by Yonah Jeremy Bob
60% enriched uranium will continue to remain useless for an extensive period of time if Tehran doesn't start to invest billions more into resources.
 |
Iran has finally come out and said it straight to the public: five months after the June war with Israel, its fleet of 20,000 centrifuges, including several hundred advanced centrifuges, remains in ruins.
An Iranian official confirmed publicly on Monday that there is zero uranium enrichment going on in Iran right now.
Lest readers scoff at the comment as a cover-up, this is no cover-up. Israeli intelligence, which incredibly skillfully took apart each aspect of Iran's nuclear program in June, confirms the statement.
There are certainly extensive efforts by Iran to build nuclear facilities and to place them further underground so that a new nuclear program might be built in the future. Israel cannot take its eye off the ball on this issue for even a second.
But the current state of play is that the Islamic Republic has made zero progress toward restoring its enrichment capabilities.
Some of it is that Israel and the US destroyed Tehran's nuclear facilities so thoroughly and left so much rubble on top of them (with many of the facilities being somewhat or deep underground) that Iran decided simply that it would take too long and was not worthwhile to dig through the rubble to rebuild them.
Better to rebuild new facilities even if they may not be operational for a period of years. This means that Iran's 60% enriched uranium is not and will not likely be a danger for the coming year or two, if not longer, as, on its own, it cannot be used for much.
Not only that, but the 60% enriched uranium will continue to remain useless for an extensive period of time if Tehran doesn't start to invest billions more into resources and developments.
This would include a new fleet of centrifuges and a wide variety of weapons development issues, such as explosively driven neutron sources integrated into scaled implosion systems and the construction of special hemispheres to be placed on the top of a nuclear warhead.
Why did Iran come out and make this embarrassing statement publicly now?
Multiple reasons.First, it used to love taking pictures with its centrifuges, which enrich uranium. After five months with zero photos, it has been clear to most that the centrifuge fleet was destroyed, reducing the cost of admitting what is basically known. Second, even though the Islamic Republic is resisting all entreaties to negotiate a new nuclear and ballistic missile limitations deal, it still does not want to face a new Israeli or US attack.
Publicizing some of its known current nuclear obstacles could delay or deter such an attack. Yet the nuclear side of the equation is only one side of the threats posed by Iran, and increasingly, since early 2025, it may only be the secondary threat compared to the ballistic missiles threat.
Just as Iranian public statements and Israeli intelligence have signaled similar understandings of the nuclear program being severely set back, they have mostly concurred that the ballistic missile program is very much alive and expanding again fast.
Recall that one of the multiple reasons that Israel struck in June of this year, and not later, was that the Islamic Republic had reached a new point in terms of capabilities for the pace at which it could produce new ballistic missiles.
If on the eve of the June war, Iran had 2,500 ballistic missiles, Israeli intelligence estimated that this number would more than double to 6,000 sometime in 2026 and that by early 2028 it might top 10,000.
These were numbers which Israeli intelligence feared could overwhelm the IDF's missile defense shield, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei seems to have gone off the deep end since the June war.
Rather than rationally evaluating his options, the Ayatollah Khamenei recognized that Israel overmatches him. He also shifted his focus from fighting the Jewish state to a more manageable mission of competing only against Sunni Arab countries for influence in the region. He is ignoring diplomacy completely and signaling that he wishes to continue the conflict with Israel at all costs.
If Khamenei dropped Israel, a country 1,500 kilometers away, from his list of active enemies and placed it on a list of countries that he may hate, but will not try to confront, he would not need to worry about the possibility of Israeli or US attacks.
Jerusalem has no interest in what course Tehran charts if that course does not threaten Israel.
By building up his ballistic missile supply again to numbers beyond what the country would need defensively against any country it shares a border with, Khamenei is showing that he wants the ability to continue to threaten Israel.
What is utterly disconnected from reality about Khamenei's moves is that his new game plan is to try to rebuild the same radars that Israel's F-35s blew up before, and to try to rebuild the same ballistic missile forces that the air force destroyed before. But this time, without a nuclear weapons program as an additional massive primary target, which Israel's fighter jets would need to contend with.
Put differently, Khamenei is trying the same old plan "minus" which just blew up in his face.
Why is Khamenei taking this irrational pathway?
First, there have always been differences in how Westerners/Israelis view the world and how top Iranian clerics like Khamenei view the world.
Second, Israel killed many of his top generals and advisers who were closest to him.
In addition, though Israel said it was not hunting him, he may have felt personally hunted.
He may be overcome with the need for revenge, have lost the capacity to think clearly, let alone rationally.
What were Egypt and Syria thinking when they provoked or initiated wars with Israel in 1967 and 1973 after getting beaten in 1948 and 1956, and especially in 1973 after getting completely walloped in 1967?
Part of it was a thought that keeping some pressure on Israel could lead to an eventual land-for-peace deal, such as happened between Israel and Egypt with the Camp David Accords.
But part of it was an irrational instinct to restore their sense of honor.
Egypt and Syria did not think they could beat Israel in 1973, and by the end of the war, they had been given a tremendous beating, but they thought they could have a better showing than what had happened in 1967 when Israel surprised their air forces on the ground.
In that sense, they were correct, and many Egyptians believe they regained their honor by routing Israeli forces in the Sinai in the war's early days.
This may be Khamenei's goal, along with some revenge for his close comrades in arms.
But Khamenei would do well to remember the end of the story, in which, by the end of the war, the Egyptian and Syrian armies took as much of a beating, and in some ways more, in 1973 as they did in 1967.
It is possible that Iran may be able to draw some more blood from Israel with a surprise ballistic missile attack in the coming years.
Yet the ultimate price Tehran would pay for such an attack would be far greater than the price it paid this past June.
Yonah Jeremy Bob
Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-874161
No comments:
Post a Comment