Former Marine Strike Planner on Obama's Azerbaijan Leak: "Start viewing this administration as an existential threat to Israel"
This leak destroyed any capability of a surprise attack by Israel using these bases. And it came from Obama administration officials.
"Bill", a former Marine Corps strike planner, weighed in on the implications of this leak Friday I just want to comment on this revelation by the State Department regarding this Israel-Azerbaijan connection. A few years ago, I was writing an article and studying how Israel might go about attacking Iran with the assets we knew they had...
I've got experience as a Marine F-4 Phantom Radar Interceptor Officer. I've planned strike missions. I've got a thousand hours in the Phantom. So I'm familiar with the problems strike planners have in attacking a target or multiple targets like Iran. And as I looked at the map, I thought: 'Boy, oh, boy, if the Israelis had an alliance with Azerbaijan, that would be the perfect place to launch a strike.
They've got this beautiful, 10,000-foot concrete runway in Baku. You take off, you come right out over the Caspian Sea. The pilots flip on their radar altimeters, drop down 25-feet off the deck, and they just race in a straight line.
They pop up over some hills, and they're in Tehran before the Iranians even know what hit them. They could then go hit the other targets. It reduces the distance for this strike by, oh, six, seven hundred miles. It might alleviate the need for tankers. Or, if they do need tanker support, you could put them over the Caspian Sea...