US-Israel War on Iran
Prabir Purkayastha
IF Israel-Iran ceasefire holds and the US President Trump, after his attack on Iran’s nuclear installations, decides that enough is enough, we might just see a glimmer of hope in the Israel-Iran war. The genocide in Gaza though continues, with its two million Palestinians offered only the choice of a quick death at the hands of Israeli forces, or a slow death by starvation. The Gaza holocaust is live on our screens every day. Israel feels secure that the West – the ex-colonial European and settler colonial states in North America – will protect them from any consequences of this genocide.
Even in this dark hour, I will like to believe in the positives. Israel might have bloodied Iran, killed many of their top military and scientific figures, destroyed some of their nuclear facilities and their missile launchers. But even on the 12th day of the war, Iran’s capacity to hit Israel’s cities, infrastructure – both military and strategic – was enough for its leadership to accept Trump’s truce. There were also reports from Western sources that Israel was running out of anti-missiles and the US was in no position to replenish its stocks in view of a possible Iran attack on its own bases and the continuing war against Russia in Ukraine.
It was clear from the beginning that while Israel could demolish most of the nuclear facilities in Iran, the Fordow plant which has been built in the depths of a mountain will require US help. Only the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) of 13,605 Kg could go down to the depth required to destroy Fordow’s Uranium Enrichment Plant. And only the US B2 bombers could carry these bombs. Clearly, Israel had foreseen that US help would be necessary if they had to accomplish destroying Fordow. It is possible that this was a plan hatched with the Trump administration right from the beginning, in which the US-Iran talks was a camouflage for the Israel’s attack on Iran. The only question that remains is, how serious is Trump now for stopping the war and genuinely discuss peace with Iran.
I am not addressing the other question that has come up. There is a possibility that the MOP bunker busters failed as Fordow was dug in too deep. The US intelligence, as per US media, is that the Iranian nuclear programme has had a setback of only a few months. Experts even before the strikes said that Fordow and Natanz’s new facilities are dug in too deep and with special roof reinforcements for even the US MOPs. Even if the Iranian plants in Fordow and Natanz have been demolished, the Iranians had taken out the fissile material and have the ability to build at least about 9-10 bombs. The question has always been – does Iran want to build nuclear weapons? Or was it a bargaining position to extract a peace treaty for itself and its role as a major West Asian country and economy? A question that the Trump administration will need to address. This war has shown that Israel without US help cannot subdue Iran. And if the US steps into this war, its bases in the region are also vulnerable.
Apart from its ships, the US maintains military presence in at least 19 sites and has about 40,000-50,000 military personnel in West Asia. Even the US, which did enter the 12-day war briefly, kept its “intervention” limited to only a few nuclear facilities. Unlike George Bush in the Iraq War, Trump was careful to call the US attack on nuclear facilities in Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz a limited strike and then quickly called for a ceasefire. Just as the US military bases in West Asia gives it the power to intervene militarily in the region, these are also vulnerable to missile attacks. After General Soleimani was assassinated, Iran had launched missile attacks on the US bases in the region after giving US advance notice. Though all the US personnel were therefore in bunkers, still about 50 US soldiers had to be treated for traumatic brain injury after Iran’s missile attacks.
Before we do some stock taking on the war, let us look at the basic questions being raised. Israel, backed by G7 and NATO countries, is arguing Iran has violated the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and therefore the need for the US and Israel to take out Iran’s nuclear and other infrastructure is “legitimate”. These are lies. NPT does not bar enrichment, but only in building nuclear weapons. Incidentally, Israel has not signed the NPT and has a stock of 90-200 nuclear weapons.
IAEA Chief Grossi said to Al Jazeera and to CNN that there is no evidence Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Given that IAEA works closely with the nuclear powers, Grossi’s argument that Iran should have shared more information with IAEA leaves it open to think that if Iran had done so, this information would have ended up with Israel’s targeting of Iran’s nuclear programme. Yes, Iran did enrich uranium to 60 per cent level from which 90 per cent enrichment is a few weeks work. But this is only the necessary fissile material. To build a bomb, Iran would need many more steps including testing a prototype to see that all the parts function as designed. Experts and Western officials say it could take months to more than a year to build a nuclear weapon. All of this would also need Ayatollah Khameini to lift his religious bar against nuclear weapons which he has not done.
Netanyahu has been propagating that Iran is only a short time away from a bomb for more than 30 years. We still remember the cartoon graphic he presented in the UN in 2012 that Iran was only a few months away from the bomb. That time gap is still the Israeli claim and lies behind its attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a claim that Trump has bought into. The problem for all those including Trump who want the US to “take out” Iran’s bomb making capacity is, that is exactly the purpose of JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ) from which Trump walked out in 2018! After various sanctions and Israel-US attacks on its nuclear capacity, why should Iran walk back into a revised version of JCPOA? Or make more of its facilities open to IAEA which then can be mapped for future strikes? The question also is why should the US and the major European powers agree that nuclear weapons for Israel is to be welcomed but not for any other country in West Asia.
Let us take a quick look at Israel’s nuclear weapons. It has the Dimona nuclear reactor, built with US help. According to estimates, Israel’s arsenal is believed to include 100-150 warheads additional stock of plutonium for building 2-3 times as many warheads to their existing stock. For the West, it is entirely legitimate for Israel to not sign the NPT, build as many warheads it wants. It is well-known that France and US helped Israel build its bombs, a secret that became public when Mordecai Vanunu gave a set of photographs and documents to Sunday Times. He paid a huge price for this, spending 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement. It is not surprising that the countries who were complicit in Israel building nuclear weapons, have been the most vociferous in proclaiming that Iran should not only not have nuclear weapons but that its nuclear infrastructure needs to be completely destroyed.
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