Iran is within weeks of a nuclear weapon, and from there forward – if not stopped immediately by a collaborative world response – they can replicate, and create enough weapons to destroy Israel and the US within a year. That is what open-source experts say. So, what is needed? American leadership.
Before we answer that important question, ask yourself a few more. What does creating a nuclear weapon really mean? Several things, not spoken about. Yes, Iran needs to complete enriching uranium to weapons grade, or 90 percent, and they are close, but more is needed.
The shine is off Teheran’s enrichment program – it has been for a long time. The goal is crystal clear: Nuclear weapons. Nuclear energy requires five percent enrichment, research 20 percent, weapons 90 percent – and Iran’s gas centrifuges appear to have spun uranium gas to within reach of 90 percent, or a concentration of Uranium 235 (u-235) sufficient to make a nuclear bomb.
More specifically, “Iran’s number of installed centrifuges, the mass and u-235 concentration of Tehran’s enriched uranium stockpile, and number of enrichment locations … prohibited research and development, illicit uranium metal production, and centrifuge manufacturing and installation,” are all beyond limits set years ago, and Iran has consistently lied about what they are doing.
To be clear, this did not start under Joe Biden, nor under Trump, or Obama, but dates back to 2003, when George W. Bush was president. But the pace has changed, jumping under Obama, despite payouts to appease Iran and slow the process, again under Biden. While it likely continued under Trump, the Trump-era sanctions measurably hurt Iran, and markedly slowed the process.
Now, we come to this hour, the global witching hour, when Iran is on the verge of “break out,” as nuclear observers call it. Iran is very close to declaring themselves nuclear. From there, who knows what might happen, since they are behind the current wave of Middle East violence, behind Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Yemen’s Houthi rebel attacks on commerce in the Red Sea, hundreds of attacks on US forces in the region, including in Iraq.
But there is more to this matrix than meets the eye. To put a nuclear warhead – even one, let alone multiple – on a ballistic missile and deliver it to any location, Iran also needs a reliable weapons design, detonation system, and survivable warhead, all three hard to create, let alone perfect.
While Iran already possesses short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, such as the Shebab-3, based on a North Korean missile, perfecting the weapon-to-missile fit – getting weight, size, shape, detonation, and functionality to deliver a nuclear weapon – gun or implosion – is hard.
So, what does that mean? In the end, four things. First, if Iran creates a nuclear weapon, we have to know and act fast. Second, Iran will seek to quickly match it to a missile, and begin creating more. Third, the rest of the Middle East – and perhaps the world – will look for a nuclear deterrent, that is, a means to counter Iran, which could open Pandora’s box. Finally, without an immediate reliable means for ballistic delivery, Iran would look for other means to terrorize the world with their new weapon.
Assuming we are prepared to take decisive action – an undefined combination of cyber and physical responses to slow, deter, neutralize, or destroy Iran’s ability to ramp up production, what else should we be doing?
Answer: We should be on guard, looking for some asymmetric, low-tech, unlikely, or surprise Iranian use of this weapon against a Western, likely Israeli or American, target.
How? Iran could put such a weapon on a small boat and deploy it to the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, could seek to deploy it overland to a regional ally with US personnel, such as Iraq, or it could try to walk it over some open border, for example into an unsuspecting US city, and then detonate it.
Bottom line: Iran is close to taking terror up a notch, from concentric circles of chaos around Israel to terrorizing the globe with a walk-in nuclear weapon. Here is where politics ends and conscientious, collaborative, responsive, deterring action begins. US leadership is needed – now.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
RBC,
Of course, all your concerns about what Iran having one or more nuclear weapons are absolutely correct. However, it should be abundantly clear that NO Democrat administration in the last 30+ years has had neither the intestinal fortitude nor the political will to stand up to any authoritarian regime actively working towards the development of their own nuclear weapons. Clinton vacillated over North Korea for his entire two terms in office, via the usual Democrat appeasement approach of handing the communist regime ample “humanitarian aid” and other forms of support, which they converted to cash to keep things going, right up to the point when North Korea finally announced they had their first nuclear weapons and set one off to prove the point.
In terms of Iran, it was crystal clear all during the Obama administration that Obama / Biden viewed Iran, despite its long history of funding terrorism in the region, as a nation they wanted to empower in the Middle East to counter Saudi Arabia. Which of course made no logical sense as you don’t normally empower someone who seeks to destabilize a region of the world. Obama viewed Iran, from all the books written on the subject since he left office, as his “big political opportunity” to have a major foreign policy win in his otherwise dismal and very short list of so-called accomplishments. Remember, Obama was handed a Nobel Prize for simply “being” shortly after he took office. So, he needed “something” to justify that undeserved hoopla.
