Will historians look back at the end of 2024, with Iran defenseless against an American and Israeli attack, as the great missed opportunity to have stopped a nuclear Iran?
Iran paid a heavy price for initiating two massive ballistic strikes against Israel in April and October; however, their nuclear program was never targeted and has progressed unscathed despite pushing past one nuclear redline after another.
Logically, Iran should be rushing over the next two months of Biden’s term to advance its nuclear weaponization program, including computer modeling, the development of neutron initiators and the conversion of uranium gas to metal for an atomic bomb.
President Joe Biden wants to leave office with the window-dressing victory of a weak ceasefire with Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon and wouldn’t like—no matter how much Iran escalates its weaponization program in the next eight weeks—to do anything to upset that legacy applecart.
Weaponization, unlike enrichment and ballistic missiles, is easy to hide, especially in a country as large as Iran. Knowing President-elect Donald Trump wants to avoid any kinetic actions in the Middle East, the remainder of Biden’s lame-duck term is a golden opportunity for Iran to accelerate its nuclear program and come within a razor edge of a nuclear bomb.
Having already enriched enough uranium for many atomic bombs and possessing the ballistic missiles to hit anywhere in Israel, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC’s message to America, the Arab world and the Jewish state is that we can have many atomic weapons whenever we want, in short order.
Hundreds of ballistic missiles can overwhelm defensive systems like the Thadd, Arrow, Patriot and David’s Sling. If just 5% carried nuclear weapons, in the case of Israel, that would be game over. Does anyone think the world would do anything more than worthless verbal censures on Iran for a nuclear attack on Israel?
This brings us to today, with less than eight weeks until Trump is inaugurated as president. The Trump team is expected to be laser-focused on its ambitious domestic agenda. Any foreign diversion would be a significant distraction to overhauling the American economy and government. It’s one thing for Trump to target the Iranian terrorist mastermind Qassem Suleimani for killing U.S. soldiers; it’s another to go to war to stop Iran from becoming a threshold nuclear state.
Iran is smart; it will likely not cross the red line now with a nuclear detonation. However, they will signal to the world that it is days away from an actual nuclear weapon, and for America wanting to avoid another Middle East entanglement, the fact Iran has not turned the final screw of an active atomic device will likely be good enough for the United States to do effectively nothing.
If the new administration engages in talks, crafty Iranian negotiators will likely negotiate down tough sanctions reimposed on Iran’s economy. However, Iran will negotiate from a new position of strength with significant leverage, as it will be closer to a threshold nuclear state.
This brings us back to now, when the Islamic Republic of Iran is defenseless to missile strikes on its nuclear program. Within a year or two, Iran will rebuild its anti-missile system, perhaps convincing its Russian ally to share the more advanced S-400 anti-missile system, which would be a more significant challenge for Israel’s F-35 stealth jets.
If Iran inches its way to the nuclear rubicon, the only way out will be regime change, with the hope that the next regime will be more willing to have a peaceful civilian nuclear program. Is that a plan, or is that a prayer?
Suppose the Trump administration decides that regime change is American policy. In that case, the best way to achieve regional stability and advance American interests is to prioritize a comprehensive transformation plan based on reimposing, increasing and enforcing consequences on those nations that breach U.S. sanctions. That is a reasonable approach to begin with, assuming the Supreme Leader and IRGC are convinced that America would be willing to use military force if Iran races towards a bomb.
Iran likely plans to bide its time, hoping the Trump administration’s rhetoric doesn’t lead to kinetic actions. That will mean a return in 2025 of Israel’s shadow wars, with Iranian proxies being rearmed and the Islamic Republic choosing soft Jewish and Israeli targets that it believes will not merit an Israeli response on Iranian soil.
Sadly, we have seen this movie before, with the goal of the proverbial “kicking the can down the road,” “mowing the grass,” and hoping that this third Lebanon war will give Israel 17 years of relative quiet on its northern border, as it received after the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
