Iran has a problem, though. If you’ve looked at a map lately, the Islamic Republic doesn’t share a border with the Jewish state. They’re more than 550 miles apart at their closest, and the two countries’ cores are nearly one thousand miles apart. That’s a big challenge for Israel, whose powerful air force would have to fly to the limits of its range just to reach Iran’s nuclear facilities. But it’s a bigger challenge for Iran, whose air force, held back by decades of sanctions, is far too feeble to break into Israel’s well-defended airspace.
Iran’s response to these challenges has been to develop a range of tools, many of them underhanded, that would allow it to hit Israel back. But not all weapons are created equal. Prior lists in our “Five Weapons” series have tried to rank weapons systems not just by how advanced they are or how widely they were used. After all, an advanced weapon might be too expensive and draw resources away from other systems, reducing overall military effectiveness (see Germany in the Second World War). A ubiquitous system might not be very good, also cutting its utility. And a weapon that doesn’t have a good crew behind it might as well not be good. But so many of Iran’s tools are highly asymmetric and highly secretive. Their impact on the strategic balance is the only criterion we can rely on. So what can Iran count on to mitigate the risk of an Israeli strike—and to hurt Israel if it does attack?
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/middle-east-showdown-5-iranian-weapons-war-israel-should-22713
