Among national security experts there is nearly universal agreement on the following: Bombing could set Iran’s nuclear program back by one or two years, maybe even several, but it would also (1) remove any doubt in the minds of Iranian leaders about whether to pursue nuclear weapons; and (2) ensure that the Iranian nuclear program was revamped to resist future air strikes.
And the new, more entrenched Iranian nuclear program wouldn’t be the kind of thing that could be undone by a new generation of bunker-buster bombs. According to experts I’ve talked to, Iran would probably react to bombing not by burying its nuclear facilities deeper, but by dispersing them much more widely. They would be impossible to identify from the air and for that matter not readily identifiable from the street. Meanwhile, the international inspectors who now keep us apprised of Iran’s nuclear status would be banned in the wake of air strikes. So even if we were willing to make additional bombing runs on an annual basis (“mowing the lawn,” as some call it), we could never be confident that Iran wasn’t producing a nuclear weapon. The only path to such confidence would be to invade the country and seize the instruments of state.
Would we actually do that? Probably.
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