Hezbollah and Hamas no longer threaten Israel. Iran’s axis of resistance lies in ruin. The Islamic Republic and Syria’s air defenses are destroyed, and Iran’s missile capabilities are shredded.
But Iran is on the verge of producing enough weapons-grade uranium for several bombs. It is so close, in fact, that relying on a timely warning by US or Israeli intelligence that Iran is “breaking out” may not be a winning bet. Now is the time to deal with Iran’s program militarily, ideally through a joint attack by Jerusalem and Washington.In December, both the US Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was closer than ever to having enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for several bombs. Iran would require only weeks – not months – to “break out” from its current self-imposed 60% enrichment limit to the 90% plus needed for a bomb.
Until recently, Tehran dismissed all talk of acquiring nuclear weapons capacity as nonsense that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had specifically prohibited in an alleged oral fatwa (Islamic legal ruling). No longer. Senior officials of the Islamic Republic now discuss openly the pros and cons of developing the bomb.
The collapse of Iran’s anti-Israel axis of resistance has strengthened Tehran’s temptation to develop the bomb. Khamenei’s long-standing plan to use proxies to weaken Israel is in tatters: Hamas barely subsists, Hezbollah no longer seriously threatens Israel, and, most importantly, the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria has all but closed the arms pipeline that Tehran used for years to bolster Hezbollah. Only Iran’s Houthi allies in Yemen are active, but they do not pose a major threat to Israel.
Moreover, the ease with which Israel penetrated Iranian airspace twice this year may have convinced Iranian leaders hitherto skeptical about the need for a bomb to see it as necessary to deter additional such “aggressions.”Tehran has not yet assembled the puzzle that is a deliverable nuclear device, but Iran continues assiduously to fashion the individual puzzle pieces. The expansion of the uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz continues apace, and multiple sources report that Tehran is working on improving the accuracy of its ballistic missiles. In October, Israel bombed what it considered to be a nuclear weapons research facility at Parchin.
THE SIMPLEST reason to conclude that Iran still aspires to obtain nuclear weapons is how it has designed its entire nuclear program from the start: enriching uranium domestically when imported fuel for a civilian nuclear program would have been much cheaper; consistently hiding key nuclear sites from the IAEA and the West and placing one of them (Fordow) under a mountain. Finally, there is Tehran’s willingness to be deprived of billions of dollars due to Western sanctions and lost foreign investment in order to build a program that is the stark opposite of what a country genuinely seeking peaceful nuclear power would want.
This is the nuclear panorama facing President-elect Donald Trump. Given the Republican Party’s division into isolationist “America first”-ers and more traditional internationalists, it would be foolhardy to predict the direction of the next administration. There are, however, indicators suggesting that Trump strongly prefers economic coercion and negotiations over military solutions.
Shortly after the election, Trump adviser Elon Musk met with Iran’s UN Ambassador to discuss ways to “defuse tensions.” Former members of Trump’s first administration have talked publicly about reapplying the “maximum pressure” economic sanction strategy that Biden discontinued. Trump himself consistently states that he wants to end wars and prevent new ones through personal diplomacy rather than by military means.
It seems likely that Trump will revive maximum pressure on and negotiations with Iran in a quest to produce a nuclear agreement with Tehran that he can claim as a vast improvement over the Iran accord (JCPOA) that Barack Obama negotiated.
That would be a great mistake.
If 25 years of nuclear negotiations with Iran have taught us anything, it is that the country’s rulers are determined to acquire nuclear weapons. Given Iran’s current perilous economic and military situation, Khamenei almost certainly wants to resume nuclear talks with the West to allay further economic sanctions and buy time while continuing to enrich uranium and research weaponization. Iran has no interest in forgoing domestic uranium enrichment, except as a temporary measure to gain time.
The ayatollahs may calculate that Trump’s eagerness to replace the JCPOA with an improved version bearing the Trump housekeeping seal of approval will produce a treaty Tehran can live with, one that appears to plug the JCPOA’s many holes while in practice leaving escape clauses that Iran can use in the future to achieve its nuclear goals.
This approach means that the United States, Israel, and the IAEA must be constantly vigilant lest Iran try to “break out” and acquire enough HEU for several bombs. Neither Israel nor the US has stated with certainty that they can detect a breakout early enough to stop it. As Iran enriches more and more uranium to 60%, its path to the breakout 90% level grows shorter and probably harder to identify, further reducing the time Western intelligence agencies have to alert their governments about an imminent breakout – and the time those governments have to react.
Such a breakout would not immediately give Iran the bomb; experts assess that Tehran needs anywhere from six months to two years to weaponize HEU. But it would mean that destroying Iran’s large, stationary nuclear targets (primarily the uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz) would no longer block Iran’s path to a bomb. The new targets would be much more difficult to locate and destroy. HEU is not bulky and can be stored anywhere in a country three times the size of Texas, and scientists can undertake research on weaponization in a facility the size of a large garage.
