Israel's strike on Iran, Part II
A preliminary assessment
Note: Just before sending this, I saw the ghastly news from Minnesota. What can I say? My heart breaks for my country.
Middle East 201 students: We’ll be discussing this tomorrow, so please read all of the items linked below. Those of you who don’t usually come to the class but who have a particular interest in this news are very welcome to join: It should be an interesting discussion. The Zoom link is here.
🚨BREAKING: Iran is striking Haifa. At least 6 ballistic missiles have landed.
🚨Flash: Israel is now striking Iran’s oil and gas installations.
🚨 Update: They hit South Pars—the world’s largest gas field. With a drone, apparently. “The attack was said to have targeted Phase 14 refineries of the Iranian section, with at least one unit reportedly on fire, leading to a suspension in operations.” It was apparently a single strike—meant as a warning against further strikes on Israeli population centers.
Iran says “destructive” attacks to hit Israel in coming hours. (Goodbye, oil fields.)
More than 200 Israelis wounded in Iranian attacks. Last night and this morning, Iran launched four barrages of ballistic missiles—some 200 in total. Most were intercepted, but at least ten hit military bases and residential areas in Tel Aviv and its environs, killing four Israelis and wounding about 100.
IAEA reports critical damage to Isfahan nuclear site, likely “setting back the Islamic Republic’s uranium fuel cycle by months.”
Iranian state media: More than 100 Iranians have been killed and more than 400 wounded.
The CG Battle Damage Assessment
This is based on today’s and yesterday’s reporting:
Israel says they killed 78 Iranian personnel, including 20 senior commanders, 6 nuclear scientists, and key IRGC leaders like Generals Salami and Baqeri.
There’s clearly extensive damage to Iran’s air defenses, ballistic missile bases, radar sites, missile facilities, and command centers across provinces such as Hamadan, Kermanshah, Tabriz, and Tehran. This has been independently confirmed by satellite imagery.
The IDF says they struck a military complex in Parchin, the Arak heavy water reactor southwest of Tehran, and the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
Isfahan: I'm not sure. I read earlier that there was structural damage to the uranium metal production facility above the ground, but that the underground systems were presumed still to be operational. The IAEA report seems to contradict this. I assume the IAEA is the more reliable source.
Natanz: Areas above ground—including enrichment halls, power substations, and centrifuge infrastructure—have been significantly damaged or destroyed. The electrical infrastructure, ventilation, and power, both above and below the ground, have been disrupted or knocked out. But no physical breaches of the underground cascade halls have been confirmed, and I assume they remain intact. The IAEA reports no radiation spike (though I believe they’re basing this on what Iran reports to them).
Fordow: Remains largely untouched. The strikes inflicted “limited” damage.
(This is all changing very rapidly—I’m trying to keep pace, but inevitably some part of this will be out of date by the time you read it.)
Here’s my sense of how this is going.
The operation has so far been a tremendous tactical triumph. Israel has dealt a massive blow to key personnel and to Iran’s surface-level nuclear infrastructure. They’ve (again) demonstrated their mastery of the air and the reach of their intelligence.
I don’t know how long it would take to repair the damage they’ve done: I haven’t seen a trustworthy estimate yet. It may be enough to delay work for some time. But I know that to achieve a significant delay, they’d have to hit those deeply-buried centrifuges in Natanz and Fordow. I just don’t know if they can do that without US bunker busters.
There seems to be near-unanimity that they can’t:
“‘Until I know that Fordow is gone and until I know where that … highly-enriched uranium is and know whether it’s usable, I consider us on the clock,’ said Richard Nephew, a lead US negotiator with Iran under the Obama administration and now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. ‘That’s all that matters now.’” …
“‘Israel can damage key Iranian nuclear facilities, but Israel can’t destroy hardened sites like Fordow without US military assistance,’ said Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association. While the Trump administration has already helped defend Israel from Iranian retaliation, Secretary of State Marco Rubio went out of his way in a statement to say that Israel’s strikes were ‘unilateral’ and that there was no US involvement.”
“Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel’s National Security Council, acknowledged that Iran’s nuclear program ‘cannot be destroyed through kinetic means.’ In an interview early Friday with Israeli Channel 12, he said ‘only the Americans can make that happen’—though not by supplying its “bunker buster” bomb but with the deal offered by President Donald Trump in which Iran would voluntarily give up its nuclear program in exchange for peace and lifted sanctions.”
“David Albright, who has studied Iran’s nuclear program for decades, said the initial round of Israeli strikes early Friday morning local time did not appear to prioritize destroying Iranian nuclear infrastructure. Rather, he said, Israel’s military appeared to capitalize on the element of surprise to kill senior Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists and to disable air defenses.”
“‘Before this, standard thinking was that Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb in less than a week,’ said Eric Brewer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. ‘If Fordow is still operating, if the materials stored there are still intact, that timeline hasn’t changed.’”
“‘I would say they’ve disabled the facility by destroying the power substation, but they haven’t destroyed the facility in a way that would impact Iran’s long-term breakout’” capacity to produce a weapon, said Decker Eveleth, an analyst specializing in satellite imagery at CNA, a policy and analysis nonprofit. ‘They need to actually destroy the centrifuges to do that,’ he said.”
“Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said after reviewing satellite imagery of Natanz that the underground facility where sophisticated centrifuges are manufactured was also spared. ‘That place can make rotors and bellows for centrifuges,’ he said. ‘So I presume they’re going to keep on making them.’”
I wonder what would happen if Israel just keeps bombing them, though? Earlier today, the IDF spokesman said that dozens of Israeli fighter jets spent a leisurely two hours flying over Tehran today and attacking targets at will. Israel, he said, had eliminated all of Iran’s air defenses and achieved full freedom of operation in Tehran’s airspace.
Beyond the military implications, writes Barak Ravid, this sends the message that “Iran’s leadership and government symbols are exposed to Israeli attacks.”
“We established aerial freedom of operation in western Iran, up to Tehran ... Tehran is no longer immune—Iran's capital is now exposed to Israeli strikes,” IDF spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in a press conference. IDF officials said … the Israeli air force has eliminated the Iranian air defenses that could threaten Israeli fighter jets on their way to Tehran.
On Saturday morning, 70 Israeli fighter jets flew more than 900 miles, spent more than two hours in Tehran's airspace and attacked dozens of target in the Iranian capital, the IDF said. “We struck over forty missile-related targets and advanced air defense systems across Iran, alongside additional command and launch infrastructure,” Defrin said. He added that dozens of Israeli “aerial platforms” are operating freely over Tehran. “This is a region where the Air Force is operating for the first time—the deepest we’ve ever operated within Iran,” Defrin noted.
IDF officials note, however, that Iran still has air defense systems elsewhere in the country and it can move them to Tehran.
Why does Israel need our help?
From Barak Ravid (he’s doing a great job—ME201 students, please read what he’s written recently in Axios before tomorrow).
How Israeli spies and pilots crippled an Iranian counterstrike:
As it became clear Israel was about to attack, the commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ air force convened in a bunker to coordinate the response. But Israel knew that emergency protocol, and the location of the bunker. They destroyed it, killing the overall commander and the heads of the drone and air defense forces. "The fact that there was nobody to give the order neutralized an immediate Iranian response,” an Israeli official said.
… The IDF was prepared for a worst-case scenario in which Iran would swiftly launch 300-500 ballistic missiles toward Israel, the Israeli intelligence official said. Instead, Iran responded hours later with around 100 drones which were easily defeated. The IDF continued pounding Iranian ballistic missile targets around the country on Friday to prevent a more significant Iranian retaliation.
Israel’s mission hinges on destroying Iran’s hardest nuclear target:
One factor that could determine whether Israel’s audacious attack on Iran proves a daring success or a dangerous mistake is the fate of Iran's Fordow uranium enrichment site. Israel will require unforeseen tactical ingenuity or US assistance to destroy Fordow, which is built into a mountain and deep underground. But if the facility remains intact and accessible, a nuclear program Israel is determined to “eliminate” could actually accelerate.
