What are our choices if Iran sprints to obtain a nuclear weapon?

According to Michael Mandelbaum, professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, if “the Islamic Republic should acquire nuclear weapons, as it is actively seeking to do, its capacity to harm America’s friends and American interests would expand dramatically. The most important task for American Middle East policy is…to prevent that from happening. This is especially the case insofar as the American government actively discouraged Israel from hitting Iran’s nuclear installations.”

With its proxies severely degraded and Israel destroying much of the Iranian anti-missile/anti-aircraft systems while disabling advanced warning radar systems in Syria and Iraq, Israel’s retaliation for the two largest missile barrages in modern history has left Iran’s other military assets wide open to be hit if Israel should have occasion to attack Iran again in the near future.

Israel would not need a first wave of fighter jets to destroy an already disabled Iranian anti-missile array. In that case, it could use more aircraft and missiles to target everything from the American-designated terrorists in the IRGC infrastructure, to the morality police who terrorize the Iranian people, to Iran’s energy infrastructure that supports its terror mechanism, to the holy grail of targets – Iran’s nuclear facilities.

However, if Iran now feels defenseless to another attack, it may decide its best option is to create a nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. It would need to accelerate the last phase of its nuclear program, the weaponization of an atomic device, and could decide to test it to prove its capabilities. If the Iranians think the time course to go nuclear is too long, they could also clandestinely transfer a few North Korean nuclear weapons and tell the world that Iran has now joined the nuclear club; game over.

According to American academic Walter Read Russell, “There are two key questions now. Will Tehran turn to a nuclear breakout to compensate for the inferiority of its conventional weapons? If it does, will the fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon be enough to lead Washington to support Israel even at the risk of Washington’s engagement in another war?... The nuclear breakout option seems easier for Tehran to accomplish and more strategically compelling than ever before.” If Iran wants to restore deterrence, it may logically conclude that only possessing nuclear weapons will save its regime for the long term.

Knowing this, should Israel strike Iranian nuclear facilities sooner than later, and is it capable of mowing the nuclear grass enough to delay Iran’s atomic program for at least five years?

The pressure from the US on Israel to avoid a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would likely be enormous. A nuclear Iran may be an existential threat to Israel but is not considered a primary threat by the isolationist Right or the anti-Israel Left in America, both influential in their parties.

As for Americans in the middle, they, too, are still traumatized by the cost and poor outcome of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and dislike the thought of being drawn into another Middle East war, which they fear would compel the need for American boots on the ground.

Let’s suppose that American and Israeli intelligence conclude that Iran has made the strategic decision to possess nuclear weapons, and intelligence strongly believes Iran has begun a dash to the bomb. As Uri Friedman, writing in The Atlantic, said, “Newly threatened, the Iranian regime might pursue a bomb to try to salvage its national security.”The first question to ask is whether America would join Israel in a preventative kinetic strike, which is questionable, despite the declarations of each of the recent US administrations that it would never let Iran have a nuclear weapon.The second question Israel must ask is whether it has the capability, acting alone, of significantly degrading Iran’s nuclear facilities enough that it will take a long time to reconstitute them.

Israel’s strike on Iran in October actually targeted some Iranian nuclear infrastructure in Parchin and the Shahroud Space Center in Semnan Province “used to build solid-propellant rocket motors…for ballistic missiles,” according to The New York Times. Ballistic missiles are the primary way to deliver an atomic weapon.

Parchin is the secretive military facility identified with the Iranian nuclear program. President Barack Obama was so anxious for a deal with Iran in 2015 that he agreed to have no inspections at Parchin and other joint use military sites. Israel’s astounding caper in 2018, stealing the Iranian atomic archives, proved that the Islamic Republic had plans for a nuclear weapon for decades.

Even if Israel believes it can unilaterally strike Iran’s nuclear program successfully, it still has to weigh the damage it could do to the US-Israel relationship, as an unapproved strike might infuriate an American administration, which might choose to punish Israel, especially if it drags America into an unwanted regional war. However, a senior American official disclosed in early November to Walla that the US told Iran that if it strikes Israel a third time, it will not be able to restrain Israel’s response.

However, if Israel concludes that it cannot effectively strike the Iranian nuclear program alone and needs the United States, its options become much more limited.