There is a better solution: the use of military means to destroy Iran’s major nuclear facilities now.Israel seriously contemplated such action in 2012, but a combination of US pressure and divisions within the Israeli government and the IDF removed the kinetic option from consideration. Now, however, Iran is much weaker and many of yesterday’s obstacles to military action are no longer relevant.
Hezbollah’s downfall
Until this year, the most compelling argument against an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was that it would unleash a catastrophic war with Iran’s proxy Hezbollah (and to a much lesser extent Hamas). But Iran has lost its ace in the hole. Hezbollah’s leadership is decimated; most – if not all – of its long-range precision-guided missiles that could reach anywhere in Israel have either been destroyed or are in Israel’s gun sights; and Hezbollah’s short-range rockets have little more than nuisance value – and that only against Israel’s North.
Assad’s demise
Equally significant is the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the Islamic Republic’s oldest and closest state ally in the Middle East. Israel’s “war between the wars” in Syria over the past decade successfully thwarted Iran’s efforts to reproduce in Syria a Hezbollah-like missile threat against Israel. Now Syria has become a no-go area for Iranian military activities. Tehran’s land bridge from Iran to Lebanon through the vaunted Shia crescent is blocked, and Iran can no longer easily replace Hezbollah’s equipment and missile losses.
Demolished Iranian and Syrian air defenses
Prior to this year, Israel had never mounted a serious air attack against Iran and thus could not know for certain how well the Islamic regime’s Russian-supplied S-300 air defense system would work. The verdict is now in: Jerusalem’s response to Iran’s October 1 launch of almost 200 ballistic missiles against Israel all but obliterated the Islamic Republic’s air defenses. Israel sent scores of aircraft against Iran, aerially refueled them, and lost not a single plane. This has left the regime’s nuclear and military sites largely undefended and will give any air force that targets them – Israeli and/or American – much greater prospects for success than was thought possible in the recent past.
Diminished missile capacities
Iran attacked Israel twice in 2024 with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, abandoning its long-standing reliance on proxies to target the Jewish state. The attacks proved that Iran is a paper tiger when it comes to missile warfare against Israel, which either intercepted most of the missiles or allowed them to land in rural areas. Moreover, Washington, Western allies, and moderate Arab Sunni states – including Saudi Arabia, which does not even recognize the Jewish state – helped Israel repel Iranian missiles. It is unclear how many of the Islamic Republic’s surviving missiles can reach Israel, but the example of Tehran’s two foiled strikes this year suggests that they do not now present a major threat.
What is to be done?
Tehran’s weakness provides Jerusalem with a golden opportunity to cut Iran’s nuclear ambitions down to size. The Israel Air Force has proven it can precisely target Iranian military and nuclear sites without generating extensive civilian collateral damage and without requiring land refueling in a neighboring country.
Moreover, the destruction of Iran’s air defenses has put paid to the long-standing assumption that Israel could only mount one surprise blow against Iran’s nuclear facilities before Iran’s residual air defenses kicked in and made further attacks too dangerous. With the Islamic Republic’s air defenses demolished, Israel would probably now be able to mount additional sorties in the hours and days following the initial attack to revisit sites insufficiently damaged in the first round.
There is one major drawback to Israel’s mounting an independent blue-and-white attack on Iran’s nuclear sites: the uranium enrichment facility at Fordow. The IAEA reports that Iran recently increased enrichment at this site, which alone could quickly produce enough HEU for several bombs. Fordow is a subterranean bunker built under a mountain that Israel – which lacks a heavy bomber fleet – would be hard-pressed to destroy by itself.
However, the United States Air Force (USAF) possesses a non-nuclear weapon that can penetrate and demolish Fordow: the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), colloquially referred to as a “bunker buster” bomb. The MOP is a 30,000-pound self-guided munition, currently only deliverable by the USAF’s B-2 Spirit stealth aircraft.
A joint US-Israel attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has another major advantage: It would permit the targeting of many more nuclear and missile sites and inflict much greater damage than a unilateral Israeli operation. There are many ways in which the two allies could cooperate. Washington, for example, could launch the MOP against Iran’s large underground nuclear sites and perhaps a few select non-nuclear ones, while Israel could target Iranian missile storage and production facilities, other sundry military targets, and especially the many smaller and more vulnerable nuclear facilities that supply inputs used at the Fordow and Natanz enrichment plants.
Retaliation?