“The entire operation ... really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordow,” Israeli Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter told Fox News on Friday. That’s why the Israeli government hopes the Trump administration ultimately decides to join Israel’s operation. Israel lacks the huge bunker busters needed to destroy this facility and the strategic bombers to carry them. The US has both within flying distance of Iran.
An Israeli official claimed to Axios that the US could still join the operation, and that President Trump even suggested he’d do so if necessary in a conversation with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the days leading up to launch. But a White House official denied that, telling Axios Trump said exactly the opposite. The US currently has no intention of getting directly involved, the official said.
Some experts think Israel could try to replicate the effect of a massive bunker buster by repeatedly bombing the same location. A much riskier approach would be sending special forces to raid the facility. Israeli special forces conducted such a raid last September, albeit on a smaller scale, when they destroyed an underground missile factory in Syria by planting and detonating explosives. The entire operation took two hours.
A note about this. Why, you may be wondering, doesn’t Israel have its own deep-penetration munitions? It’s been clear for many years that Israel would need them if ever it decided it had no choice but to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program without our help. It’s also long been clear that Israel should not count on having our help. Israelis proudly boast of strategic autonomy—this is the whole point of Zionism, they often say. Preventing Iran from acquiring the Bomb has been Israel’s single most urgent defense priority. So why haven’t they acquired the means to do so?
Fordow, buried deep below a mountain near Qom, is probably the most difficult nuclear facility in the world to destroy by means of air strikes. Public estimates indicate that it’s buried under at least 80 meters of rock, shielded by reinforced concrete.
The only munition capable of threatening it (according to pretty much every assessment I’ve read) is the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a 30,000-pound behemoth designed to penetrate more than 60 meters of reinforced concrete, or 200 feet of earth, before detonating. The MOP has to be dropped from a B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.
But Israel doesn’t have those, and it can’t acquire them.
Israel does have GBU-28 bombs—5,000-pound monsters capable of penetrating about 6 meters of concrete or 30 meters of earth. But that’s not enough for Fordow. So why doesn’t Israel have the MOP, or something comparable? Because we refused to give it to them.
Israel has asked us. We have demurred. We were uneasy about selling the MOP (with the requisite delivery system; i.e., the B-2 or something analogous) because that would effectively delegate to Israel the ability to launch a first-strike on Iran—and we weren’t willing to run the risk that we’d be drawn into a war we didn’t initiate.
So why didn’t Israel build its own? It’s a world-class military innovator, after all. But designing, building, and delivering a weapon on the scale of the MOP requires a strategic bomber program, a massive engineering infrastructure, and years of trial and error with exotic materials, high-yield precision explosives, and advanced guidance systems. Even we found it challenging to develop the MOP. It requires underground test ranges. The subterranean physics are super-complex to model. The physics of depth and mass are unforgiving. A 13,000-kg munition can’t be dropped (at least, not to useful effect), from an F-15I or even the F-35.
So Israel has no such bomb—and no platform from which to launch it, even if they had one.
What about smaller penetrators aimed at entryways and ventilation systems? The conventional wisdom is that at best this would degrade operations or trap personnel. (The conventional wisdom may be wrong, of course.)
No other country makes the equivalent of the MOP. The UK, France, and Russia have bunker-buster capabilities, but not of that order (and wouldn’t sell them in any case). China might try to build one. Maybe it has already, I don’t know—but certainly wouldn’t be offering it to Israel. We’re the only plausible supplier.
It seems astonishing, at first blush, that Israel would allow itself to be so dependent on the US for a capability that it rightly regards existential. But Israel’s national security doctrine has long combined technological superiority with strategic alliances, chief among them its alliance with the United States. Even when Israel acts unilaterally (Operation Opera in 1981, or the 2007 strike on Syria’s al-Kibar reactor), it has done so while carefully treading around the limits of American tolerance.
Until now, Israel has focused on preventing Iran from breaking out, rather than striking the facilities directly. All of its sabotage operations, assassinations, cyberattacks, and influence campaigns were designed to delay or degrade Iran’s capacity (and its will) without recourse to a GBU-57. Israel bet the farm that shadow war, diplomacy, and its alliance with the US, rather than trying to recreate the entire infrastructure of a superpower.
