In wake of U.S. strikes, Iran faces a pivotal alternative: sprint to construct a weapon or negotiate

Hiding key Iranian nuclear facilities deep under a mountain made them that much harder for U.S. and Israeli weapons to reach.   

It will also make it more difficult to assess just how successful the historic U.S. strikes against them overnight Saturday were and more challenging to predict Iran’s next steps. 

In his statement moments after the U.S. attack by B-2 bombers and their deep-penetrating almost 14 tonne bombs, U.S. President Donald Trump was unequivocal in his claim:    

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” he said.     

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sounded equally conclusive, claiming his promise to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities had been “fulfilled.”

Yet, within hours, Iranian officials were giving Reuters news agency a conflicting account, claiming that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow had been moved elsewhere before the attack.  

Fordow is Iran’s main site for enriching uranium, with some of the stockpile there having been enriched to about 60 per cent in the assessment of the International Atomic Energy Agency, charged with monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities. Ninety percent enrichment is considered weapons capable.

“The degree of damage inside the uranium enrichment halls can’t be determined with certainty,” IAEA director General Grossi said Sunday of the strike on Fordow.

The sprawling Isfahan site, which had already been struck several times since Israel’s strikes began June 13, also suffered “extensive additional damage” in the U.S. operation, the agency said.

The IAEA had reported on Saturday that the facilities at Isfahan bombed by Israel either contained no nuclear material or small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium, an indication that the highly enriched uranium might be stored elsewhere.

‘Extremely severe damage and destruction’

In his morning-after briefing, General Dan Caine, the head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the three targeted sites had sustained “extremely severe damage and destruction,” but he acknowledged a final damage assessment would take some time.

He said the operation was “the largest B-2 operational strike in U.S. history.”

But Daria Dolzikova, with the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based military think tank, said it might not be enough to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.

“The fundamental reality remains that military action alone can only roll back the program by degrees, not eliminate it fully,” she said. 

Given that, Dolzikova says, there are two key questions for both sides to consider: how much damage is enough for the U.S. and Israel to feel they have curtailed Iran’s nuclear program sufficiently; and equally important, what have the strikes done to Iran’s resolve to speed up enrichment and potentially create a nuclear weapon?

“One thing that I’m looking out for … is Iran’s future within the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and whether these strikes actually convince it to potentially pull out of that treaty,” Dolzikova told CBC News in an interview. 

Exiting the NPT would banish IAEA inspectors from Iran and effectively send its nuclear program into the shadows. 

The NPT, which went into effect 55 years ago, is aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons while at the same time allowing countries to build nuclear programs for peaceful purposes.    

Iran is a signatory and as part of the monitoring provisions, its nuclear facilities have been open to the IAEA for inspection. A deal signed in 2015 known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action had also aimed to restrict Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions but fell apart after Trump withdrew the U.S. from it in his first term.

In its latest report on Iran earlier this month, the IAEA said it had no evidence that the regime was trying to build a nuclear weapon but nonetheless declared the country non-compliant for being evasive and failing to account for the whereabouts of all of its supplies of enriched uranium. 

It also said its inspectors had limited access to the Fordow facility and that Iran had previously removed cameras that were part of the monitoring process.

When asked at a news conference Sunday morning in the aftermath of the U.S. attacks if Iran was now going to pull out of the NPT, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqhchi refused to say. 

Sprint for a nuclear weapon?

Robert E. Kelly, an American academic based in Busan, South Korea, who has studied North Korea’s nuclear program, says he fears the U.S. strikes on the Iranian facilities in Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz could spur Iran to build a bomb faster.

“That’s what I’m really worried about, that this is going to deeply incentivize the nuclear hawks in Iran to sprint for a nuclear weapon,” Kelly told CBC News. “[They are going to say], ‘We should have sprinted for a bomb 10 years ago. We should’ve been like North Korea.'” 

North Korea is now believed to have around 50 warheads and has repeatedly used its nuclear capabilities to threaten its neighbours, especially South Korea and Japan.

“The North Korea strategy on nuclearization has been validated by the strike,” Kelly said. “I mean the North Koreans were telling us for 30 years this is exactly why we built nuclear weapons, so you can’t do these kind of big air attacks against us.” 

Notably, the first stop for Iran’s foreign minister Sunday was Moscow for a meeting with Russian officials and President Vladimir Putin. Russia, which has the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear warheads, is a major backer of Iran’s nuclear program.

In an ominous sounding social media post, the country’s former president Dmitri Medvedev said the U.S. attacks will have no lasting impact on Iran’s nuclear ambitions if its leaders choose to pursue a weapon.

“A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads,” he wrote, a move that would be a direct violation of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which Russia is a signatory to.

Israel is not a signatory and does posses its own nuclear weapons although it has never acknowledged that publicly.

Immediate decisions

Warning: This section includes images of people wounded in missile strikes.

Both Iran and Israel will have to make immediate decisions on whether to continue the cycle of strikes and retaliations that have played out since Israel attacked Iran nine days ago. 

Within hours of the U.S. strikes, Iran launched two large salvos of ballistic missiles at targets in Israel, with several impacts in the Tel Aviv area that injured dozens.

There were no immediate indications, however, that any U.S. interests in the region were being targeted. 

“Our forces remain on high alert and are fully postured to respond to any Iranian retaliation or proxy attacks, which would be an incredibly poor choice,” Caine said in his Sunday morning briefing. “We will defend ourselves.”

Iran’s Health Ministry has said more than 400 people have been killed so far in the exchange of missile strikes between Israel and Iran while Israeli authorities say at least 24 have been killed. 

Analysts say the weakened Islamic regime in Tehran faces difficult choices in calibrating its responses so as to not invite further American attacks.   

That could range from Iran doing nothing to turning its large short-range missile arsenal against U.S. military bases or assets in the Persian Gulf.  

Its leadership could also decide to disrupt shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to cripple the global economy or hit out at the energy infrastructure of U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia or the UAE. 

In a series of social media posts, Andreas Krieg of the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, said Iran cannot let the U.S. strikes go without a response at it would signal weakness, which would be unacceptable domestically. 

He says those options include missile and drone attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq but done in such a way as to limit U.S. casualties and keep the potential escalation minimal. Iran’s proxy militias in Lebanon and Yemen, Hezbollah and the Houthis, could also be used to harass U.S. positions. Cyber attacks would be another option, Krieg said. 

War of attrition a risk for Israel

In a briefing Sunday morning, Israeli military officials indicated that as far as they are concerned the U.S. strikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities are far from the end of the war.

“We have more objectives, and we are acting all the time to achieve them,” Brig.-Gen Effie Defrin said in a press conference. “We will continue to act to achieve these objectives.”

But some Israeli analysts say without a clear vision for victory, Netanyahu could be committing Israel to another drawn out conflict that will come at an unacceptable cost to the country.

Israel has been at war with Hamas in Gaza for more than a year and eight months, with Israeli attacks decimating the territory and killing close to 56,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, with no end in sight.

“Netanyahu’s problem is that if Trump does not broaden the operation, and Iran doesn’t agree to comply with the administration’s dictates, Israel could slide into a war of attrition with Iran with the U.S. standing by and refusing Netanyahu’s ambitions to expand the campaign,” said Danny Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. 

“Trump is hoping this attack will push the Iranians back to negotiations and accept U.S. demands.”