How Israel could obliterate Iran's nuclear sites: With Hamas and
Hezbollah smashed and Assad driven out of Syria, they've never had a
better chance to act... this is how it might happen
By David Patrikarakos
Daily Mail
Jan 3, 2025
A US Airforce B-2 stealth bomber. This type of weapon could be used to wipe out Iran's nuclear facilities
The Iranian landscape is a blur of colours and textures. Deserts morph into mountains, rivers into plains.
The
B-2 stealth plane's top speed is classified, but today it's flying at
almost 700 mph. So far, its radar-absorbent materials and angled
surfaces – which give it the appearance of an angry metal mosquito –
have done their job. The flight remains undetected. Iran's air defences have been rendered useless.
The
Kuh-e Kolang mountain looms into view. Its surface of undulating brown
and grey has a calmness that belies the reality. Buried scores of metres
within is the target: a half-built uranium-enrichment plant. Once
operational, it will produce enough material for several nuclear bombs.
It's time. The payload, two 6-metre,
14,000 kg GBU-57 bombs that penetrate deep below the surface before
detonating, is released. It's a double tap: first one, then another. The
roar of the explosion is colossal. The mountain seems to tremble before
a part of it implodes, sinking in on itself.
'Mission accomplished,' says a calm voice with a Midwestern American accent, 'back to Missouri.'
A little to the north two Israeli pilots are smiling. Earlier, they passed over Syria
on their way to Iran and surveyed with satisfaction the shattered
Syrian aircraft they had destroyed at the end of 2024. Now they are
closing in on another target: Iran's Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant in
Natanz.
The Iranian regime murdered Mahsa Amini, pictured on poster, in September 2022 for incorrectly wearing her hijab
Their tools are US-made BLU-109
bunker-buster bombs. Jerusalem used these to kill Hezbollah terror
leader Hassan Nasrallah back in September; today they are bringing the
same vengeance to his Iranian paymasters.
The
bombs are released. An inferno of flame and smoke erupts below. Smiles
turn to grins. 'Balagan,' (chaos) says a voice in Hebrew. The planes
turn sharply and begin the journey home.
The
January 2025 strike on Iran's nuclear facilities marked both a
beginning and an end. Donald Trump had started his second administration
in spectacular style. For Iran, decades of work and billions of dollars
of equipment and research were no more.
This
dramatic description of the obliteration of Iran's nuclear ambitions
is, of course, fictional. But the fact is that, for Israel, a nuclear
armed Iran is unacceptable. And as far as it is concerned, the Iranians
are intent on 'the bomb'. Many years ago, I sat in a cafe with an
Israeli intelligence officer and asked him how sure he was of this: 'If
it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – and
it's not a pregnant woman,' he replied. 'It's a duck.'
Iran has consistently denied it seeks
nuclear weapons, pointing to the fact that it signed the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and only wants peaceful
nuclear power, as is its legal right. Either way, what is clear is that
while it may not yet have a nuclear weapon, it is close to gaining the
capability to produce one.
Jerusalem
and Washington DC have repeatedly 'war-gamed' how to successfully strike
Iran's nuclear facilities. But it is not easy. As I discovered while
writing my first book Nuclear Iran: The Birth Of An Atomic State, the
Islamic Republic has been smart about the programme's security.
In
1981 the Israelis struck Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor
at Osirak. Operation Opera, as it was called, was a total success.
But
Osirak was a single, above-ground facility built around one reactor –
and the Iranians learned from it. Iran's programme is very different: it
has dispersed its faculties around its country and buried them deep
underground.
Iran has two paths to any
bomb: plutonium production and uranium enrichment, the latter of which
it favours. It is now enriching uranium at up to 60 per cent fissile
purity, close to the 90 per cent weapons grade it needs to manufacture
nuclear bombs.
Its two key enrichment
facilities are in Natanz, south of Tehran, which goes several floors
underground, and Fordow, which is dug into a mountain, making it
theoretically even better protected.
Then
there is the nuclear technology centre on the outskirts of Iran's
second biggest city Isfahan, while Iran is also reportedly building
another facility in Natanz. Satellite photos taken in April 2023 show
that Iran is burrowing into the Kuh-e Kolang mountain just south of the
existing complex – some experts have speculated that this facility is up
to 100 metres below ground.