I’m not sure how it figured into their calculations that this bet looks increasingly perilous. They’re all too aware that the US is sunk deep in isolationism and strategic idiocy. They’re aware, too, that the US public, on both the right and the left, has soured on Israel. I’m sure they grasp that none of these are passing trends. When they look at America’s future, they see no cause for optimism: President JD Vance? President Tucker Carlson? President Alexandria Ocasio Cortez? Civil War II?
Israel is now all but begging the US to take part in the MOP-ping up. If we decline, there’s a real chance this strike will wind up doing more harm than good. But it’s absolutely impossible to say, at this stage, how things will play out (and anyone who claims to know is lying).
Trump seems to think Iran will now be persuaded to negotiate. Shay Khateri agrees. Maybe. But this might also leave what’s left of the regime utterly hell-bent on building that Bomb as fast as possible—after all, how can they otherwise stay in power? How can they possibly justify themselves to the Iranian people? They’ve immiserated Iranians for decades—subjecting them to sanctions, isolation, savage repression, grinding hardship—in pursuit of this nuclear program. They’ve squandered a fortune on their miserable terrorist proxies. Now the Little Satan is doing Pugachev's Cobra over Tehran while the remnants of their second-strike facility are wandering around Northern Lebanon tapping white-tipped canes and clutching their crotches—are they really going to capitulate to the Great Satan and give everything up?
I kind of doubt it, not least because it wouldn’t just be a strategic defeat: It would be a theological rebuke, a catastrophic indictment of the whole theory of velayat-e faqih. The Supreme Leader is the Hidden Imam’s deputy and the inheritor of the infallibility of the twelve divinely ordained Shia imams. If not one thing the Supreme Leader has promised has come to pass—and if, in fact, Iran wakes up with Jews doing pinwheels over the ruins of their nuclear program and the Supreme Leader signing the Abraham Accords—it suggests that the theological underpinnings of this regime are fundamentally unsound and a whole lot of young Iranians have been executed for absolutely nothing.
If they make a deal now, what will become of their regime? Think of it from the Supreme Leader’s perspective: You don’t want to end up like Muammar Gaddafi. There is only one way to make all of this look right, and it isn’t “surrender to the Great Satan.” It’s racing for the Bomb. If you succeed in destroying the Jews, sending the Americans packing, and liberating Palestine, then all will be unfolding as God promised. Victory will be all the sweeter for the hardships you endured. You will be the uncontested leader of the umma. The Sunni dogs will see the error of their ways. Your place in the hereafter will be assured. You’d get your hair mussed, sure, but no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops.
Of course, I have no idea what they’re apt to do. Maybe they’ll surprise me by signing the Abraham Accords forthwith. Or maybe the Iranian people will follow Netanyahu’s counsel. It is their best chance. (It’s an unspeakable shame that they can expect no help from us.)
But I don’t think we’re going to help. No words are more likely instantly to tank an American presidency than, “At the request of Benjamin Netanyahu, I’ve launched a preventive war in the Middle East to ensure that some country with a four-letter name beginning with ‘I’ can’t acquire nuclear weapons.” Trump is exquisitely sensitive to this. He’s also incapable of thinking in terms of American strategic interests, or any interests but his own—and even these, only in the very short term.
Perhaps the Israelis concluded that their best hope was to strike even though they can’t reach into Fordow, praying that if they made an initial success of it, Trump would wish to attach himself to the glory—and send in the B-2s.
Or perhaps they’re betting that if they stun and humiliate the regime badly enough, the Iranian people will rise up and finish the job. They’ve said they’re not aiming for regime change. But Netanyahu’s speech to Iranians suggested otherwise. (If you skipped that yesterday, here it is again.)
I think this is a real possibility—but it’s a hell of gamble. That said, every choice before them represented a hell of a gamble.
