Underneath the appropriate concern of conventional airborne attacks on Israel by Iran and its progeny lies an anxious appraisal of a potential nuclear attack. That fear is the basic driving force of U.S. policy towards Iran, and the driving force of Israel’s presumed development of their own nuclear weapons development. The prior American administration withdrew from the nuclear arms agreement between the West and Iran but stymied much of Iran’s ongoing efforts with deep economic strangulations that began to bear fruit in civil unrest. Our current administration has resumed giving that Islamic Republic nibbles of the carrot without really requiring any pulling of the cart. Iran’s economy has rebounded, and with a flood of new oil money from China and Russia, civil unrest has subsided. The theocracy even felt comfortable enough to allow a “moderate” to run for President and to be elected, seemingly signaling gentler intentions. Granted, a large part of that economic windfall permitted by the West has funded huge expansions in conventional weapons by Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis (why do they like names beginning with H?). But Israel and its erratic allies seem content to elaborate the Iron Dome and use the occasional flurry of missile and drone attacks to validate their own new weapons systems.
The Houthis’ effective closure of the Suez Canal remains a useful distraction. The West, primarily America, focuses not on elimination of that threat but retaliation for any effective actions by the Houthis, after the fact. After all, we stopped the Saudis from eliminating that potential threat years ago on humanitarian grounds. Now that potential threat has become real.
Also real is the possibility of overwhelming conventional missile, drone, and artillery attack on northern Israel by Hezbollah from their sanctuary in Lebanon. Iran’s Western-enabled watershed of conventional weapons has flooded southern Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of very sophisticated missiles and drones. Truly mass attacks with these weapons would devastate a large part of Israel, much in the same way that North Korea could attack South Korea with its conventional weapons. One very old estimate indicated North Korea could bombard Seoul 24 hours a day for 7 days with continuous artillery and missile fire from virtually untouchable underground bunkers. Hezbollah could overcome their defensive site disabilities with a coordinated massive volume attack. Israel’s vaunted human and signals intelligence, augmented by Western satellite surveillance, might well spot such an attack in the offing. They failed to do so October 7th. But would our current administration support the humanitarian cost of a pre-emptive broad-based strike that would effectively raze southern Lebanon and/or eliminate the country’s feeble infrastructure? How would that play in Michigan, and our college campuses?
Attrition by distraction, from multiple directions, will not be effective in obtaining Iran’s two-part goal. Eradicating Israel from the face of the earth is merely the stepping-stone to a return of Persian hegemony over the Middle East and ultimately the Islamic world. The Iranian theocracy views itself as on a mission of their vision of God. Despite their experience in their prior war with Iraq (no longer real to the vast majority of their much younger population), they are adamant in a need for suicidal expenditures of their population’s true believers beyond even that of the Russians. Iran cloaks its desire for nuclear weaponry in a defensive posture towards Israel’s presumed possession and an aggressive posture of enhancing its stature in the world of nations by intrinsic intimidation. Their real underlying intent may be the kind of wholesale slaughter of an entire people seen repeatedly in the Old Testament by a God angry that the people would not persist in living by his dictates. That God, softened with forgiveness and mercy in the New Testament, was reinvigorated in the required wanton eradication of non-believers beginning in the seventh century. At least in the version of Islam offered by the Iranian theocracy. What could be a better illustration of that new version’s authenticity than a giant, God-like lightening-strike that consumes much of Israel in a maelstrom of fire?
Realizing such a strike, a true ending of Megiddo, requires two main components. First, a deliverable nuclear weapon. Our own Director of National Intelligence reported in July, last month, that Iran is undertaking preparations to produce a nuclear device. Veteran nuclear inspectors at the Institute for Science and International Security find a rapid acceleration of Iran’s preparations for producing a nuclear device over the last two years and especially the last several weeks (emphasis added). We know they have been enlarging their stores of uranium enriched to just below weapons grade, and markedly increasing their capacity for producing more of that and for the final conversion. What’s below the surface, underappreciated by Western intelligence watchdogs, is their successful development of readily produceable delivery systems. All the components of a crude nuclear explosive are probably available and at the ready, as are missiles proven to be capable of reaching anywhere in Israel. The nuclear material is the last, just-in-time component. Actual testing may be moot. Unlike 1945, many countries have extensive information on predecessor nuclear weapons technology, and extraordinary computational capacities to “simulate” the use and success of such a device. At worst, a delivered nuclear weapon whose “trigger” explosives worked even though nuclear fission failed would create a dirty bomb effect devastating any urban Israeli area. If we accept that such a device, successful or not, is now within reach of the Iranian theocracy in a few weeks, what will be the delivery?
Delivery of a nuclear holocaust to the Israelis requires a method and a timing. Given Israel’s superb abilities in screening people and packages coming into and moving about the country, a “suitcase” bomb has a low yield of success. Use of such a device could not be assured to take place at a pre-specified time. Iran’s missile technology is capable of delivering a small nuclear warhead quickly, accurately, and at any time specified. Many of their launch sites for such missiles are either mobile or hardened against attack. But how to get past the Iron Dome?