An article by Toby Dalton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment, and Eli Levite, a nonresident senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program, states: “The best option already has a successful playbook from 2013.” They recommend a “secret US-Iran dialogue, facilitated in and by Oman, that yielded an interim nuclear restraint agreement in 2013 and led ultimately to the JCPOA.”

They advocate going around the Senate, saying it wouldn’t “require sign-off from the US Congress,” just as Obama refused to bring the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal) to the Senate, a brazen undermining of our constitutional checks and balances, usurping power for the executive branch. If Iran dashes toward an atomic bomb, this will be an ineffective and counterproductive option.

I wrote about another choice in a previous article, where I stated the case for those who want to minimize the chance of a preventative strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is to have America transfer bunker-buster 30,000-pound bombs to Israel with the means to deliver them by forward staging B-2 and B-52 American bombers that could carry that payload. A headline on November 3 in The Jerusalem Post read: “B-52 Stratofortress arrives in Middle East area from US amid Iranian threat” under CENTCOM command.

Beyond the usual cyber attacks and targeted assassinations, the need to prioritize destabilizing the regime is still the best path to long-term regional stability and preventing the US from being pulled into a war. Helping the Iranian people rise against their tyrannical overlords and take charge of their lives to chase the mullahs out of town should become a coordinated US-Israeli policy.

American leadership

The incoming Trump administration should articulate a new strategic policy with Iran: regime change. Enforcement of the maximum sanctions that the Biden administration abandoned would decrease Iran’s financial support for its terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Israel, too, has a role to play to destabilize the Iranian regime. Israel’s kinetic options to weaken the government would entail targeting the lifeblood of its economic survival, the energy infrastructure, and container ports for commerce. If Iran strikes Israel a third time, this is a legitimate response.

The key is for America to signal to the Iranian people that we are with them, unambiguously pro-Iranian – that is, pro-Iranian people. American policy should lead fellow democracies in a call for a referendum on what type of government they want to lead them.

If the people do rise in protest, there’s little doubt that the Iranian morality police, along with the IRGC, will clamp down on the Internet and begin another campaign of intimidation, terror, and arrests reminiscent of the previous brutal crackdown that occurred in 2009 during their Green Revolution and most recently after the Women, Life, Freedom Protests that followed the killing of the young woman Mahsa Amini, accused of not wearing her hijab head covering properly.

The Green Revolution was ignited by fraudulent election outcomes, allowing the vicious Iranian President Ahmadinejad to be re-elected. To America’s shame, the Obama and Biden administrations, both in turn, abandoned the Iranian people, undermining US values as a beacon of light to those repressed by authoritarian regimes. No boots on the ground were necessary; only American leadership in speaking truth to the world.

If Iran does develop or acquire a North Korean nuclear weapon, then the best and perhaps the only path to defang the regime from intimating its neighbors and preventing a nuclear arms race would be regime change. It is believed that the vast majority of the Iranian people yearn to be free of the repressive government, which prioritizes hegemony and destroying Israel over the people’s needs. Regime change would bring chaos and unintended consequences, but the risks outweigh the challenges.

In theory, an Iranian government not run by fanatical zealots could be trusted with a well-regulated and inspected civilian nuclear program that enriches uranium outside of Iran. American security interests would advance if China and Russia lost an Iranian client state.

Every option to deal with an Iran dashing to a nuclear weapon has risks. The only greater risk is accepting Iran with atomic weapons. As in 1981 and 2007, when Israel struck the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs, if Israel believes it can effectively strike the Iran nuclear program, now may be the time to do it and deal with the diplomatic fallout later, including the risk that striking enrichment sites might cause significant environmental contamination there.

If the regime falls or Israel defangs its nuclear program, don’t expect anyone in the international community to give Israel credit, but do expect sanctions on Israel and being tossed from the UN for choosing offensive options. It may be a small price to pay to survive to fight another day, as Israel is a one-bomb country, as a former Iranian president put it. A defensive shield cannot block all incoming missiles. An Iranian barrage of 1,000 missiles, ten of them nuclear-armed, would be likely to get one of those past the THAAD and Arrow systems.

The new US administration needs to have strategic empathy for Israel, knowing it is at war with an enemy who is committed to one thing: its extermination. Our choices must take that into account when we decide how to respond to an Iranian dash to an atomic bomb. ■

Eric Mandel is the director of the Middle East Political Information Network and Mandel Strategies, and regularly briefs members of the US Congress and their foreign policy aides on the Middle East.