Perhaps Israel has another plan for Fordow? They have air superiority. They can make as many sorties as they need. But I don’t know if that matters. A 13,000 kg bomb dropped from altitude (at terminal velocity, say) delivers far more kinetic energy per impact than ten smaller bombs, even if their combined weight adds up to 13,000 kg.1
There’s some evidence that Israel has been experimenting with novel techniques—multi-phase attacks, drone swarms, directed energy, specialized burrowing munitions—but none of these, as far as I know, replicates the destructive depth of a MOP.
“As far as I know” isn’t that far, mind you: If the IDF has developed a super-duper-secret-squirrel miracle-burrowing bomb, they wouldn’t exactly hit me up on Signal to tell me about it. So … who knows. Too soon to say.
Speaking of Iranians rising up against the regime, I just read this interview in Le Point and thought I’d translate it for you. I’ve found no such article in English, which is a shame: It’s easy for journalists to do this kind of interview, and they should—many would find it interesting to hear what Iranians think. The subject of the interview may not be a typical Iranian (he’s described as “a prominent dissident”) but I’m certain he’s not the only one who feels this way. For example, here’s a surreal scene from Tehran—young people are celebrating in response not to the strikes on Israel, but on the Iranian regime.
“Like most Iranians, I’m afraid—but I’m also relieved.” A prominent Iranian dissident in Tehran shares his first impressions, anonymously, just hours after Israeli strikes targeted the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Le Point: How are you?
Iranian Dissident: I’m alright, thank you—though a bit shaken. My house is near one of the targets in Tehran. The blast was very powerful. But this is war. Like most Iranians, I’m frightened and anxious. And yet, at the same time, I also feel a kind of relief.
Le Point: Why relief?
I’m stressed, of course—war is terrible for everyone. It’s a terrifying prospect for a society already wounded, and this will only deepen the pressure on it. But I also feel a kind of happiness, because some of those killed played central roles in the regime’s repression, especially against demonstrators. These were enemies of Iran—enemies of its people. That’s what many Iranians feel right now: fear, yes, but also a sense of grim satisfaction.
Le Point: Do you fear the Islamic Republic will now intensify its domestic repression?
Dissident: No. The regime’s ability to crack down has evaporated—like snow under the sun. When the security forces see that they can’t even protect the top leadership, they realize that they themselves are no longer safe. That realization breeds hesitation—and hesitation weakens repression.
There are also deep divisions within the state apparatus. Some factions have already broken ranks. Add to that the bravery of the people, and you have a deadlock—an impasse that could lead to popular revolt. And that’s what terrifies the regime. It’s why they’re treading carefully now.
Le Point: Who, in your view, is to blame for this crisis?
Dissident: Since last night, I’ve spoken to a great many people. And there’s a clear consensus: the fault lies with the Islamic Republic. The regime’s propaganda machine is still active on social media, of course. But in the real world, people overwhelmingly believe that this war was provoked by the regime’s own actions—by the excesses of Khamenei and the ruling elite.
Le Point: What do you think of Israel’s intervention?
Dissident: Israel, like any nation, is acting in pursuit of its national interest and security—that of its people. And that’s exactly what we, the Iranian people and opposition, should be doing: putting our own national interest first.
Among ordinary Iranians, I don’t sense hostility toward Israel. Quite the contrary—there’s a certain admiration that someone powerful was able to stand up to the regime’s bullying.
But that doesn’t mean people see Israel as a savior. At the end of the day, only the will of the Iranian people will bring about real change. Nothing else.
Le Point: Are Iranians sensitive to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza?2
Dissident: Speaking personally—and politically—I believe what’s happening there is primarily the result of Hamas and the Islamic Republic’s policies. The people of Gaza, especially the children, are victims of cynical power plays they barely even understand. That’s the real tragedy.
Le Point: Could the Israeli strikes push Iranians to take to the streets?
Dissident: It’s possible. In this moment, anything is.
I wish the interview were longer. I would like to read many more like this.
Also:
“We’re praying Israel keeps hitting senior officials; end this nightmare.” Iranian dissident living in Tehran says regime loyalists feel “betrayed” as Israeli strikes continue unabated; “We’re ready to pay any price—even our lives.”
