Obliteration? Israel and America’s assault might end up facilitating, not preventing Iran’s nuclear bomb – Firstpost

One feels for Iran. You can’t help but wonder if the mullah regime missed a trick. Instead of rubbing the volatile American president the wrong way, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should have simply thanked Emperor Trump for the ceasefire, told him that he is always right about everything, and notified the world (in bold fonts, ALL CAPS) that Iran is nominating Donald J Trump for the coveted Nobel Peace prize. Khamenei could have then emerged from his bunker, sat back and let the US president invite him to the White House for a power lunch.

Look at Pakistan. By following this simple notebook, the Pakistanis have pitchforked themselves back into relevance. Not only has ‘Field Marshal’ (some say Failed Marshal, but they are unkind) Asim Munir snatched a narrative win from the jaws of a humiliating spanking from India, he has reinforced his grip on power, made prime minister Shehbaz Sharif a laughing stock, pacified the restive populace by “beating Endia”, and pushed bête noire Imran Khan to the verge of irrelevance.

Pakistan even hopes to reopen “talks” with India, though on this issue it’s rather hard to tell whether Munir conned Trump, or the ‘dealmaker’ sold him a dummy. There will be no “talks” with India except on the issues of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism and PoK. Still, Munir has played a deft hand and increased his stock just by massaging Trump’s ego.

The Ayatollah, instead, drew the Emperor’s wrath by trash talking in his first televised appearance since the ceasefire. It seemed quite desperate and ungainly.

Iran has suffered significant battlefield damage and global embarrassment. Its much-hyped military lies decapitated. All senior military commanders – including the head of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that answers only to the Ayatollah – are dead. Some were taken out at their residence through precision-guided munitions from hundreds of kilometres away in a fearsome display of Israel’s power and spying ability. A string of top scientists involved with its nuclear programme were also taken out with clinical precision.

Iran’s major nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan (Esfahan) have been bombed to dust through coordinated attacks by Israel and the United States. The critical infrastructure at these sites that lay underground have suffered grievous damage as well, including Fordow which lies beneath a mountain and several hundred feet of granite as the Americans brought to bear thousands of pounds of bunker-busting munitions.

As the dust settles, whether Iran’s nuclear programme has been set back by a few months, years, or decades, has become a subject of intense debate in the US. In a span of 12 extraordinary days, Israel also targeted several of Iran’s suspected nuclear sites, air and missile defence systems, airbases, drone storage facilities, key military installations, command and control centres and support infrastructure in waves and waves of attack to critically degrade Iran’s offensive and defensive capabilities.

Moreover, Iran appeared particularly lonely in its hour of crisis. All of its feared proxies lay defanged and ineffective. Its ‘axis’ partners China and Russia watched from a safe distance, letting Tehran fend for itself. While Israel did suffer death and destruction owing to volleys of Iranian ballistic missile attacks, Iran’s losses were greater and more crippling.

It sounded jarring, therefore, when the Ayatollah, emerging from his bunker, claimed victory and threatened to target America’s military bases in the Middle East if attacked again. Iran did send a few missiles to Qatar, the largest American base in the region, but that was a stage-managed show of force to avoid utter loss of face at home. Iran had given early warning to the US, the projectiles were all intercepted and nothing came of it except a chance for the Iranian state TV to gaslight its public.

The Ayatollah’s rhetoric about “never surrendering”, “slapping America in the face” and boasting that the US entered the war to “save the Zionist regime from utter destruction” carried a note of pantomime. Trump, of course, reminded the Supreme Leader that he would have died “an ugly and ignominious death” had it not for him, because the US and Israel knew “exactly where he was sheltered” and was about to take him out, but Trump being merciful and large-hearted, decided to spare the Ayatollah his life.

The US president, however, told the Iranian leader that he has dropped all work on sanctions relied due to the “statement of anger, hatred and disgust”, and that he is ready to bomb Iranian nuclear sites again, if necessary. The entire exchange appears unflattering for Iran.

And yet there are layers beneath the apparent theatre. Iran, a proud civilization of 90 million people, was never going to bow down before the US as Pakistan, which has been practicing the art of doing Uncle Sam’s “dirty work” for decades.

