There seems to be a lot of rumors floating around that Israel planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities from Georgia, this plan makes perfect sense to me. What I have read suggests that the Russians captured a great deal of Isreali military hardware.

I guess the plan would go like this, Isreal pre-positioned assets in Georgia, Fuel, weapons, and fresh pilots, the air strike takes off from Israel, lands in Georgia the aircraft are armed, re-fueled, and the fresh pilot gets in, they strike from the north.

How does that sound for a plan in a nut shell?

Of course they would have mimimum air to air capiblility no sense carrying bombs, this will allow them to fly light and fast. Speed being key to success.

Food for thought....

Originally Posted by Topmaul

There seems to be a lot of rumors floating around that Israel planned to attack Iranian nuclear facilities from Georgia, this plan makes perfect sense to me. What I have read suggests that the Russians captured a great deal of Isreali military hardware.

I guess the plan would go like this, Isreal pre-positioned assets in Georgia, Fuel, weapons, and fresh pilots, the air strike takes off from Israel, lands in Georgia the aircraft are armed, re-fueled, and the fresh pilot gets in, they strike from the north.

How does that sound for a plan in a nut shell?

Of course they would have mimimum air to air capiblility no sense carrying bombs, this will allow them to fly light and fast. Speed being key to success.

While it sounds interesting it would still require a lot of air time over potentially unfriendly countries and would run the risk of dragging NATO into it if they went anywhere near Turkey, to be honest I am not sure I see any advantages in this for either Israel or Georgia as I imagine the Russians know when a car backfires in Tbilisi they would be less enthusiastic about seeing fighters taking off on their radar screens.

Highly unlikely. It would violate the number 1 rule of formulating any sort of plan: keep it simple.
Any action like this would be impossible to keep as a secret.

Redneck,
When have you seen a simple military operation involving a deep strike into a country with a well thoughtout air defense system?

Where did you find the infomation about the Israeli military hardwares in Georgia?

Originally Posted by Topmaul

Redneck,
When have you seen a simple military operation involving a deep strike into a country with a well thoughtout air defense system?

Gee I don't know but the Israelis were practicing the air strikes and they could cover the distance to the Iranian targets without landing and refueling in a foreign country. I probably put that video clip here somewhere but I can't seem to find it.
So if they can make the distance without landing the darn planes, why would they go ahead and land them in Georgia and hope that the Georgians don't change their mind.
As for hardware... well... Israeli hardware belonging to Israel or Israeli hardware belonging to the Georgians? Or is it Israeli hardware that's definitely there like the WMDs were definitely in Iraq?

Redneck
Fake left and hit right. Of course they did that exercise to fool the Iranians, media, and arm chair generals why the heck else did they tell CNN about it? If it was a serious rehersal for an urgent military operation the media would not know about it?

I am just putting this out as a theory not a fact. The rumors exist none the less, mostly from Iranian sources which are less than reliable.

#1
09-05-2008, 02:35 PM




Motive for Russia's actions in Georgia?
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5559

Russian units raid Georgian airfields for use in Israeli strike against Iran – report

DEBKAfile Special Report
September 5, 2008, 12:58 PM (GMT+02:00)
Israeli long-range unmanned aerial vehicle



The raids were disclosed by UPI chief editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, who is also on the Washington Times staff, and picked up by the Iranian Fars news agency. The Russian raids of two Georgian airfields, which Tbilisi had allowed Israel to use for a potential strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, followed the Georgian offensive against South Ossetia on Aug. 7.

Under the secret agreement with Georgia, the airfields had been earmarked for use by Israeli fighter-bombers taking off to strike Iran in return for training and arms supplies.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that flying from S. Georgia over the Caspian Sea to Iran would sharply trim the distance to be spanned by Israeli fighter-bombers, reducing flying time to 3.5 hours.

Northern Iran and the Tehran region, where most of the nuclear facilities are concentrated, would be within range, with no need to request US permission to pass through Iraq air space.

Russian Special Forces also raided other Israeli facilities in southern Georgia and captured Israeli spy drones, says the report.

Israel was said to have used the two airfields to “conduct recon flights over southern Russia as well as into nearby Iran.” The US intelligence sources quoted by UPI reported that the Russian force also carried home other Israeli military equipment captured at the air bases.

Our sources say that if the Russians got hold of an Israeli unmanned aerial vehicle complete with sophisticated electronic reconnaissance equipment, they will have secured some of the IDF’s most secret devices for spying on Iran and Syria.

When this happened before, Russian military engineers quickly dismantled the equipment

Or they may be trying to get the support of Arab countries.

Here's my 2 cents. Israelis would have to fly over;

(1) Armenia

Armenia is a major Russian client state, it is a solid part of the Russian sphere of influence and its airspace is tightly protected by Russia. Israel cannot fly over Armenia without first getting Russia's consent, and I really doubt an Israeli (or American) strike on Iran serves Russia's best interests at all. Regardless of all the bickering and political games, Iran buys the vast majority of its military gear from Russia and China, have major economic deals in the works with these two, and both the bear and the dragon need Iran to continue to keep the US busy in the neighborhood while they develop their economies, technological base and consequently warmachines and global influence.

(2) Azerbaijan

Again, a state influenced by both Russia and Turkey/NATO. Azerbaijan has been enjoying significant oil/gas revenues in the past few years, thanks to new pipelines (like BTC) that transport oil from the rich reserves of the Caspian Sea to the western markets, mostly through Turkey. The last thing they'd want right now would be to become a direct target of Iran.

(3) Turkey

Not only would it mean direct NATO involvement and may lead to a truly global turmoil, but also the Turkish government alone (who's been negotiating its ass off with all the sides and players to solve the problems with Iran through economic sanctions and diplomacy) would never allow such an attack through its airspace. There's actually a semi-formal agreement between teh governments of Turkey and Iran that Turkey would not allow any foreign power to use its territory, airspace or other resources in attacking Iran, be it Israel, the US, the vandals, whoever. Turkey, of course, is Iran's northwestern neighbor and is fully aware of the fact that any full-scale war would negatively effect it in many ways for a very long time to come.

In short I just can't see it happenning via Georgia. It's too much detouring with too many interconnected, adverse implications. If they tried, it'd instantly turn into one huge multinational mess.