Rafel
Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the
watchdog that monitors nuclear proliferation, assessed in January 2023
that Iran had enough uranium to build 'several'nuclear weapons. If
enriched to the right levels and if it has sufficient technology to
weaponise them with the appropriate delivery systems.
Iran
also relies primarily on centrifuges to enrich uranium, which are
small, 20-30cm in diameter and 1-2 metres tall, and can be constructed
in a variety of locations. So if Israel launches strikes Iran would
theoretically be able to rebuild and place them even deeper underground.
Israel
does have bunker-busting capabilities. It reportedly used a BLU-109
bomb (which can go 35 metres deep) to assassinate Nasrallah. But
whacking a podgy terrorist in a Beirut suburb is very different to
destroying an Iranian nuclear site buried in a mountain.
For
that it needs the US with its GBU-57 bunker-busting bombs, which
penetrate at least 60 metres underground before detonating. Pentagon
officials have discussed using two bombs in succession to ensure any
nuclear site would be destroyed, but even then, success is not assured.
The
GBU-57 is likely to be carried on the B-2 Stealth Bomber plane as it is
so huge (about 6 metres long). The US used the B-2 to strike five
Houthi facilities in October 2024, a clear warning to Iran. As US
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said afterwards: 'This was a unique
demonstration of the United States' ability to target facilities that
our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried
underground, hardened or fortified.'
This
speaks to an inescapable truth: set aside all the rhetoric, the
Israelis cannot do this without Washington. For years, Israeli officials
have tried to make the case that this is America's problem. Avi
Dichter, former head of Israel's internal security service Shin Bet,
once spent an hour telling me that the nuclear crisis was a superpower
problem that required a superpower solution.
The
Americans, though, are not having it. George W Bush reportedly rejected
Israeli requests to give them the necessary bombs and the planes.
Obama's desire to make a deal with Iran meant he was never going to
countenance Israeli strikes. Trump talked up a strike on Iran's
bomb-making facilities after the country attacked Israel with 200
missiles last October, saying he had advised Netanyahu to 'hit the
nuclear first and worry about the rest later'. But then he says a lot of
things.
There is no doubt that Trump
loathes the mullahs and fears an Iranian nuclear capability. A tough new
strategy on Iran, which includes possible military action, sending more
US forces to the region and selling Israel more advanced weapons, is a
key foreign policy objective. But he is also reluctant to unleash a new
war dragging in the US military.
Rafael
Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), assessed
in 2023 that Iran had enough uranium to build 'several' nuclear
weapons
Airmen work on a GBU-57, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri, US
All
of which means that if the Israelis are immovable in their desire to
take out Iran's nuclear programme, they will probably need to do it
themselves.
And if they cannot do that, can they target the regime directly?
The
time has probably never been more propitious. Just over one year on
from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and Iran is reeling.
Its Syrian vassal Bashar al-Assad has finally fallen and duly scuttled
off to Moscow to enjoy a future of exile-cum-imprisonment as Putin's
guest there.
Make no mistake, Assad's
fall is a disaster for Tehran. Not only has it lost face for its failure
to protect him, but without Assad it no longer has a land bridge to
supply Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Meanwhile,
its Palestinian proxy Hamas is ravaged: thousands of its fighters are
dead, as are its Gaza leaders, while the Qataris have asked its
'political' cadre to leave Doha. (The billions they have stolen from
their own people will no doubt ease that blow.)
The
jewel in Iran's proxy crown, Hezbollah, lost its charismatic leader
Hassan Nasrallah to those Israeli bunker-busting bombs in September,
while its officer class remain largely alive but also largely bereft of
limbs following Israel's pagers operation against them, when the
country's intelligence services turned the terrorist group's
communication devices into bombs.
The October 7, 2023, massacres did indeed change everything – just not in the way the axis of resistance planned.
Only
the Houthis, a medieval-like Shia Yemeni terror group that brought
child slavery back to their country, remain fully functioning, with the
capacity to bomb Israeli – and indeed international – shipping at Iran's
behest. How long before Jerusalem turns its attention to them? And does
international commerce a favour in the process?
Only
last week, Israel's ambassador to the UN warned that the Houthis risked
the same 'miserable fate' as Hezbollah if they continued their missile
attacks on his country.
With so many
arms of the octopus now either amputated or crippled, I know that many
Israelis are saying it's now time to take out the head, the source of so
much regional instability – the Iranians themselves.