Iran may be searching for access through the Iron Dome now. Their recent “retaliatory” mass missile and drone attack showed the relative impermeability of Israel’s Iron Dome when combined with the force of arms of several neighboring and allied nations. Iran indirectly notified everyone that the attack was coming. Ostensibly to make a diplomatic “show” of retaliation for domestic and international Islamic consumption, while avoiding igniting immediate war or Israeli return. That is why the U.S. and other countries in the area were prepared to look for, find, and destroy many of the incoming conventional weapons before they reached Israel. Iran gained something other than diplomatic credibility amongst their friends and more direct attention from their adversaries. They saw the actual maximum possible effort not only of Israel but of the local international coalition in countering their attack. They gained direct experience in how well their current technology works against such a network. They learned how large that network’s arsenal might be, and what it is composed of. This may have been a diplomatic tit-for-tat glove-slap; or it may have been a wide-ranging probe of Israel’s defensive capabilities providing information on overcoming those defenses. If so, the next such attack, again with massive numbers of airborne weapons, should be unannounced. That will allow a more realistic estimation of how to overcome it. But again, it will be broad-based, with no obvious specific targets to avoid telegraphing intentions. An additional scenario calls for several such attacks, with at least one in at least two waves, perhaps accompanied by simultaneous attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. This would illustrate how quickly the Israelis can “reload”, and how successfully larger Iranian missiles can hide in the swarm. True, the Iranians may exhaust their supplies of such missiles and drones before the Israelis spend all their defensive weaponry. Provided the U.S. continues its resupply efforts despite its own difficulties in producing enough weaponry for Ukraine. That latter consideration points out an important possible factor in timing of further attacks leading up to the intended finality.
Iran knows that our current administration is its best reluctant ally. Biden relaxed the stranglehold on the Iranian economy, loosened all sanctions, and allowed return of international oil sales without any resumption of nuclear accountability. The U.S. posture seems to be, “if you build a profitable peace, Iran will come”. They are not playing ball. But indicate they might be draftable. Our diplomacy remains based in hope. Iran also knows a return of a Trump administration will be a formidable obstacle. Not only because of adverse American actions such as those in the past, but also because of actual unpredictability of those actions. So, Iran has begun actively hacking and sabotaging the Trump campaign. Further action against that campaign or the candidate, perhaps by elements of the American pro-Palestinian movement, will reveal their intent based in their worry. Should Trump’s re-election seem a likelihood, their timeline may be accelerated. Should the current tide flow continue in Harris’ direction, Iran gains time useful for further probing and planning. An optimum time for a final nuclear option might well be very early in a Harris administration, before the new President and her team have gotten their feet in the mud and their hands out of joy. Should Iran be successful in methodically mapping and penetrating the Iron Dome, what would be a singular important target?
Iran might decide to produce only one, or a very few, nuclear devices. The more, the more difficult, and the more likely to be detected. A target for such a device, camouflaged aboard one of their routine conventional missiles, would best be an urban center important for its population and its economic contributions. Governments often speak of decapitating their enemies, but in modern warfare seem never to seek doing so. Perhaps to avoid inviting return decapitation. Therefore, Tel Aviv seems lower down the selection list. Jerusalem is off-limits for obvious reasons being the central site for all three Abrahamic world religions. An additional concern is the area to be affected, and how it is to be affected, and whether any friendly sites might be damaged. Someplace more central to the length of Israel seems appropriate. This minimizes any encroachment on Gaza or southern Lebanon and leaves those areas free for follow-up conventional attacks in the immediate post-nuclear confusion.
In my distant past as a high school student in ROTC, I engaged in a dense course on the planning and objective effects of nuclear explosions. We studied the publicly known characteristics of Soviet devices and used clear acetate overlays on Ordnance maps of metropolitan U.S. areas to calculate what the best method would be for a 25-megaton warhead. One of many useless factoids I’ve retained over the decades is my accepted estimate of using such a device over Los Angeles with an airburst at 1400 feet to maximize the area of death and damage. That area of southern California would have been scoured “clean” with nuclear dirt lasting centuries. More than half a century later, I am gripped by the horror of knowing that nuclear weapons are now much more effective. But a slap-dash Iranian device would be far more limited in size and effect. Which of Israel’s beloved assets would be most vulnerable?
Haifa. Israel’s third largest city, central to the third most populated district in Israel, a seacoast port of great economic importance to Israel. Somewhat northern but still well away from Hezbollah’s haven and remote from Gaza and from Jerusalem. Its coastal location offers the additional useful option of onshore winds at the appropriate time of day to spread fallout inland through central Israel. Such a corridor of nuclear fallout might cut the country in two. Perhaps the sea of Galilee might be permanently contaminated. Those in the West Bank, not as valuable as the armed active terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, will accept the necessity of some martyrdom to assure victory over their hated Jewish enemies.
If events follow some variation of my nightmare, hopefully some government will have the brutal fortitude to intervene in Iran before the fact. Given our nation’s ongoing ambivalence towards Israel and Jews, that final redoubt against another holocaust may act alone. And then will arise the more complex conundrum—how will the broader Islamic world react to a definitive solitary attack on the Iranian theocracy and its nuclear capacities by Israel? Or will mushrooms bloom in Haifa?