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Times
3 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
Israel has done most of the job — now Trump can finish it
For any US president, the decision whether to intervene in a foreign war is a momentous one. This is the week when President Trump has to make that decision. Should he, or should he not, use American air power to finish the job Israel has very nearly completed, ensuring that Iran never possesses nuclear weapons? We understand why Trump is weighing the decision with the utmost care — why he gave negotiations with Iran a 60-day chance, and why he has spent many hours with his national security team, hearing their different views. Opponents of US military action tell a simplified story of past interventions — in Vietnam, most obviously, but some also cite Iraq and Afghanistan — that led to 'forever wars'. But isolationists have trouble arguing that the US should never intervene abroad. Would the Cold War have gone better if Harry Truman had abandoned South Korea to Stalin's proxies in 1950? Would the Middle East have benefited if Kuwait had been left in Saddam Hussein's hands in 1991? Would the Balkans be stabler today if Bill Clinton had not belatedly acted to save Bosnia and then Kosovo from Slobodan Milošević's aggression? None of these analogies is really applicable anyway, because the US today is not being asked to send soldiers to invade or occupy Iran. The action President Trump must decide upon is clearly defined and limited in its duration and scale, since much of the work of defeating Iran has already been done by Israel. The past six days have marked a strategic inflection point. After decades of preparation, Israel has acted: striking critical nuclear sites, dismantling missile production lines, and eliminating senior figures in Iran's military and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These operations have already set Iran's programme back by years. The current campaign did not begin spontaneously. It is the result of a long-planned strategy built on four prerequisites: neutralising Hezbollah, crippling Iran's ballistic missile production, establishing an air corridor to Tehran — and later, air superiority over Iran — and securing American support. The first three were achieved by October. Once the fourth was in place, earlier this month, the campaign could begin. We both salute the extraordinary skill with which the Israel Defence Forces and Mossad have executed Israel's war plan. For generations, cadets at military academies around the world will study Operation Rising Lion as a classic of modern asymmetric warfare, brilliantly combining mastery in the air with covert operations. Much of Iran's nuclear weapons programme now lies in ruins, and many of the scientists who ran it are dead. But one key site remains, at Fordow. Deep underground and heavily fortified, it holds the core of Iran's remaining enrichment capability: eight cascades with over 3,000 centrifuges. The facility's scale allows Iran to rapidly enrich weapons-grade uranium. It could do so in just three weeks, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Leaving it intact risks allowing the Islamic Republic to rebuild and resume its quest for the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Fordow is built into the mountains near Qom, encased under at least 90 metres of limestone, and protected by additional layers of reinforced concrete shielding and other structural defence measures that increase the facility's ability to survive a heavy air attack. There is no credible way that Israel alone can destroy it. Only one air force has the power to finish off Fordow. The US designed and built the GBU 57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) precisely for such a task. The MOP is a 30,000-pound, 20-foot-long weapon. Its warhead contains 5,300 pounds of explosives. Cased in a hard steel alloy, the weapon is dropped from high altitude, accelerates to Mach 2 or 3, punches into the target, and rips through layers of protection before detonating. Three to eight MOPs would suffice to render Fordow defunct. The MOP is designed for American B-2 Spirits, all of which are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Each B-2 can carry two MOPs, meaning a strike wave of two to six B-2s delivering four to 12 MOPs would get the job done. Fordow is 6,800 miles away from Missouri, so the B-2s would need to refuel at least twice and potentially five times. The US has moved exactly the requisite number of tankers from North American bases to Europe. One of us devoted considerable time and effort to considering ways that Israel could achieve the same result with the F-15Es it possesses and the 2,000 and 5,000-pound bombs they can carry, or with a Second World War–style commando raid behind enemy lines. Neither option is realistic. Only America can do this. Only President Trump can order it. Primo Levi's novel If Not Now, When? is about a group of Jewish resistance fighters who desperately defy the might of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. The Holocaust has been much on the minds of Israelis since October 7, 2023, an Iran-sponsored atrocity that was consciously intended as a trailer for a second Shoah. But the question 'If not now, when?' is also an ancient Jewish one, posed by Hillel the Elder more than two millennia ago. It is the question we would now ask President Trump. And we would