To
reiterate: the fall of Assad, the failed direct strikes on Israel and
the smashing of Hezbollah and Hamas mean that the Islamic Republic's
entire policy toward Israel – which the mullahs use to garner support
for their regime among the surrounding Arab population – is in ruins.
Indeed,
this is unquestionably the most precarious period in the Islamic
Republic's history, more so than even the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, when
the country was at least united in the face of an external enemy.
Now, though, Iran's people are furious with their leaders.
The
huge sums the mullahs have spent on foreign adventurism when the
country has chronic financial problems – brought about by decades of the
regime's economic mismanagement – are a long-standing source of anger
for Iranians.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in an overnight strike on Beirut in September
Now
that it has seemingly all been for nothing, that anger has turned to
rage. Former Iranian MP Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh articulated the
thoughts of millions of Iranians when he posted that 'no one will be
able to waste Iran's dollars for maintaining a spider web anymore'.
And
it has been a lot of dollars. Iranian government documents, cited by
The Times, indicate that Assad accrued a £39 billion debt to Iran for
oil and military supplies during the Syrian civil war.
Between
September and October this year, US based research firm Stasis
Consulting conducted a poll of 1,189 Iranian citizens living across all
31 provinces, which found, among other things, that 64 per cent of
Iranians think 'Iran's foreign policy is a cause of Iran's economic
problems'.
Critically, 60 per cent
agreed with the statement that 'Iranian officials do not care about
solving the issues that matter to the Iranian youth'.
They
are not wrong. Across Iran the people are revolted by the regime's
barbarity. According to a March 2024 UN fact-finding mission, after
Iranian police 'murdered' Mahsa Amini in September 2022 following her
arrest for incorrectly wearing her hijab, its security services went on
to slaughter at least 550 people in the subsequent protests, the highest
number killed since the Islamic Republic's founding.
Security
services fired assault rifles and shotguns loaded with metal pellets at
protestors, as well as beating them with batons. This 'unlawful killing
of hundreds of protestors and bystanders' included 'scores of
children'.
Amnesty International,
meanwhile, has claimed that authorities 'committed widespread torture'
as well as 'the use of rape, including gang rape, and other forms of
sexual violence'.
Add to this that
Iran's 85-year-old supreme leader Ali Khamenei is finally dying and is
doing everything he can to ensure that his son Mojtaba succeeds him.
This means implementing a dynastic succession model fundamentally
opposed to the guiding principles of the Islamic Republic. When Khamanei
does die, the transition period is likely to be one of acute
vulnerability for the regime.
The
Israelis know this. At the end of September Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu filmed a three-minute video posted on social media, in which
he directly addressed the Iranian people. 'When Iran is finally free —
and that moment will come a lot sooner than people think — everything
will be different,' Netanyahu said. 'Our two countries, Israel and Iran,
will be at peace.'
In the video's key
phrase he declared that 'the people of Iran should know – Israel stands
with you'. It was smart politics, expressing support but stopping short
of any specific promise of action. But the message was clear: rise up
and overthrow your oppressors.
Again,
there has probably never been a more opportune moment. According to
Holly Dagres, a non-resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, and a
recent guest on the Mail's weekly global news podcast, 90 Seconds To
Midnight, 'the Iranian people are fed up with the status quo and want
the Islamic Republic gone. This was most evident by the 2022 Women,
Life, Freedom uprising that has since evolved into a movement.
'Just
because mass protests aren't in the streets doesn't mean their demand
for the downfall of the clerical establishment has changed'.
Yet
what can the Israelis do? Even if Iranians want the regime gone,
allying with Israel to do this would be a treason too far for many.
Also, Israel's foreign operations are generally in response to Iranian
aggression, and they revolve around the business of sabotage and
assassinations; political warfare is, ironically, far more of an Iranian
speciality.
In truth, if the Israelis
want to help bring about regime change the best thing they can do is
carry on as they are: humiliating the regime at every turn, showing it
for the weak and corrupt and falling entity that it is. Show the
Iranians that those who oppress them are not only vile but incompetent.
Show them that if they do overthrow the mullahs, they will have a friend
in the region, should they so wish.
Until
then, Tehran remains committed to Israel's destruction, as do its
proxies and millions of people across the world. The odds are long for
the Israelis, but then they usually are and it's probably wisest not to
bet against them.
The Middle East is
littered with the corpses of those who thought they could torture and
kill Jews with impunity, and who have paid the ultimate price for this
hubris.