The Iran Nuclear Deal, which was intentionally NOT a treaty, as it would never get through the Senate approval process, was essentially Obama giving the Iranian Mullahs whatever they wanted in terms of money and terms and conditions in order to get something Obama could claim was a major foreign policy accomplishment. Otherwise known as ego stroking of a true narcissist at the expense of further destabilizing the Middle East and creating a new nuclear adversary at some point down the road. President Trump rightly ended that agreement soon after taking office, as he and many of his advisors understood the insanity of what a nuclear armed Iran would mean for the Middle East and the rest of the world at large.
Fast forward to today. The Biden regime is populated with many of the same people that existed in the Obama administration. The same major financial players that backed Obama also selected who would serve in the so-called Biden administration. Biden of course is NOT in charge of anything and is merely the useful puppet being manipulated by those actually running things. So, what he says and does is merely want someone tells him to say and do.
The primary goal of Biden’s foreign policy team is to resurrect the Iran Nuclear Deal in some form or fashion to restore Obama’s sole foreign policy “win”. That is the why that is driving this apparent insanity to get a new nuclear deal with Iran at any cost. Since it is apparent the Iranians are emboldened by the desperation of the Biden people to get something / anything that would revive the original deal and thus restore Obama’s sole foreign policy “win”, they want more than just mere money this time around. Thus, the Biden administration has done things like grant Iran sanctions relief and even the recent secret approval, from a number of news outlets, by Team Biden to allow Iran to enrich uranium to the 60% level. Just short of weapons grade for half a dozen nuclear bombs. So, this the administration you hope will show some degree of U.S. leadership that doesn’t result in Iran having nuclear weapons before Biden’s first term in office ends.
There is NO United States leadership under the current regime!
????. We don’t need to wait until Iran is ready to launch. What needs to happen are covert destruction moves on their military process industry. (????maybe even put a Russian equipment bomb package together as a decoy blame system— or other ally of theirs) Or, send bombs disguised as asteroids; or some diversion tactic or during storm weather…????But whatever, subterfuge is needed is needed now, from a responsible organized country or a coalition. No advertisement of the plan to the world is helpful ????
The weakness began with carters dithering thruout 1980 when these monsters captured our embassy. The mockingbird media opined constantly that sanctions or even life itself meant nothing to these fanatics. There was nothing we could do but wait. Then carter tried a peanut brained rescue that failed. Net result: the usa was a paper tiger. Even under reagan there was insufficient response when their proxies attacked us. Their leadership has concluded that we are unwilling to take necessary steps to counter them. The vaporization of solumaini by trump was a step in the right direction but world left wing media went nuts. Now its either too late or nearly so. Deterrence will necessarily involve controversial actions. As ben franklin said, a stitch in time saves nine
As i see it, the problem with American foreign policy is Democrats think they can reason with insane fanatics and Republicans, who talk tough, do little except “just enough”, such as lobbing a few missiles after attacks, to “get by”. With religious fanatics, there is no mutually-assured destruction or “MAD” that kept the US and Russia from destroying each other nor us there hope of “dialogue”. Democrats can appease them all they want but the end result will be the same as tough-talking Republicans who do the minimum: a religious fanatic nuclear martyrdom Iran.
This would NOT be happening with President Trump running the United States.
Why don’t we just destroy their uranium processing facilities? We know where they are.
We need ground leveling shock and awe in Iran. A nuclear Iran must not be allowed to exist. We need to completely alimnilate this threat before it get going.
Gosh fort, you’re makin me smile. Stop that. I know that was a tough one to process, but keep working at it.
Seeds for WW3
If the PROVEN genocidal Israeli government can steal American nuclear material, enough to make several nuclear weapons and not be held accountable for that theft nor its hoarding of nukes……..then why all this ongoing crap about Iran and its always “about to have at any minute” nuclear weaponry?
Let me get this straight. To criticize mass child murderers that happen to have Judaism as their religious belief is “anti Semitic” m but to dish out the same criticism for anything even rhyming with Islam is just fine.
Whats next America? Gonna start selling black folks again? If Israel started doing so, Im positive that if anyone criticized it they would be cancelled for ” antisemitism”