add another question: If B-2s and MOPs were not designed for precisely this purpose, then what use are they? A nuclear-armed Iran would pose more than a threat to the Israeli people and their state. Its missiles could reach Gulf capitals and Europe. Those missiles could allow Iran to sponsor terror and wage conventional war with impunity. The result would be a nuclear arms race in the Gulf. By destroying Fordow, President Trump would create a new equilibrium in the Middle East and re-establish American leadership. The strike would focus solely on eliminating Iran's nuclear arms programme, but it should be accompanied by a clear message: If Iran attempts to target the US or its Gulf allies, it will risk the elimination of its regime. There is an economic consideration too. The longer the current conflict continues, the greater the risk to energy markets and global economic stability. Running out of missiles and launchers, its military command structure disabled by assassinations, Iran must now be contemplating desperate measures such as attacks on its Arab neighbours or mining the Strait of Hormuz, in the hope that these might deter US intervention. Decisive action now can prevent an oil-price shock. Israel has moved and continues to move with determination and dispatch. The support of allies, first and foremost the US, has been crucial. Now, with a single exertion of its unmatched military strength, the US can shorten the war, prevent wider escalation and end the principal threat to Middle Eastern stability. It can also send a signal to those other authoritarian powers who have been Iran's enablers that American deterrence is back. This is a rare moment when strategic alignment and operational momentum converge. It must not be missed. Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford. Yoav Gallant is the former Israeli minister of defence. He writes The Defense Memo substackThis article first appeared at
Al Arabiya
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Israeli military says attacked dozens of military targets in Iran, including nuclear sites
The Israeli military said on Friday it carried out strikes on dozens of military targets in Iran overnight, including an attack on the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), which it said is involved in Iran's nuclear weapons development. Developing...
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Reuters
Israel says it struck dozens of military targets in Iran, including nuclear research site
June 20 (Reuters) - The Israeli military said on Friday it carried out strikes on dozens of military targets in Iran overnight, including an attack on the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), which it said is involved in Iran's nuclear weapons development.
Wall Street Journal
14 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Israel Strikes Iran's Heavy-Water Reactor in Arak
Israel's military said it hit Iran's heavy-water reactor in Arak as well as what it described as a site used for the development of nuclear weapons in the city of Natanz. Arak's heavy-water reactor, which is under construction, is important for spent-fuel reprocessing. Israel's military Wednesday night told people to evacuate the central Iranian cities of Arak and Khondab ahead of the strike.
Times
17 hours ago
- Politics
- Times
How close is Iran to actually building a nuclear bomb?
One key issue underlying the debate over whether to attack Iran in Tel Aviv, Washington and beyond is the long-running question of how determined the regime is to actually build a nuclear weapon, and when it could do so if it chose to. For well over a decade most western intelligence services have held two paradoxical but not contradictory positions on Iran's nuclear programme. The first is that Iran, as a result of a nuclear agreement with European powers in 2003, had formally halted its nuclear weapons programme, and has not since made an actual attempt to build a nuclear weapon. The second is that it has continued work on enriching uranium and other potential components of a nuclear weapons programme, sometimes deliberately misleading the recognised nuclear monitor, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, in doing so. That has led, over the years, to regular reports, resulting from some new revealed advance in the programme, that Iran is 'a matter of months' away from building a bomb. That refers to an assessment of how long it might take for Iran to succeed, if it did actually decide to build a bomb. It had not changed much in recent years, at least since Iran began installing high-speed centrifuges, the devices that enrich uranium, in 2013. But in the past year those reports have surfaced again. Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump's director of national intelligence, who has a record of opposing military intervention in the Middle East, reiterated the formal position to the US Senate select committee on intelligence in March. 'The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme that he suspended in 2003,' she said. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and, below, Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump's director of national intelligence OFFICE OF THE SUPREME LEADER OF IRAN/GETTY IMAGES Nevertheless, in the past five years, Iran's nuclear advances have changed in their nature in key aspects. The most important is that it has enriched uranium in significant quantities to a much higher degree of purity than it has ever done before, certainly before the Obama-era nuclear deal of 2015. That limited enrichment to 3.67 per cent purity — the level needed for generating nuclear power. Previously, it had reached 20 per cent, the level required for certain medical uses. As part of the deal, Iran would be allowed to continue to enrich to 3.67 per cent, but not beyond, and be supplied with medical-use enriched uranium from abroad. Since 2020, once it became clear that the deal, which Trump tore up in 2018, would not be restored, the regime began to enrich uranium to 60 per cent, well beyond the level needed for any peaceful use. Weapons-grade uranium is of 90 per cent purity, not a difficult extra step. As of May this year, it had enough 60 per cent-enriched uranium for 233kg of weapons-grade uranium — which could make nine 25kg weapons, according to an analysis of IAEA assessments by the Institute for Science and International Security (Isis). That extra enrichment would take about three weeks to achieve. 'Breaking out in both Fordow and the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant, the two facilities together could produce enough WGU (weapons grade uranium) for 11 nuclear weapons in the first month, enough for 15 nuclear weapons by the end of the second month, 19 by the end of the third month, 21 by the end of the fourth month, and 22 by the end of the fifth month,' Isis said. EPA Iranian commentators have explained that this higher enrichment was done purely as a negotiating tactic, to put pressure on the United States to restore a nuclear deal. If so, it was a dangerous bluff. Whether that is true or not, obtaining weapons-grade uranium is just one component of a nuclear weapons programme. Others include turning 90 per cent enriched uranium from a gaseous state to a metallic form that can be fashioned into a warhead; designing the warhead; attaching it to a missile; and creating the trigger mechanisms to detonate it. That is where Iran is said to be still many months or more than a year away from building a bomb — and according to the published US intelligence report not making a co-ordinated effort to do so. Netanyahu reportedly presented Israel's latest intelligence on Iran's trigger-mechanism advances to President Trump last month, in particular a 'multi-point initiation system', according to the Wall Street Journal. It is also where the most controversial aspects of Israel's decision to bomb Iran may be found to be, as it is examined with the benefit of hindsight. According to reports in Israeli media — clearly briefed by the Israeli military or intelligence apparatus — Iran was in fact making significant strides 'up to the point of no return', as the Israel Defence Forces put it in a statement. The precise details, though, are murky. Israeli intelligence claimed that Iran was indeed working on a trigger mechanism, and also that it was modifying its standard missiles to take nuclear warheads. Iran was 'working to secretly develop all components needed for developing a nuclear weapon,' the IDF said. According to the fuller media reports, the Taleghan 2 installation at Parchin, a recognised Iranian missile development site near Tehran, had conducted 'detonation experiments'. One problem with this analysis is that the Israelis had already bombed Taleghan 2, in November 2024. Israeli reports of recent developments are more vague — saying that weaponisation efforts had taken place 'in recent days'. The other problem is that there were competing assessments of what Iran might have been doing in Parchin. The US intelligence assessments did, however, change to reflect its belief that Iran had 'undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so'. Netanyahu reportedly presented Israel's latest intelligence on Iran's trigger-mechanism advances to Trump last month. Trump's intelligence advisers still concluded, however, that this represented only research and not an active decision to build a bomb. It is agreed by intelligence agencies and the IAEA that Iran's refusal to fully comply with inspections and secrecy about some aspects of its nuclear-related work leaves much room for concern. The IAEA report concluded: 'While safeguarded enrichment activities are not forbidden in and of themselves, the fact that Iran is the only non-nuclear-weapon State in the world that is producing and accumulating uranium enriched to 60 per cent remains a matter of serious concern, which has drawn international attention given the potential proliferation implications.' That does not, however, reflect a qualitative change in the assessment of the Iranian programme from a year ago, when Trump was campaigning. The change is to the speed with which Iran has been building up its stocks. Trump said, in a typically unorthodox intervention, that he was choosing to disregard Gabbard's statement on behalf of the US intelligence community. 'I don't care what she said, I think they were very close to having them,' he said on Tuesday. In terms of the speed of Iran's development, even Netanyahu does not differ much from other estimates. Iran 'would achieve a test device, and possibly an initial device, within months, and certainly less than a year', he said in a Fox News interview. No one doubts that Iran is developing the technical ability to build a bomb, only whether the decision has been taken to proceed — and what that decision would look like.
