One week into Israel’s war with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel has the “capability” to strike all of Iran’s nuclear facilities, including the heavily fortified Fordow uranium enrichment site.
Israel has yet to attack Fordow, which is near the city of Qom and 95 kilometers from Tehran.
Netanyahu had counted on U.S. President Donald Trump to enter the war on Israel’s side and bomb Fordow. Much to his disappointment, Trump dashed his expectation. On June 19, Trump abruptly announced that he needed upwards of two weeks to decide whether to join Israel in its campaign to decimate Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
The following day, Trump cast doubt on Israel’s capability to take out Fordow on its own. “They really have a very limited capacity,” he said. “They could break through a little section, but they can’t go down very deep. They don’t have that capacity.”
What he meant is that Israel lacks two essential components in its arsenal that only the United States possesses. Israel does not have the GBU-57 A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb. Nor does Israel have the B-2 stealth bomber to carry it.
Fordow would be a “very difficult target,” says Frank McKenzie Jr., the former commander of the U.S. Central Command, whose area of operation is the Middle East.
The GBU-57, weighing 30,000 pounds and 20 feet in length, might well solve the problem. The world’s heaviest non-nuclear projectile, it was designed to penetrate about 200 feet below the surface of a target before exploding.
Israel sought to purchase the GBU-57, which has been tested but never deployed in combat. The United States refused to sell it, fearing it would embolden Israel to go after Iran’s nuclear sites.
This raises an important issue. Absent the GBU-57, does Israel have the ability to eradicate Fordow? It is a question that goes to the heart of the matter.
As Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, said the other day, “This entire operation … really has to be completed with the elimination of Fordow.”
Viewed from this perspective, Fordow appears central in Israel’s plan to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program, which poses an existential threat to its existence. Iran has often called for Israel’s destruction, and Israel takes its blood-curdling threat seriously.
Fordow, Iran’s second major enrichment center after Natanz, became operational in 2009. Iran built it deeply into a mountain to ensure it could withstand an Israeli strike.
Israel bombed Iraq’s French-built nuclear reactor, near Baghdad, in 1981. And in 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear facility in Syria designed by North Korea.
According to the Institute for Science and International Security, Iran could convert its current stock of 60 percent enriched uranium at Fordow into weapons-grade uranium within three weeks, enough to produce nine nuclear bombs.
Last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency inspected Fordow and found that some uranium had been enriched to 83.7 percent purity, close to the 90 percent enrichment level necessary for a nuclear weapon.
Although the director of U.S. National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, believes that Iran has yet to decide whether to produce a nuclear device, many U.S. government officials think that Iran has accumulated a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium to move quickly toward making an atomic bomb.
John Ratcliffe, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is of the view that Iran is very close to this objective.
General Michael Kurilla, the commander of the U.S. Central Command, said recently that Iran could “sprint” to a nuclear weapon in a week.
Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, told reporters that Iran has the basic materials to produce a nuclear bomb. “All they need is a decision from the supreme leader to do that,” she said.
The Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency, is of the opinion that Iran could roll out a nuclear weapon in two weeks.
Since 2012, Netanyahu has repeatedly warned that Iran is close to joining the nuclear club. Several days ago, he said, “In recent months, Iran has taken steps that it has never taken before … to weaponize this enriched uranium, and if not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time. It could be a year. It could be within a few months. This is a clear and present danger to Israel’s very survival.”
Iran insists that its nuclear program is peaceful in nature, and that nuclear weapons are contrary to the tenets of Islam.
But if Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is assassinated, or if Fordow is attacked, Iran could respond by manufacturing a nuclear bomb and/or withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Although Trump is skeptical of Israel’s ability to knock out Fordow, which is protected by surface-to-air missiles batteries, Israel could resort to an array of unorthodox methods to deal with it.
Israel could deploy lower-level bunker buster bombs in an effort to smash Fordow. Alternatively, Israel could possibly disable it by bombing its more accessible power generation and transmission plants, or blocking its entry points.
Another possibility is a commando raid. Israeli troops could blast into Fordow and rig it with enough dynamite to obliterate it.
Iran is acutely aware of this option.
Last September, Israeli commandos dropped by helicopters destroyed the Scientific Studies and Research Center in Masyaf, in northwest Syria, which had been producing precision-guided missiles for Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran. As the commandos advanced on the facility, Israeli drones swooped down, killing Syrian soldiers.
Israeli aircraft had bombed Masyaf several times since 2018, but the results were uneven. The decision to send in commandos was taken to ensure that it would be entirely destroyed.
Since June 13, the day Israel broke the psychological barrier and attacked Iran in a fullscale bombing operation, the Israeli Air Force has struck the Natanz, Isfahan and Arak enrichment sites.
Rafael Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Anergy Agency, told the United Nations Security Council on June 20 that Israeli strikes have destroyed electricity infrastructure and seriously damaged centrifuge machines in Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center. He said that radioactivity outside it has not been detected, but suggested that it could have been contaminated.
Grossi said that Israeli strikes have damaged the central chemical laboratory and centrifuges at Isfahan, as well as a reactor-fuel manufacturing plant and a uranium conversion factory in Tehran.
He confirmed that the Khondab Heavy Water Research Reactor in Arak, which produced weapons-grade plutonium before it was closed in accordance with the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement was signed, was bombed on June 19.
In addition, Israel has assassinated about ten Iranian nuclear scientists.
At the very least, Israel has degraded Iran’s nuclear program after about a week of war.
On June 21, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Israel has set it back by a minimum of two years. “According to the assessment we hear, we already delayed for at least two or three years the possibility for (Iran) to have a nuclear bomb.”
If this is true, Israel has struck a severe blow from which Iran will struggle to recuperate.