Day After Thoughts on Trump’s Iran Strike
Some points on the effect rather than on wisdom or any benefits of these attacks.
The president said on several occasions that the Fordow nuclear installation was “erased”. It is clearly a celebration slogan rather than any kind of factual analysis. We now draw the first post-action reports of the Pentagon and Israel who talk about the installation of Fordow seems to have undergone “serious damage” but not be destroyed. One thing that struck me last night was the American assessment which helped to arouse this attack which, according to him, was that the entire Israeli assault had pushed the Iranian program for about six months. It is quite derisory in terms of great change in strategic perspectives. I note that because we should wait for an important period before concluding – if proof the merit – that the United States has somehow presented the Iranians to the box in its ability to build nuclear warheads.
We must remember that you cannot destroy the quest to create nuclear weapons (or more specifically the quest to have all the parts and knowledge to do it in the short term) with the bombing alone. If you take the logic of this action according to its own conditions, it must prepare the ground for negotiations or an effective deterrence. In other words, an option is that you hope to destroy a lot from what Iran has spent years building. With this, you hope that they are more open to an agreement which leads them to really accept not to work on the constituent elements of nuclear warheads because you have demonstrated that the costs are too large. Or maybe with this demonstration, you clearly indicate that any reconstruction effort will be encountered by another similar or more devastating attack. They therefore abandon the effort because they decide that it is not worth it or simply without hope. You always destroy work before it ends.
In the absence of a version of these scenarios being the case, they restart their efforts and come back to it, let’s say two or three years. And probably, it is a much more concentrated Iran on the construction of a nuclear weapon deliverable to be sure that it is never found in this position again.
Nuclear weapons have existed for 80 years. Basic science is no secret. Obviously, I am far from being an expert on this subject. But the challenges produce fuel and what is essentially engineering and industrial challenges to produce materials with a level of precision adapted to nuclear warheads. The fact is that these things are achievable with an industrial economy reasonably advanced and engineers and physicists who can direct the work. These things are all fundamentally replaceable. We already hear people in the Maga world saying that Trump has ended the Iranian nuclear program. But even in the most successful attack scenario, it is not really possible.