“Since Thursday night, our mood—those of us who oppose the regime—has swung between euphoria and deep fear. Between joy over the change underway and sorrow over what has become of our country,” says Azita, a young woman from Tehran … “That’s one of the reasons we’re still sitting at home, practically paralyzed, not organizing or taking any action.” Another reason, Azita explains, is the near-total breakdown of internet access. “It’s our only way to communicate under the regime’s radar,” she says. Laughing nervously, she adds, “Maybe Elon Musk will bring his satellite internet over us, as some are reporting right now.” …
“Since Thursday night, our mood—those of us who oppose the regime—has swung between euphoria and deep fear. Between joy over the change underway and sorrow over what has become of our country,” says Azita, a young woman from Tehran, speaking to Ynet and its sister publication Yedioth Ahronoth. “That’s one of the reasons we’re still sitting at home, practically paralyzed, not organizing or taking any action.”
Another reason, Azita explains, is the near-total breakdown of internet access. “It’s our only way to communicate under the regime’s radar,” she says. Laughing nervously, she adds, “Maybe Elon Musk will bring his satellite internet over us, as some are reporting right now.”
Fear also keeps many indoors. “There are a lot of people on the streets—mostly regime supporters—who are in shock over the strikes and the breach of Iranian territory, which was left undefended. They’re stunned by the damage to military sites and the deaths of high-ranking officers and scientists.” Regime loyalists, Azita says, feel betrayed. “They hear or see that Israeli intelligence agents entered Iran and did as they pleased. Now they realize just how vulnerable they are, and how incapable the regime really is of protecting them. They’re angry and looking for someone to take it out on. They roam the streets with batons, belts and other objects, ready to strike. And we’re the easiest targets, because in their eyes, we represent Israel.”
… “In recent months, there’s been no real enforcement by the authorities—no morality police, no one cares anymore how women dress or if people behave against religious law,” she adds. “Iran is facing too many problems: inflation, currency collapse, energy shortages that cause constant power outages and disrupt schools, hospitals, public transport and the banking system. The percentage of people living below the poverty line keeps rising. The regime is busy trying to pacify the streets. It fears gatherings, it fears unrest. The airstrikes between Thursday and Friday derailed their plans.”
… She says she and others have been reading Israeli posts on social media declaring they’re willing to pay any price to end the Iranian threat. “That’s exactly how we feel. We’re ready to pay any price—even our lives—to end this nightmare. It’s been 46 years of a nightmare. We are secular people; religion in Iran has destroyed our lives. But since Friday morning, we’ve been praying. We hope Israel doesn’t settle for hitting launchers and defense systems. For us, those strikes are only symbolic. We’re praying Israel keeps hitting senior officials. That’s the only thing that will make a difference here—only then will there be no more rush to nuclear weapons or warmongering. If Israeli jets ultimately succeed in toppling the regime, that’s the only way to stop the atomic threat.”
“There’s fear here, of course, but I call it ‘brave fear.’ Everyone is afraid—afraid they or their family might be hit. But for many of us, we just don’t care anymore. We’d rather die than keep living like this. This isn’t life.” …
“We’re glad they’re hitting us,” she says with grim irony. “What a miserable situation for the citizens.”
Let’s hope.
More reading
Key takeaways from the Institute for the Study of War:
Iran has used significantly fewer munitions in its response to Israel than originally planned because the IDF destroyed and damaged missile launchers and silos that Iran planned to use to retaliate against Israel. This is consistent with CTP-ISW’s observation that degrading Iran’s retaliatory capabilities was one objective of the initial Israeli strikes on June 12.
The IDF has continued to strike Iranian air defense systems to maintain air superiority over Iran.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Brigadier General Majid Mousavi to replace Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajji Zadeh as the IRGC Aerospace Force commander. The IRGC Aerospace Force oversees the Iranian missile and drone programs and led the Iranian attacks against Israel in April and October 2024.
Iran has conducted six waves of ballistic missile attacks targeting Israel from Iranian territory since the initial Israeli strikes on June 12. At least 10 interceptors, shrapnel, or ballistic missiles struck the Tel Aviv area, causing damage to high-rise buildings, over 60 injuries, and one death.
