By Jeremiah Rozman
Israel’s security establishment sees a nuclear-armed Iran as its greatest “intolerable” threat. Iran crossing the nuclear threshold changes Israel’s security position from one where it faces the threat of violence from many enemies but total destruction from none, to one where Iran holds the capability to destroy Israel in a nuclear holocaust, with Israel left guessing under what circumstances it would resolve to do so. This dynamic leaves Israel not only vulnerable to a perhaps unlikely nuclear attack but also to very likely nuclear blackmail, severely constraining Israel’s ability to act against its enemies including Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel considers a nuclear Iran an unacceptable strategic outcome. What this means is that if negotiations on a return to the nuclear deal between Iran and the powers fail, as they very likely might, Israel may be faced with two options, launch a risky and potentially unsuccessful kinetic strike against Iran’s nuclear program or accept a nuclear Iran. Since Israel has maintained that the latter is not an option, the former–a kinetic strike–is a very real possibility. In that event, Israel will almost certainly find itself in a kinetic war with Iran and its proxies, including the formidably armed and strategically positioned Hezbollah. To face this possibility Israel needs to understand how Iran will fight. Iran’s involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine provides a glimpse into what very well might be Iran’s strategic calculus if it faces Israel.
Since Ukraine launched a rather successful counteroffensive, Russia has shifted strategies in Ukraine. Russia’s shift to targeting Ukraine’s critical civilian infrastructure through mass precision strikes marks its third strategy in this conflict. Each phase of the conflict can be understood as Russia targeting a different Center of Gravity (CoG). This term originating with Carl von Clausewitz has been slippery to define. In essence, it denotes a defeat mechanism. Knock out a CoG and you defeat the opponent’s “freedom of action, physical strength, or will to fight.”
First Russia went for a swift knockout blow against what it thought was a reachable CoG with the best cost-benefit payoff -- Ukraine’s government. President Vladimir Putin sought to achieve this by killing or capturing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and installing a pro-Russian puppet. When this failed, Putin attacked another CoG, Ukraine’s military. It reckoned that with Zelensky out of reach, Russia needed to defeat Ukraine's military to achieve his desired policy outcome without appearing to blatantly target Ukraine’s civilians. Prior to air power, if an attacker could not pull off a governmental coup, defeating a nation's armed forces was a necessary step to forcing capitulation. In the age of air power, especially precision air power, this is no longer the case. Herein we find Putin's latest strategic shift.
The Ukrainian military proved a tougher CoG than anticipated, too tough for Putin to defeat. At best Putin has secured a military stalemate, capturing some territory at enormous cost. While Ukraine may or may not be able to completely drive Putin out of Ukrainian territory, it is clear now that Putin cannot rapidly defeat Ukraine’s military.
Over the past few weeks Putin has shifted towards attacking what he must consider to be Ukraine’s last tenable CoG. While some have dubbed Putin’s new actions ‘vengeful’ there is a strategic calculus to them. Putin believes that Ukraine's critical civilian infrastructure is also a CoG, meaning that by knocking it out, it can force Ukraine to capitulate even if it cannot defeat its armed forces. Using precision air power with Iranian drones playing a central role, Russia has been able to deal enormous damage to Ukraine's water and power grid in advance of the upcoming harsh Ukrainian winter, this despite Ukraine being able to intercept a majority of these munitions. Iran must be drawing important lessons from this battlefield testing. Its advisors are on the ground helping Russia integrate these drones into its arsenal. It is likely that Iran is taking notes for a future conflict with Israel.
Combined with Hezbollah, Iran has enough precision munitions to truly threaten Israel by a similar targeting of critical infrastructure tested by Russia in Ukraine. Iron Dome and Israel’s other air defenses have never been tested against precision munitions or against the type of precision combined drone and cruise missile attack that Iran conducted against Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil refineries. While Israel is certainly better able to strike targets in enemy territory than Ukraine has been thus far, it also has far less strategic depth than Ukraine, meaning it has fewer targets that Iran and its proxies must hit and they are less dispersed.
Because it is highly unlikely that Iran and its proxies can defeat Israel’s armed forces or capture its seat of government, Iran might determine that Israel’s only vulnerable CoG is its civilian critical infrastructure as well as its population. If Iran believes that it can defeat Israel by inflicting enough damage on these targets, any future kinetic conflict with Iran would likely see the targeting of Israel’s power and water facilities. Iran has already targeted these with cyber attacks. Iran has successfully tested complex precision targeting against Saudi Arabia, defeating U.S. provided Patriot air and missile defenses. It is currently honing this form of warfare in Ukraine.
Israel must learn from Ukraine as Iran surely is. In order to deter Iran by threatening a military response to it crossing the nuclear threshold, Israel must demonstrate that it can defend itself to the point where Iran no longer sees Israel’s critical infrastructure as a defeatable CoG. This would make the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program far more credible, potentially preventing war. Israel’s next best option if deterrence fails is to win in conflict. Israel must harden its critical infrastructure and improve its ability to rapidly target Iran and its proxies’ precision fires if it is either to deter Iran or defeat it if deterrence fails. Therefore, Israel should rapidly integrate lessons learned from Russia’s new Iran-backed strategy in Ukraine and pay close attention to how Ukraine contends with this new strategy.
The views expressed do not reflect the position of the U.S. government or military and are the author's own.
Jeremiah Rozman currently works as the National Security Analyst at a DC-based think tank. From 2006-2009 he served as an infantryman in the IDF. His regional expertise is in the Middle East and Russia. He designed and taught an undergraduate course on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Read full bio here.