Biden’s Blunder Could Lead to Israel’s 9/11

The United States gross incompetence in Afghanistan gifted the Taliban a military airport the size of a large town containing $83 billion of the finest military equipment that included hundreds of aircraft.

We have already seen the Taliban gruesomely using Black Hawk helicopters to dangle hanging men as they flew over Afghan towns as a warning to the citizens below.

So for what other evil purpose can they devise for the use of this American treasure trove?

A C130 US military transport plane packed with explosives crashing into a tightly populated urban city would have the same devastating effect as a nuclear explosion. It would be a world shattering statement by a messianic terror organization akin to 9/11 that they enabled Al-Qaeda to execute twenty years ago.

It would have to be a crazy terrorist organization on a martyrdom mission. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS are all messianic jihadists with a deadly hatred of the West, and Israel.

The Taliban now possess four giant American C130 military transport planes.

Just pack a monster-size aircraft full of explosive material and fly it to its target, or targets.

No need for a fuel supply for the return flight. This would be a one-way mission.

But would a jihadi martyrdom group try to crash an explosive-packed transport plane into an American city?

It would certainly be a tempting target. Sweeping in over the Atlantic to hit New York in another 9/11 style attack must be tempting. They won’t have to hijack a commercial plane. They have their own, thanks to Biden and his military generals.

There is only one problem. The C130 can fly to America from Bagram without refueling but not with a packed payload of explosive material, and there are not many options for the Taliban for refueling. Apart from Iran, no other country would give them landing rights, and the element of surpise could be lost on the long distant leg over the Atlantic.

So what other country would present a huge and attractive target for the Taliban, or one of its Afghan-based jihadi allies, to attack?

Israel, the one country in the world the Taliban doesn’t recognize. What better Islamic message would it send if it, and not Iran, obliterated the Jewish State.

Coming in undetected and crashing into Tel Aviv with a population of over four million would make 9/11 look like child’s play.

With three planes they succeeded in killing 3,000 Americans. With one or two planes they could kill millions of Jews.

Apart from mass deaths and casualties, an attack on Tel Aviv would knock out sensitive infrastructure including power grids, communication and transport systems. It would destroy Israel’s central military command and control center and vital military defense facilities. Depending on its impact location, it could destroy Israel’s major Ben Gurion Airport.

Such a 9/11 style attack, setting out from Bagram airfield and coordinated with Iran, could be an Israel Doomsday scenario particularly if two planes were employed in the deadly mission.

A second plane targeting Haifa would have a devastating effect.   Although the population of Haifa is far fewer than Tel Aviv, just over a million people, it also houses chemical storage facilities that, for years should have been removed to safer locations. A packed plane exploding a large chemical storage plant would indeed produce a mushroom cloud akin to a nuclear blast making the Beirut port blast looks miniscule in proportion.

Whatever remains of Israel would be dangerously exposed to any enemy wanting to move in for the final kill, and we have them in large numbers on our northern, southern and eastern borders.

Is such a nightmare scenario possible?

If the planes were to fly unrefueled from Kabul to Israel with a maximum payload of 44,000 pounds the distance is within reach.

The distance from Afghanistan to NYC is double.

Flying time is just beyond four hours. Taking the land route over compliant countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, the lement of surprise is entirely feasible.

The target has to be Israel.

Unless Israel was alerted for such an attack, in advance or on route, it wouldn’t know what was about to hit it until the final seconds.

If Israeli intelligence did not pick up clues that such a mission was in the planning, would its air traffic control be aware of large planes on route to their target flying over countries with which Israel has no cooperation or open communication? Probably not, until they appeared out of Lebanese air space and into Israel.

And that would be too late to intercept huge flying bombs heading to Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The distance from the Lebanon border to the Haifa port is just 45 miles. The C130 has a cruising speed of 335 miles per hour. That is less than six minutes flying time to Haifa.

Would there be time for Israeli air traffic control and the Israeli Command and Control Center to identify these mystery aircraft or scramble a jet especially if the planes had external US Military markings but did not response to radio communication?

Surely precious time would be lost as Israel went in search of verification from the United States? By the time Israel had made contact with the Pentagon, the explosions would confirm that the unidentified planes were our version of 9/11.

A far worse version of 9/11.

Such hesitancy would be understandable, but it would result in the death of a million Israelis or more and the destruction of Haifa and Tel Aviv on a scale unknown since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Such a nightmare scenario is too dreadful to consider, but contemplate it we must, because the malevolent actors involved in such a mission have the same dedicated goal of all our enemies in the region. To destroy the Jewish State and everyone in it.

Why should Iran continue arduously spinning underground centrifuges to produce the material for a nuclear bomb, then have to fit the bomb onto an aircraft when they can more easily assist a neighboring Islamic terror regime do the job for them, albeit in a simpler, more straightforward, form?  Don’t they always prefer to use proxies to die doing their dirty work?

All they have to do is to train the pilots to fly the planes, pack them with explosives and send them on their suicide mission.

With Haifa and Tel Aviv gone, Jerusalem and the rest of Israel would be in chaos, exposed to the whims of the combined enemies of Israel, those who have sworn to destroy the Jewish entity and establish a Palestine from the river to the sea. Hamas from the south, Hezbollah from the north and east. Who would come to the rescue of the survivors? Nobody.

Our enemies would not shed a tear if the land was burnt to a cinder and the dead included Christians, Druze, and yes, Muslims They would celebrate the slaughter prophesized by the Prophet. Peace be upon him. They would have achieved the holy mission of Israel’s annihilation.

Does anyone think that Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, even the fanatics of the PLO and PFLP would hesitate before descending on defenseless Jews, to kill them and take their property? Haven’t they done this in the past? Isn’t this what they have been indoctrinated to do by their leaders in Ramallah, Gaza, and Beirut?

If you think this is an unbelievable nightmare scenario, think again and plan for such an Armageddon.  That is the only way to prevent such an outcome in which the mechanics and the intention are there for all to see.

What to do? The answer is both simple and complicated. Pinpoint the exact location of the planes. The complicated part is the plan and the execution of the mission to destroy them before these vehicles of death destroy us.

The weak United States was not prepared to attack Bagram to destroy billions of dollars of their equipment. They cannot be relied on to carry out such a msision. Can Israel do the job? Afghanistan is further than Iran. I am confident in the ability of Israel’s military intelligence,  our Mossad, and our air force to do the job.

This is an existential threat that Israel must solve, and quickly. Before 9/11 comes to Israel.

Barry Shaw,

Senior Associate for the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.