The IDF has reportedly continued to target Iranian military targets. Some of these strikes—but not all—seek to degrade Iran’s retaliatory capabilities.
How the Israel-Iran War might end. Scenarios include an Iranian defeat, an Israeli retreat—or an expanded regional conflict.
Israel is going for the death blow on Iran. The Israeli attack on Iran is about much more than its nuclear program:
… There has been endless commentary right up to and during Israel’s initial wave of assaults that the IDF does not have the ability to knock out the Iranians’ nuclear program and that any attempt to do so will result in a regional war. It’s only been a few hours since Israel’s strikes on Iran began, but these certainties no longer seem so certain.
The hint should have come last October when Israel dealt a shattering blow to Iran’s air defenses and missile production facilities using weapons not previously known publicly to be in its inventory. In the recent attack, the Israelis reportedly killed several major regime figures and senior nuclear scientists, destroyed a portion of its missile forces, and attacked the country’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz. Israeli leaders said the strikes will continue. This should have come as a surprise only to anyone not paying attention to the way Israel has been carrying out its changed strategy.
It remains to be seen how Iran will respond. But regardless of any specific military developments, the shift in Israeli thinking about security is forcing a potential paradigm shift in the Middle East. The Israelis are clearly not satisfied with doing damage to Iran’s nuclear program but seem to be engaged in regime change. They recognize what too few in the US foreign-policy community seem to grasp. The nature of the Iranian regime is dangerous. Its leaders do not want a new relationship with the United States. They want to leverage American gullibility and caution to Tehran’s advantage. …
The targets that were hit made it clear that Israel’s goal was broader than damaging Iran’s nuclear program. It is a risky strategy based on the assumption that if the Iranian regime is gone or greatly weakened, many of the problems that have bedeviled the Middle East may also be gone. The potential upside for Israel is significant—more security, increased prospects for regional integration, and the final foreclosure of a Palestinian state. But the downside is also significant if the regime survives and the Islamic Republic lives to fight another day.
The real threat from Iran. Tehran’s most dangerous option for responding to Israel:
Iran has limited options to respond directly. The danger, however, is that Israel has opened a Pandora’s box: the worst Iranian response might also be the most likely—a decision to withdraw from its arms control commitments and build nuclear weapons in earnest. Containing those furies over the long term is likely to be the real challenge for both Israel and the United States. If the two parties fail, the Israeli gamble could ensure a nuclear-armed Iran rather than prevent one. …
Iran already has enough highly enriched uranium to build several nuclear weapons. This is containerized and believed to be stored at three different locations, and it is unclear whether Israel will be able to destroy all of it in the ongoing military strikes. Iran also has large quantities of uranium feedstock (called “yellow cake”) that could be enriched to weapons grade. The Israelis (and the US government) believe that they know about all of Iran’s functional centrifuge cascades, but the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that Iran has built many more centrifuges, the whereabouts of which are unknown. Even if they are not part of operational cascades, they could be integrated into them fairly easily, and Iran can build still more. Without IAEA inspectors in country to enforce the terms of the NPT and the JCPOA, Israeli and other Western intelligence services may have a very hard time finding new, secret Iranian nuclear sites. It may also have trouble destroying those sites even if they are identified, since Iran will likely harden them even beyond the level of its current facilities.
Discussions of Israeli options for stopping Iran’s nuclear program often refer to the 1981 Israeli strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. The mythology of that strike holds that the operation critically set back Baghdad’s nuclear program, saving the world from having to deal with a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. But in reality, as analysts learned from Iraqi documents and scientists after the 1991 and 2003 wars, Saddam responded by pouring additional resources into his nuclear program, making it many times more dangerous than it had been before the Israeli operation. He likely would have produced an Iraqi bomb sometime between 1992 and 1995 had the Gulf War and the subsequent inspection regime not ended his program.
