Quote Originally Posted by William F. Owen View Post
Why mount Nuclear Warheads on Harpoon and fire them from an SSK?

While obviously classified it seems most likely that Israel's "Special Weapon" is Jericho 2 and 3 ICBM mounted in hardened missile silo's all over Israel - same as the US and in some cases a generation plus based purely on more recent construction.

I can take a pretty good guess at 7 such sites, dispersed from end to end of the country. An Iranian capability of successfully strike all these successfully is extremely unlikely.

- but to ask the exam question, again, to what purpose? What Iranian policy could be successfully progressed by striking Israel?

Israel reason to possess Nuclear weapons is purely as a defence against land invasion, and to deter the use of Chemical Weapons against the civilian population by another state.

Another issue constantly avoided is that Israel "may or may not" have nuclear weapons. Now everyone knows that this is a game, but if you claim not to have Nukes, you are logically bound to exclaim dismay about someone else getting them.
I agree. There is basically 0% chance that Iran will first strike Israel, doing so would essentially be tantamount to suicide. Iran would be turned into glass. The Iranians may be able to escape retaliation through "plausible deniability" with conventional weapons, but this would not be the case if they supplied a proxy with a nuclear device, they would suffer retaliation as if it were an ICBM that had been launched from Iran. I also doubt that the Iranians will fully weaponize. It seems far more likely to me that they will develop a break out capability, and leave it at that. The whole point of developing a nuclear weapon is to prevent invasion, and a break out capability will do that, in many ways, us assuming that they have/will have that has already acted as a deterrent. We need to stop freaking out about this. Nuclear deterrence will continue to work. No matter how crazy you think the IRGC & friends are, they are not about to commit mass suicide. This isn't Heaven's Gate.