Trump Has Struck Iran's Nuclear Infrastructure. Now What?

Answer: plenty of uncertainties

Friends,

Below are some thoughts, composed at warp speed, about last night’s attack by the Trump administration on Iran’s nuclear installations.

Rajan

By attacking three of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, Donald Trump has ended the “Will-he-won’t he?” parlor game during which some pundits asserted confidently that he would strike while others that he would not. Most of the predictions were sensible as a matter of logic. What they lacked was any evidentiary basis. That plus Trump’s penchant for saying one thing on a particular day and the opposite the next made the soothsaying cycle endless—and pointless. We can say for certain that the crystal balls have been put away, for now. That alone is a relief.

Much less certain is what Trump’s attack has achieved. First, some context. We do know three installations were hit. Fordow, 125 miles south of Tehran (and close to the holy city of Qom), is built into the side of a mountain beneath layers of rock and lies 300 feet below the surface. It’s surrounded by a guarded ring fence with one entry point and has six tunnels that provide entry to the centrifuge cascades. Centrifuges—in brief—are machines that spin uranium in its natural state so as to increase the concentration of the isotope U-235. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated in its most recent report that Iran’s enrichment had reached 60%--close to the 90% needed to develop a nuclear bomb. But keep in mind that that’s but the first step. The bomb must be tested to ensure that it detonates and then it must be placed onto a “delivery vehicle”—a missile, most likely given that missiles, especially hypersonic variants can travel at speeds that far exceed that of warplanes, up to and beyond Mach 5 or five times the speed of sound. Fordo is estimated to house 3,000 centrifuge cascades. The only way to penetrate to its depth is by using the US GBU-57B Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Israelis don’t have anything like it; their bombs can reach a depth of about 50 feet, no more. And even in the unlikely event that the United States were to give them, they lack aircraft capable of carrying what is a 30,000 lbs. device. That’s something that only American B-2 Spirit stealth bombers can do. This explains why the Israelis have been beating the drum for Trump to enter the war.

The second site that was targeted yesterday was Natanz, located 200 miles south of Tehran and 60 miles northeast of Isfahan in central Iran. Natanz lies at a depth of 60 feet or so but a newer annex may have structures even more deeply buried than Fordow, perhaps 500 feet below ground. (Six of its buildings are at ground level.) The Natanz installation contains some 50,000 centrifuges and employs some 3,000 scientists. Natanz was hit by the Israelis prior to Trump’s strike of yesterday, as was the heavy water plant at Arak. (Heavy water is used to cool plutonium reactors, and plutonium enrichment, to PU-239, is another pathway to building nuclear weapons.) The IAEA reported that the Israeli strikes dispersed highly toxic uranium hexafluoride gas inside the Natanz facility, and this highlights the risk of striking nuclear installations, though Iran has claimed that Trump’s strike against its three sites did not release radioactive contamination.

The third site is at Isfahan and is a research complex that also contains three small reactors as well as equipment that turns “yellow cake” (uranium oxide, U-308) into uranium hexafluoride (UF-6), which in turn feeds uranium enrichment cascades. The Isfahan complex is not fully deep underground and hence makes for a much more vulnerable target.

Here’s what we don’t know conclusively. Even before Trump’s attack there was disagreement among experts about whether the MOP could in fact reach the depth of Fordo or the newer extension of Natanz. The doubt was legitimate because the bomb has never been used in this role before. Most of its 30,000 lbs. weight is accounted for by its heavy steel casing, the explosive for only 5,000 lbs. It is the massive weight that enables the MOP to slam into targets at super-high velocity, while being steered by GPS. Because Fordo is built into the side of deeply-ridged mountain, the question was whether the cone of the MOP would be bent or damaged to an extent that the bomb’s trajectory would be altered. Trump asserted in his post-strike speech that the attack had been highly successful but he was in no position to know that because no damage assessment has been conducted and, in any event, a full-scale assessment can only be done by inspections at the site. The Iranians would of course never allow that and Trump has shown no sign of readiness to deploy ground troops into Iran, something that would embroil the US in an Iraq-style, and in a country of 90 million people, with a land area that ranks 17^th in the world, about the same as Alaska’s. Bottom line: we cannot know at this stage whether Iran’s enrichment program has been fully or partially destroyed. But even if the hit was completely successful, Iran may have hidden centrifuges in other locations. Plus, though Israel killed several Iranian senior nuclear scientists recently, Iran has many others who can step into their shoes.

I’m not in the prediction business but one scenario we cannot rule out the possibility that Trump’s strikes, and those of the Israelis, will have the opposite of the intended effect. Like North Korea, Iran may conclude that the only way to avoid being attacked by the United States (and in Iran’s case, by Israel) is to have a nuclear bomb. Trump’s attack may well, therefore, boost the influence of the hardliners in Iran who have been full-throated supporters of the nuclear option. It remains to be seen whether they can persuade Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to lift his injunction, imposed on religious grounds, against building nuclear weapons. I would not be surprised if Iran were to kick out the IAEA inspectors, among whom, it has claimed, are American and Israeli intelligence operatives, operating covertly. Iran could also announce that it is exiting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows signatories to enrich uranium, but solely for non-military purposes. If Iran takes either step, it will be a sign that its leaders have reached North Korea’s conclusion that only nuclear weapons provide sure-fire security and prevent another American or Israeli attack. Netanyahu, therefore, may be a victim of the law of unintended consequences—more importantly so might Israelis belonging to a younger generation. Again, I’m not saying that this scenario is predetermined now, only that if it materializes, Israel and the United States will have only kicked the nuclear can down the road and laid the groundwork for the outcome their strikes were meant to prevent.

Finally, what will Iran do to retaliate? It will certainly continue its missile and drone attacks against Israel. Israel’s multilayered air defense system—extending from the Iron Dome for low-altitude interceptions to David’s Sling, for high-altitude kills, has leaked and Israel has been hit harder than expected. The government’s public claims that the air defense system has had an interception success rate of 98% is almost certainly an exaggeration based on photos and videos of damage that are publicly available and have been analyzed by missile technology mavens. Iran may not, however, strike US bases in the region or block the Straits of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil exports, move to markets, mainly in Asia. That would draw the US further into the war, and at a time when Iran is having hard enough of a time defending itself against Israel’s attack. In short, the Iranian leaders may hope that Trump, having crowed about the success of yesterday’s strike, will call it a day and avoid deeper involvement in the war—something that the America First wing of the MAGA movement, represented by those like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, adamantly oppose.

As Carlson, Bannon, and others of their political persuasion see it, Israel has been hell bent on dragging the US into forever war of the sort Trump promised, during all three of his campaigns, not to wage and indeed attacked previous presidents for having initiated. Trump, then, has the opportunity to end it here. That would enable him to show those of his supporters who are unconditional supporters of Israel—among the Jewish organizations like AIPAC; neocons like Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham; wealthy Jewish mega-donors to his campaigns, such as Miriam Adelson and Bill Ackman; and Evangelical Christians, such as former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, Trump’s current ambassador to Israel—that he stood by Israel in its time of need. It would also allow him to show that this strike against Iran was not a prelude to deeper US intervention and that he remains opposed to such campaigns and can be counted on to honor the America First credo. Of course, Trump can only call it quits if the Iranian leadership decides that they want to define the war as one that pits them against Israel, and not any other country.We must wait and see what happens.