Accordingly, the real challenge—for Israel, the United States, and any other government intent on preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East—is to find ways to prevent Iran from following the path that Iraq did following the Osirak strike. If anything, the situation is more dangerous now than it was then, since Iran’s nuclear program is so much more advanced, its scientists so much more knowledgeable, and its nuclear infrastructure so much more capable than Iraq’s was in 1981. This creates the Catch-22, in which the best way to prevent Iranian reconstitution would be an aggressive pursuit of a new nuclear deal with Tehran, at precisely the moment when Iran’s leadership will be least interested in one given their likely outrage at the Israeli attack. And without such a new deal, Israel may have succeeded in setting the Iranian nuclear program back in the short term—perhaps for a year or two—only to ensure the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran not long thereafter.
I knew this intuitively. But I couldn’t work out why on my own. So I asked ChatGPT. The answer is that kinetic energy isn’t additive. It’s given by the formula
Energy scales linearly with mass, but quadratically with velocity. Penetration depth into earth or concrete, meanwhile, doesn’t scale linearly with bomb mass. From empirical tests, we know that it scales (roughly) as:
(or even more weakly, depending on material). So if you double the mass of the bomb, it might only increase its penetration by 25 percent. If you drop ten light bombs, you get ten shallow holes, not one big crater.
Would you have ever figured that out on your own? (That’s a serious question—do I have any readers who could have answered that question off the top of his or her head?) I couldn’t have done it in a million years. The basic idea—that heavier, faster objects hit harder—is intuitive. But no way could I have gone further than that.
At first I thought this must be because I’m lousy at physics. But on further investigation, I discovered that actually, no one understood this until really very recently. The history of the science of penetration mechanics is surprisingly interesting. Galileo made basic observations about falling bodies, acceleration, and projectile motion, but of course, he had no tools to calculate penetration into rock or concrete. So we didn’t even have formal models of the problem until the early 20th century. Even through the Second World War, we were still figuring out solutions to these problems by intuition. The British, Germans, and Americans all experimented with concrete-penetrating bombs. For example, the 10,000 kg Grand Slam, like many famous bombs, was designed by Barnes Wallis, whose bombs
were dropped on the Saumar railway tunnel just after D-day, which delayed a Panzer division’s arrival in Normandy. These bombs penetrated the earth as though it were butter and produced a devastating shock wave from great depth.
Wallis had no rigorous physical theory. He did it by intuition, and his designs worked spectacularly.
During the Cold War, the US military invested massively in research on armor penetration and silo-hardened targets. We came up with several semi-empirical models and developed testing protocols that involved concrete slabs, rock tunnels, and high-speed photography. So by the 1960s, we had a working mathematical and experimental grasp of the key parameters: mass, shape, velocity, impact angle, target density. But believe it or not, we didn’t have a truly complete handle on this, theoretically, until the early 2000s. It took us that long fully to figure it out. We did it thanks to computational hydrocodes, which apparently model not just the kinetic energy transfer, but the material deformation, the shockwave propagation, and the fracture mechanics in both the bomb and the target. (Here’s more on hydrocodes—you’ll need it if, like me, you plan to spend your day figuring out how to blow Fordow to smithereens.)
In other words, we could kill bunkers by the 1940s, we could model them decently by the 1970s, and we could simulate them exquisitely by the 2000s—which is why Whatever happens, we have got/the great big MOPs, and they have not. Ir was this theoretical foundation that allowed us to design and build the GBU-28 and GBU-57 bunker busters.
I find it droll to imagine how puzzled the interviewer must have been to hear this.
If the US will not help, maybe Israel should make an explicit promise of support for an uprising in Iran to end the Islamic Republic and they could include repairing the damage and getting Iran's oil flowing at full capacity part of the deal in exchange for permission to completely dismantle all nuclear facilities in the country post-war.
Israel has achieved all of this without any US air or navy support. Let that sink in - we heard for so long from so many ‘experts’ that what’s been done so far is impossible. The distance is too great. Iran is bristling with Russian and homegrown air defense systems. Iran’s cyber capabilities defend them from real intelligence penetration. All those predictions have been groupthink that missed the point.
There are several other options for how to deal with Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Israel has entered similar facilities to Fordow dug under Syrian mountains with special forces, ones built by Iran for Syria. With air superiority such an action becomes possible.
I’m also not sure why the delivery of a tactical nuke into Fordow hasn’t been mentioned as an option.