself in Iraq. Up to then Israel had only done small bombing raids (and perhaps covert ground action or cyber attacks) on nuclear and chemical/biological labs. No reason to do so now with US troops on the ground.
 
Interesting point.

Israel did claim that if the Scud threat did not get handled, they would retaliate.

I have not read it as the nuclear option.

If that is so, it would change the equation.

It really accentuates the question: where would they hurl it? Baghdad is obvious, but would the objective be to hit a military target or to just kill a lot of civilians?

In that instance Basra is not a bad place either.

Ivan
 
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