The Tehran Initiative (43 page)

Naphtali looked around the room and leaned forward in his seat.

“We have been praying for a miracle, for a regime change, for Hosseini to change his mind and Darazi to die, or some combination thereof. Thus far, those specifics have not happened, but I am confident that the God of Israel is still with us and that He is answering our prayers in ways that we do not yet see. One thing is clear: it is time for us to fight. Indeed, we have run out of time for anything else if we intend to survive. And, gentlemen, that is my intention. This will not be easy. In fact, I believe it will be the most difficult mission our nation and our armed forces have ever undertaken. Israel will suffer. The region will suffer. The Iranian people will suffer. But I see no other way, and in the end, I believe good will triumph over evil, and I hope to God that you do too.”

* * *

Natanz, Iran

Jalal Zandi took the urgent call in his office.

Having been up most of the night overseeing the missile technicians, he was bleary and bloodshot and had just poured himself another large cup of thick, black coffee.

“Missing?” he asked between sips. “How long? . . . Gunshots? You’re absolutely certain? . . . No, you’ve done the right thing. . . . What? . . . No, get this thing contained—I’ll let the leadership know. . . . Yes, absolutely. . . . Okay, call me the minute you know more.”

Zandi hung up the phone in disbelief. Tariq Khan was gone. Dead bodies were all over the scene. What did that mean? Who had done it? And were they coming for him next?

* * *

Tel Aviv, Israel

Naphtali turned the meeting over to his defense minister.

“Thank you, Mr. Prime Minister,” Shimon began. “As you know, gentlemen, we have multiple assets inside Iran who are feeding us detailed information. We are hopeful that in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, we will have precise targeting information to take out those eight warheads. But I must stress that I am advising the prime minister that we must be willing to attack by the beginning of Shabbat at the latest even if we do not have this information, or we will lose the initiative and, most importantly, the element of surprise.

“Surprise, of course, is a relative term. There is much concern inside Iran and around the world that we may be preparing for a strike. We have, therefore, been doing everything we can to make final preparations as discreetly as possible, as per our discussions here in this room over the last few months.”

Shimon directed the attention of the Security Cabinet to the large flat-screen monitors as he walked them through a highly classified PowerPoint presentation on Operation Xerxes.

“We recently ran an exercise in which we sent some four hundred planes on a practice bombing run to Greece, given that Greece is roughly the same distance from Israel to the west as Iran is from us to the east,” Shimon continued. “This was the second such exercise of its kind, though the first one involved only about a hundred planes. The purpose of this exercise was severalfold, but let me focus on two critical elements. First, we needed to see if we really could pull off such a massive air attack. I’m pleased to report that while we had numerous glitches, all of them have been fixed, and the IDF and I believe the answer is now yes, we could, if we were so asked. Second, we needed to get the Iranians—and the rest of the world—thinking that we are planning for a much larger-scale air attack than they had previously considered. This was done to confuse our enemies and our friends alike, to have them watching for grander preparations. But the truth is, we believe a smaller strike force is prudent. Let me explain.”

For the next thirty minutes, the defense minister provided a detailed picture of what the IDF and IAF were preparing to unleash. Using satellite photos, maps, and pictures taken by assets on the ground, he identified sixteen Iranian facilities that would be targeted, ranging from nuclear research-and-development facilities and missile-production-and-launch facilities, to the Iranian Defense Ministry and the regime’s intelligence headquarters in downtown Tehran. He noted that fourteen of the targets had been subjected to extensive surveillance and detailed attack planning for nearly eighteen months. Two, however, were new in the last few days—the Iranian naval flotilla steaming through international waters in the Mediterranean, and something called the Qaleh, the Supreme Leader’s mountain retreat center, only recently uncovered by a Mossad asset within the regime.

“Rather than send a massive armada of four hundred planes that could be detected by every intelligence agency in the region the moment it left the ground,” Shimon explained, “the idea is to send small squadrons taking different routes to attack each of the individual sites. We’ll also need additional fighter jets for security to accompany those carrying the bombs, as well as refueling tankers, electronic warfare planes, and so forth, but the pilots have been practicing for months, and we feel confident that they can move with little or no notice, once the prime minister gives the word.”