Moreover, despite Trump’s frequent claims that Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities have been “completely and totally obliterated”, the truth is a lot more complex, and at this stage, still unclear. The central issue is Iran’s stockpile of 900 pounds (about 400 kg) of highly enriched uranium (HEU) that the UN nuclear watchdog believes Iran has managed to hide. This fissile material, believe some weapons experts, is still accessible, and Iran still possesses the capabilities to turn it into a nuclear weapon in a reasonably short amount of time.

There are a lot of technical issues to consider before a sweeping judgement can be arrived at. A lot of known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, variables that are known and unknown. No one knows the location of the HEU stockpile, but US officials believe underground facilities at Esfahan might be holding a lot of it. The speculation has gained ground also because Rafael Grossi, the chief of UN nuclear watchdog, indicated that Iran may have managed to save the fissile material and move it to a secure location.

And in recent comments, Grossi told American broadcaster CBS News that the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities caused severe but not total damage. According to the IAEA director
general’s assessment, Iran could be producing enriched uranium “in a matter of months” since it seems to have moved a lot of it and still has the requisite “industrial and technological capacities.”

Grossi’s views contradict Trump’s assertion of “total obliteration” and reinforce the preliminary assessment of Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s intelligence arm, that the strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities would set the programme back by at best a few months. The Trump administration went ballistic at that assessment and targeted CNN and New York Times, the newspapers that carried the leaked intelligence. The US president seemed to have taken it as a personal affront that his words were being contradicted.

Grossi’s views are sure to infuriate Trump. What will also be noted in this context is latest SIGINT (signals intelligence) by American intelligence officials who obtained “intercepted communication between senior Iranian officials discussing this month’s US military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and remarking that the attack was less devastating than they had expected,” according to Washington Post.

The Post report, citing latest information on the bombing of Iranian sites, added another layer to the controversy and further inflamed the Trump administration. The existence of SIGINT wasn’t denied, per se, but a White House spokesperson was
quoted, as saying that “It’s shameful that The Washington Post is helping people commit felonies by publishing out-of-context leaks… The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense. Their nuclear weapons program is over.”

This seems to be a strenuous call, at best, because all evidences (albeit preliminary) are pointing at the opposite direction. According to weapons expert and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies Jeffrey Lewis in Foreign Policy, “Iran likely retains the 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium that the IAEA said Iran had produced, as well as an extensive network of underground facilities to produce centrifuges, enrich the material further, and assemble it into a small stockpile of nuclear weapons if that’s what it chooses to do.”

Professor Lewis was quoted in a CNN report, as saying that Iran accessed the underground tunnels at Esfahan after the Israeli and American bombing campaign was over. “There were a moderate number of vehicles present at Isfahan on June 26 and at least one of the tunnel entrances was cleared of obstructions by mid-morning June 27,” which he reckons indicates that the material was moved to an undisclosed location.

One of the intriguing questions was, why wasn’t Esfahan subjected to Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOP), the 30,000 pound bunker-busting bombs that Americans dropped a dozen on Fordow? We finally found the answer when CNN reported on a classified briefing for American lawmakers where Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, top US general, told senators that Esfahan was hit only by submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles and not MOPs by B-2 bombers because “the
site is so deep that the bombs likely would not have been effective.”

Therefore, while all of these are still technical assessments, there is a strong likelihood that Iran’s nuclear programme is on course. Moreover, Iran has indicated that it will no longer allow UN nuclear watchdog to visit its sites. Given Iran’s proven ability to install hundreds of centrifuges per week, only the most reckless punter would claim that Iran’s nuclear programme is over.

In light of these calculations, suddenly Khamenei’s rhetoric takes on a different meaning, and Trump’s vociferous assertions appear a case of denial to accept reality. The mid and long-term consequences of Israel and America’s assault of Iran will take time, but we can perhaps safely say that at best, the world’s most powerful military and its equally efficient protectorate have bought a limited amount of time when it comes to stalling Iran’s nuclear programme with their fierce firepower. In final judgment, they might end up facilitating Iran’s bomb. Munitions can destroy sites, not human willpower.

The writer is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost. He tweets as @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.