The Agenda: Iran.[1] 

            The Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah (1979) spread chaos in the country.  Saddam Hussein, the dictator of neighboring Iraq, sought to exploit the situation by attacking Iran.  The subsequent war[2] (1980-1988) caused all sorts of troubles.  In its aftermath, during the 1990s, the Iranian Republic launched a program to develop nuclear weapons.  The program’s physical component—as opposed to intellectual and technological components–began with the construction of a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water plant at Arak. 

            In 2002, Iranian dissidents obtained and published secret documents on the nuclear program for all the world to see.  In 2003, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published a “fatwa” banning the possession or use of nuclear weapons.  No one believed him.[3]  Eventually, in 2006, the United Nations plastered Iran with economic sanctions.  In 2015, the Obama administration, busy with other quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, led the negotiation of a deal with Iran.  Iran would limit uranium enrichment to 3.67 percent and send 97 percent of its already-enriched uranium to Russia for safe-keeping.[4]  The agreement would run for 15 years.  It hardly made it out the gate. 

            In 2018, President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement so far as the United States was concerned.  In Trump’s view, the agreement did nothing to address Iran’s non-nuclear aggressive behavior in the region.  Specifically, Iran was arming-up and coordinating allied forces in the region.[5]  Trump seems to have hoped that renewed economic sanctions would force the Iranian regime to cut a new and better deal.  To emphasize his point, in 2020 Trump ordered the killing of General Qassem Soleimani, a leading figure in the Revolutionary Guards. 

Next, in 2021, President Joe Biden[6] tried to revive the agreement, but the Iranians had moved on.  At about the same time that Biden entered the White House, Iran began enriching uranium to 20 percent, and then to 60 percent.  Enrichment to 90 percent creates “weapons grade material.”  All the while, economic sanctions and mismanagement have battered Iran’s domestic economy.[7]  

The last year or so has altered the situation.  First, Israel has inflicted immense damage on Iran’s clients through its wars in Gaza and Lebanon.  Turkey sponsored a rebel offensive in Syria that overthrew Iran’ ally Assad.  When Israel killed a Hamas leader in Tehran, Iran responded with a missile barrage; and, in October 2024; Israel answered with air strikes that wrecked key elements of Iran’s air defense system, among other things.  This leaves Iran open to follow-on strikes against nuclear facilities (and the Iranian leadership cadres) if Tehran doesn’t change its tune. 

Second, Donald Trump’s return to the White House has seemed possible (if not certain) since the beginning of 2024.  Tehran has been intensifying its drive to enrich uranium to 60 percent.  That is, apparently, a hop, skip, and a jump from 90 percent or weapons-grade uranium.[8]  I don’t know how much time that hop, skip, and jump would take.  Expert opinion holds that a basic sort of bomb could be manufactured six months after a sufficient quantity of weapons-grade uranium has been accumulated.  Another year after that and they could have a warhead for a ballistic missile.  One that could easily hit Israel. 

NOTHING in the history of Israel’s military and national security policy suggests that Israel will let Iran get anywhere near that point.  They will not allow Iran to get even one nuclear weapon.  Never mind the ballistic missiles.  “Just put it on a freighter bound for Haifa.”  The time-line for preventive action by Israel (and/or the United States) is very short.  Maybe a year at the outside?  There will be heavy pressure on the prime minister of Israel[9] to act soon. 

The time-line for Iran to decide what course it will choose is very short.  Will the rulers of Iran try to rush ahead and break-out to possession of nuclear weapons?[10]  If they do achieve a nuclear weapon, will they feel compelled to “use it or lose it”?   

Or will the leaders of Iran repent their disdain for Biden’s offer to revive the 2015 agreement?  The country’s alliance network is in shambles and its own defense vulnerabilities have been exposed.  Russia could divert no forces from the Ukraine war to save Assad, so it isn’t likely to do much for Iran.  Would the Iranian leaders—belatedly—seek to engage with the United States?  If so, how stiff-necked would they be about concessions? 

The stakes are high.  In theory, Israel would need the assistance of the United States to attack the key Iranian facilities.  A prime target would be an enrichment facility near the city of Qom.  It is tunneled into a mountain.  So is another site near Isfahan.  The American “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” dropped by a B-2 bomber would be the only conventional weapon that could destroy the targets.[11]  In reality, Israel has its own nuclear weapons that might do the job.  That’s an awful thing to ponder.[12] 

Finally, there is a loose alliance between Iran, Russia, and China.  How would the Russians and the Chinese respond to either an Israel-America joint attack on Iran or to an Israel-alone attack (albeit with American blessing)? 

Can of worms.  Or, as the French say, “a basket of crabs.” 

[1] “Briefing: A looming nuclear crisis,” The Week, 17 January 2025, p. 11. 

[2] See: Iran–Iraq War – Wikipedia  If you want to explore in depth, see: Williamson Murray and Kevin M. Woods The Iran–Iraq War. A Military and Strategic History (2014).  Murray is deeply knowledgeable and hard-headed.   

[3] Iran is predominantly Shi’ite Muslim.  As a long-persecuted minority within Islam, Shi’ite theologians determined that Shi’ites could dissemble about their real religious beliefs.  Over the centuries, other people have come to believe that Iranian culture has generalized this originally purely religious easement on veracity. 

[4] So, as part of their recent mutual sliming-up to each other, has Russia secretly returned the enriched uranium to Iran?  I haven’t noticed reporting on this question.  My bad.  What does Mossad say? 

[5] Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and the Assad regime in Syria. 

[6] More recent developments cause me to wonder if it wasn’t the policy of President-for-Foreign-Policy Antony Blinken.  Who would have been President-for-Domestic-Policy?  Can’t have been Janet Yellen.  We wouldn’t have had the inflation mess.  I understand that this is a nasty remark.  But see “Biden: How to hide a president’s decline” The Week, 17 January 2025, p. 16.  Reports on a WSJ story on “how Biden’s aides and family hid his apparent cognitive decline from almost day one of his presidency.”  On which side of “day one” did the hiding begin? 

[7] Pakistan’s prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto once said that “Even if we have to eat grass, we will make a nuclear bomb.”  You couldn’t force that in a democracy, but neither Pakistan nor Iran are real democracies. 

[8] Obviously, I haven’t tried it myself.  Nor would I try.  Don’t want to get hauled into a black Escalade while I’m walking my dog. 

[9] Probably Benjamin Netanyahu, but it doesn’t matter.  The leaders of the IDF and Mossad seem likely to be on the same page. 

[10] The ever-shrewd Eliot A. Cohen raised this possibility in the Atlantic in December 2024.  For a sample of Cohen’s Atlantic pieces, see: Eliot A. Cohen, The Atlantic 

[11] It has been reported that the Pentagon has briefed President Biden on plans for American attacks on Iranian nuclear resources.  “Briefing: A looming nuclear crisis,” The Week, 17 January 2025, p. 11. 

[12] Many people outside of Israel already are appalled by pictures from Gaza.