The questions came fast and furious.

“What is the total number of aircraft you plan to use?” the foreign minister asked.

Shimon explained that they were looking at using between 116 and 168 planes, depending on the final targets chosen. In the low-end scenario, he said, they would deploy fifty-two fighter jets if each jet were dropping two bunker-buster bombs on its target. These would be guarded by an additional fifty F-16I fighter jets for air escort and fighter sweep missions and to suppress enemy air-defense systems. In addition, they’d be using twelve KC-130 and KC-10 refueling tankers, plus two Gulfstream 550 electronics jets.

In the high-end scenario, he explained, they would need to deploy 104 fighter jets, if each jet carried a single bunker-buster bomb to its target. These would need a similar assortment of support aircraft.

“What kind of attrition rate are you projecting?” the finance minister asked.

“Between 20 and 30 percent.”

“You’re planning for losing up to 30 percent of our planes?”

“Planning for it? Yes,” Shimon replied. “Expecting it to actually happen? No. I believe our pilots are better than that, but war, as you well know, is unpredictable, and I’m trying to be conservative.”

“So at the low end, you’re saying that losing between twenty-three and thirty-five planes is acceptable?” the justice minister asked. “And at the high end, you are okay with losing between thirty-three and fifty planes, each of which cost about $20 million without ordnance, fuel, or electronics upgrades?”

“Compared to losing six million citizens? Yes.”

Shimon noted that the war plan also included measures to minimize the loss of Israeli pilots. They would, for example, deploy fifteen UAV drones, each armed with two Hellfire missiles. In addition, they anticipated firing roughly two dozen cruise missiles from Israeli submarines as well as numerous torpedoes to take out key Iranian naval vessels.

“And when our boys go down in enemy territory, what’s the plan to get them back?” the vice prime minister asked.

“We have twenty search-and-rescue helicopter teams on standby,” Shimon explained, putting some of the data up on the screens. “About a month ago, we pre-positioned quite a few of these teams in Azerbaijan. They are very well trained. They are highly motivated. I have reviewed these teams personally, and I am confident they can get the job done.”

At that, the prime minister stepped back into the conversation. “Just after the first of the year, as you’ll recall, I went to see my friend Jilan Kazarov, the president of Azerbaijan,” Naphtali said. “We met in his gorgeous villa in Baku, on the shores of the Caspian Sea. He was very gracious. He has seen the Iranian threat for a long time. He understands it. I gave him my list of requests, including more electronic listening posts near the Iranian border and the ability to pre-position these SAR teams, and he gave me everything I asked for.”

Naphtali paused briefly. He waited for people to stop jotting notes or looking at the video monitors and for all eyes to be back on him.

“Levi and I and the IDF chiefs have looked at this thing a thousand different ways, gentlemen, and we’ve concluded that hitting these targets isn’t the hardest part. It’s going to be very hard—extremely hard—don’t get me wrong. But it’s not the hardest part. The real problem is after our planes get home and the full-scale retaliation begins. The Iranians have at least a thousand ballistic missiles, most of which are aimed at us. Hezbollah in the north has at least fifty thousand rockets and missiles aimed at us. The Syrians have theirs. Hamas has theirs. Succeeding with our first strike isn’t what worries me. Riding out their first wave is.”

51

Langley, Virginia

“You did what?”

Zalinsky’s face was so red it was almost purple. There were veins in his neck and forehead that looked like they were going to burst at any moment. Eva had known the man for years, and she had never seen him so angry. He was shouting at her in the middle of the Global Operations Center, and almost two dozen more CIA staff were watching.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Eva responded, trying to maintain her composure. “It was a split-second call—a life-and-death decision—and you weren’t available, so I made the call.”

“You retasked the Predator away from the missile base to help an agent in trouble?”

“Absolutely,” Eva said. “And I’d do it again.”

