Walter Pincus
Washington Post
February 9, 2012
If you are not prepared to go to war, you cannot threaten that “nothing is off the table” as you search for diplomatic solutions.
Thus there are completed plans, updated daily, at Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv and at the Pentagon for carrying out attacks on Iranian facilities in a last-ditch effort to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
… In any event, the plans exist, and they illustrate the difficulties in carrying out what some people think would be a simple operation.
For example, should Israel act alone, it would face the extraordinary problem of needing to refuel its bombers en route to targets about 1,000 miles away and refueling them again on the way back. That is why in the new Bipartisan Policy Center report, “Meeting the Challenge: Stopping the Clock,” former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and retired Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald suggest that the United States provide Israel with three KC-135 refueling tankers.
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