Some US policy-makers oppose almost any use of US force in the Middle East out of fear that the subsequent “escalation” would drag the United States into another Middle East war on a par with the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The Iraq/Afghanistan experience, however, teaches us little if anything about the consequences of an attack on Iran’s nuclear and other military facilities. Such an operation would not require a single US boot on the ground (although clandestine Israeli boots might play a role).
No one is proposing that a US expeditionary force march to Tehran. And if the Israeli experience over the skies of Iran is anything to go by, USAF pilots are likely to return home as heroes, not in coffins.
A second, more credible, objection is that while Iran cannot significantly penetrate Israel’s air defenses or those of major US military bases in the region, it can wreak havoc on US allies in the Persian Gulf, especially the UAE, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Iran has thousands of short-range projectiles it can hurl against military and economic targets in these countries: Tehran has already proven their effectiveness. In 2019, the Islamic Republic mounted a cruise missile and drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil production facility, putting the kingdom’s premier petroleum processing plant out of business for several weeks.
The threat of Iranian retaliation on our Arab allies, however, is not a game-stopper. The Gulf states’ air defenses are much more effective today than they were in 2019 when Tehran essentially caught Riyadh with its pants down.An entire regional air defense network, which includes Israel, the US, and the major moderate Sunni states, has taken shape since then and showed its mettle twice this year by defending Israel from Iranian attacks. Some Iranian missiles will penetrate these defenses, but the notion that Tehran can quickly reduce all Arab Gulf state oil production and processing facilities to rubble in the wake of an attack by Israel and/or the US is overblown.
Secondly, a serious promise by the US and Israel to hobble Iran’s economy should it retaliate in a major fashion for the destruction of its nuclear facilities would give Tehran pause.
The US and Israel should deliberately spare Iranian industrial and oil production facilities from damage while sending a message (overtly and/or through clandestine conduits) to Tehran to coincide with the dropping of the first MOPs over Fordow: “We are not targeting your economy, but if you retaliate against Israel, the US, or any of its regional allies, we will utterly destroy your oil and gas production and export facilities.”
One major installation alone – the Kharg Island terminal – handles nearly 90% of Iran’s gas and petroleum exports, which in turn account for 40% of the country’s export earnings; Israel could easily demolish Kharg Island.The prospect of losing the jewel in its economic crown must give Tehran pause before it retaliates in any more than a perfunctory fashion. Even more intimidating would be an Israeli/American pledge to go after the entirety of the country’s petroleum infrastructure, plus other major industrial sites.
There is a downside to destroying Kharg Island and other such targets: World oil and gas prices would immediately soar. But this is no reason to turn the threat into empty words. Saudi Arabia has ample excess oil capacity that it can quickly bring into production, minimizing the impact on world petroleum prices of lessened Iranian oil production and export.
An unexpected bonus?
The weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the demise of the Assad regime in Syria illustrate the dangers of predicting Middle East developments.
We do not know how Iranians would react to a concerted attack on their country’s nuclear and military facilities. Such a setback might induce Khamenei and his security forces to batten down the hatches and intensify persecution, lest the Iranian populace revolt. To judge by the regime’s recent repression of popular protests, it retains the loyalty of its most capable and bloodthirsty security forces. Whether the massive international and domestic embarrassment caused by a nuclear debacle would shake this loyalty is anyone’s guess. There is at least a chance that such an open demonstration of the regime’s manifold weaknesses could break the log jam that has hitherto impeded the Iranian opposition from threatening Islamic rule.
At the very least, such a shock would likely weaken the regime and force it to devote more and more manpower and resources to keeping the Iranian political pot from boiling over.
A perishable moment
We are at a crossroads in the 30-year struggle to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
The Islamic Republic has never been weaker, both at home and abroad. Its axis of resistance lies in shambles, and what little domestic popular support the mullahs retain is draining away. The only place where Tehran is not retreating is at the Natanz and Fordow uranium enrichment plants, where the danger of a nuclear breakout is greater than ever. Meanwhile, both Israeli and US military capabilities have never been stronger, resulting in a very high probability of successful kinetic action against Iran’s nuclear program.
These circumstances will not last forever. Russia may help the Islamic Republic defend itself by supplying it with the more formidable S-400 air defense system. Tehran could lure Washington into an endless series of negotiations which it would take advantage of to inch ever closer to breaking out – or else negotiate an agreement only marginally less favorable to the regime than was the JCPOA.
Should the latter happen, the West will once again just have just kicked the Iranian nuclear can down the road, in the forlorn hope that it explodes on somebody else’s watch.
The writer is a 30-year veteran of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he specialized in the Middle East, from which he retired in 2012 as a member of the Senior Analytical Service. From 2012 until his departure in 2024, he was the senior in-house Middle East expert for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
The views expressed here are exclusively his own and do not represent those of the CIA or AIPAC.