“You weren’t authorized to do it the first time,”
Zalinsky shouted,
“and there isn’t going to be a next time.”
He turned to the uniformed security guards by the main door. “Guards, I need Eva Fischer taken into custody immediately.”

Eva was incredulous. “You’re having me arrested?”

“We operate within a chain of command around here, Ms. Fischer. You don’t get to break it. No one gets to break it.” He addressed the guards, who were now putting Eva in handcuffs.
“Get her out of my sight.”

* * *

Route 56, Iran

David was driving as fast as he dared.

He was heading east on 56, toward Arak. Khorramabad was far behind him, but that wasn’t making him feel any safer. He feared he had already pushed his luck too far. He needed to find a place to interrogate Khan, hide the Peugeot, and regroup. Khan wasn’t shrieking anymore, but David feared he was losing him. He had to move fast.

David suddenly remembered his meeting in Qom. The road he was on would get him there eventually. He was a little more than an hour away. But he certainly couldn’t go now, not with Khan and Yaghoubi and with a car that had been shot to pieces. He speed-dialed the MDS technical team leader and apologized profusely.

“Look, I’m very sorry, but something has come up,” he said. “I’m going to be late, probably this afternoon at the earliest. . . . You sure? . . . Okay, I’ll check in when I’m almost there and give you an update. . . . I know, I owe you. . . . What? . . . Very funny. . . . Okay, see you soon—bye.”

He hung up and kept driving. About fifty kilometers outside of Arak, he saw an exit for the Lashkardar Protected Area, one of Iran’s national forests. Seeing no cars behind or in front of him at the moment, he took a left and headed north for about fifteen minutes, past five or six impoverished homesteads, until he found the forest and a parking lot nestled alongside a row of small, rustic cabins surrounded by thousands of pine trees and hiking trails leading off in every direction. The lot was empty. It was far too early in the season for camping. So David parked and told Khan to stay quiet.

He rechecked the pistol, making sure it was fully loaded, then moved quickly to the first cabin. It was empty. So were each of the others, though all of them were locked. He kicked through the door of the cabin nearest the Peugeot, then ran back to check on his two prisoners. He had no idea what he was going to do with Yaghoubi. He just hoped he didn’t have to kill him.

Switching off the safety, he prepared to pop the trunk with his keys. It was the first chance he’d had to see how much damage had been done by the gun battle at the hotel, and he counted no fewer than seven bullet holes in the crumpled bumper and the badly dented trunk. Now he aimed the pistol, stepped back a few feet, and hit unlock. The trunk slowly opened, and David braced himself for Yaghoubi’s move. But the man didn’t stir.

“Come on, let’s go—out,” he said.

But the man still did not move, and then, as David looked more closely, he realized that Yaghoubi had been hit several times by bullets that had penetrated the back of the car. He checked for the man’s pulse, but there was none. He felt a twinge of guilt, or at least sorrow for the man, then realized that Yaghoubi had ended up serving as a human shield. Had he not been in the trunk, those rounds might very well have killed Tariq Khan.

* * *

Tel Aviv, Israel

Was it time to call up the Reserves?

The debate around the table had been raging for a quarter of an hour and was still unresolved. The proponents held that there was no time to waste. If they were going to launch Operation Xerxes in the next forty-eight hours and the Israeli people were going to be subjected to a massive missile attack as retaliation, then the prime minister had to order a full mobilization within the hour. They needed to get the Reservists on the road and to their bases before missiles were inbound or risk having key bases undermanned and key positions poorly defended amid a full-blown war.

The opponents—led by the foreign minister—said they should wait a bit longer so as not to take actions that would look provocative to the Mahdi or the rest of the world. To buttress his case, the foreign minister read cables from the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans, the French, and the British, all strongly warning Naphtali and the Israeli government not to launch or provoke a new regional war lest they risk condemnation by the UN Security Council. The American secretary of state, he added, wasn’t being quite as blunt but was warning Jerusalem not to take any “noteworthy action” without “consulting us.”

The vice prime minister was incensed by the threat of UN action, calling it meaningless blather and downright anti-Semitic. This was seconded by several others, but not by Naphtali.