In rational strategy - nowhere. Nuclear weapons are last resort for when no other option is available. Israel has options.
Furthermore there are complications arising directly from game theory and the nuclear balance of powers. All nuclear exchange that aren't between India and Pakistan and North Korea and South Korea have consequences directly affecting US and Russia therefore every nuclear exchange is part of the strategic balance between US and Russian nuclear arsenals. India and Pakistan are the only two major states that can nuke each other with no significant change to the overall balance of powers. Koreas on the other hand are simply too irrelevant strategically due to China's size. However if Israel was to nuke Iran it would first of all establish a precedent of nuclear use and destabilise an important buffer zone for Russia. I don't think Moscow would agree to that scenario and as soon as Moscow is involved so is Washington and we're back to the main nuclear dilemma.
I also don't think we should be discussing nuclear exchanges because the rules are too complex and counter-intuitive and these topics attract the worst type of person into discussion. My view is that it won't happen and let's end it here.
Israeli nuclear weapons were a personal obsession of Ben Gurion who faced opposition internally because of that. Israel developed them at a time when state survival was legitimately in question. From there they simply continued because very much like South Africa until the 1990s (which co-developed the technology with Israel after France withdrew in 1968) they are an apartheid state and are driven by unreasonable - if still perfectly rational - goals and attitudes.
Israeli stockpile composition is secret. They have warheads for ballistic missiles which are purely strategic as well as submarine-launched cruise missiles which are also purely strategic. There should be a number of smaller warheads which are air-deployed by gravity bombs and air-launched cruise missiles and these would fulfill both strategic and tactical function.
So by default the loss of the air force cripples Israel's tactical nuclear arsenal. This is one of the reasons why Israeli Air Force is such an Achilles' heel - in literal terms.
FYI the main reason why Israel installs its own mission computers in American aircraft is nuclear deployment. For every other reason there are relatively simple workarounds e.g. what Italy did for their F-35s. But if you want to deploy nuclear weapons which are not American you will need your own hardware. This is also why Britain built the Tornado and why Germany bought F-35s. NATO nuclear sharing stockpile was carried by F-4s and F-16s
It doesn't share a land border and yet somehow it manages to support Hezbollah with direct land routes.
I'll repeat: state actors don't need to attack Israel directly. Iraq has over 40m people. Afghanistan has close to 40 m people. Yemen has 35m people. There are many people in Pakistan who would be viable recruits and that is a population of over 250m. Similarly in Egypt which has over 100m people there will be many recruits. If only 0,1% of them decided to fight it's the entire reserve pool of IDF.
Israel has 7 million Jews. The state and economy will shut down within weeks if more than 20% of population is committed to defense and between the occupied territories, security at home (vs terror attacks) and defending the country against half a million militants that's the number of people that would be required.
US has never replaced stealth fighters for Israel. When Israel last needed US aircraft replacements it was 1973 and the aircraft were F-4s and A-4s which were in use by USAF with no modifications.
F-35I is not F-35A. The primary difference being hardware modifications for Israeli nuclear deployment but other reasons exist as well. But even if Israel accepted the baseline variant in a crisis the reserve at LM is a back-log of deliveries not meeting specific technical criteria and LM does not have any free resources as the are still behind schedule. They are meeting formal conditions for "delivery" to receive payment but not for the aircraft to be put into service. This means that these are not "service ready" aircraft that are awaiting TR3 but at any time could be put into action because if that was the case then LM would be selling F-35s at different rate than it does currently. The waiting time is 6-7 years at minimum. Poland was able to order its F-35s in 2020 with delivery in 2026 because they were Turkish F-35s and that number is mostly up - Finland taking a lot with their 64.
F-35 is as different from F-4 in terms of combat readiness as F-4 is from 4F4.
Using those retained F-35s LM could plausibly prepare a replacement for Israel in under a year but "under a year" is not fast enough in the scenario that I was considering.
And focusing on stealth fighters is a mistaken notion. In most air operations it is the fast-turnaround workhorse that does the heavy lifting. For Israel that is the F-16. Any air counter to ground operations will not be decided by F-35s or F-15Is but by the numerous reliable F-16s. Exactly as it was done in 1991 in the Gulf.
Under a full-scale attack the Israeli Air Force would be neutralised in a period of 2 to 3 weeks which means that more importantly than not being able to bomb Tehran it wouldn't be able to bomb the areas around its state borders. If ground warfare began within next 3 to 6 months the conflict would force Israel to use either nuclear weapons or - if that proved not feasible for various complicated reasons - forced a negotiated ceasefire in disadvantageous conditions and those would mean any recognition of Palestine within 1967 borders and full sovereignty at a minimum. And then Israel is back to where it was in 1967.
Contrary to what people may think Israel itself doesn't matter as much to either the US or Europe. Israel matters as a justification for intervention in the Middle East and it matters as an effective regional bully removing the need of direct involvement. But the state itself is irrelevant. Capital and key personnel will be evacuated and the rest can fend for themselves. The people who think otherwise are simply not very smart - which is very much why they are very loud.
Israel was necessary for Britain and France for securing of the Suez Canal. Later for the US it became necessary as a tool of pressuring Gulf Monarchies to support the petrodollar. The relationship between Israel and its western backers was always transactional. The moment Israel stops delivering it stops being valuable. People in Israel understand that even if they don't talk openly about it. This is why double citizenship is such a standard occurrence in the population.
Even if Iran needs hours in advance it won't change anything because Israel has no conventional counter. Iranian strategy is a development of the traditional airfield strike which means that it assumes that the aircraft survive the attack and are simply suppressed i.e. ineffective for combat purposes.
No missile with a conventional warhead is useful at ranges in excess of 1000km. Rocket equation will disabuse you of that notion fairly quickly if you start dealing with payloads of 1t and more. That becomes a problem even before accuracy becomes a factor. During Cold War all of the missiles carried nuclear warheads by default because of their poor payload-to-yield ratio.
Ballistic missile attacks are similar to artillery attacks or any other attack - their primary purpose is to suppress and force retreat. Destruction in warfare is rare.
The biggest problem that Iran has to consider in weighing a full-scale attack is the destabilising effect it will bring. Rhetoric is one thing but most governments (including Iran's) don't want the change of status quo in the region. The last time there was a major status quo change in a macro-region was WW1 and what it brought about was WW2.
The people in charge of those decisions tend to be much smarter than the people discussing those decisions on SDF.
On the contrary - personnel training excluded PLAN has everything it needs to conduct the most logical operation:
PLA Strategy in a Taiwan Contingency
Singapore is not in a position to disallow anything. If there's a conflict between China and the US and a country where the US is based tries to prevent the use of its facilities, the US will attack it. In Singapore's case I doubt things have to go that far since they operate F-35s, the US could...
www.sinodefenceforum.com
This post was from May 2022 and now it's 2,5 years later. Unless the entirety of PLA and CMC is lacking brainpower they're ready for that very scenario with minimal notice.
