E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

How close was Iran to the bomb, and how far has Israel pushed it back?
[IsraelTimes] The more we learn, the clearer it becomes that Israel struck in the nick of time: Iran was very close to the bomb. Its ballistic missiles were becoming a dire threat. And then there’s that derided ‘Destruction of Israel Plan’

A version of this Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

How close was Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate Jews Zionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
to the bomb, and how far has Israel now pushed it off?

Rafael Grossi, the head of the UN’s nuclear weapons watchdog, the ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency, warned a few weeks ago that "they’re not far off," and also cautioned that Tehran’s obstruction of his agency’s inspectors has meant that the IAEA has not been able to keep track of recent progress by the regime on the various aspects of its program.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was still more dramatic, characterizing Israel’s resort to force on Friday as preemptive action against an imminent "existential" threat. In a video address at the start of the campaign, Netanyahu said Iran had stockpiled enough uranium to build nine bombs, had taken unprecedented steps in recent months to weaponize that enriched uranium, and could get to the bomb "in a very short time — it could be a year, or it could be a few months." (The IDF at the launch of the attacks said Iran could enrich enough uranium to weapons-grade level for 15 bombs "within days," and did not specify how long it would take the regime to complete its nuclear weapons project.)

By contrast, CNN
...formerly the Cable News Network, now who know what it might stand for...
 on Tuesday cited a host of American sources assessing that Iran was "up to three years away" from being able to build, deliver and detonate a bomb and asserting that it was not even "actively pursuing" one — an implausible claim, not least in light of the regime’s documented production of increased quantities of near-weapons-grade uranium with no civilian application.

As far as I have been able to determine from interactions with several sources familiar with the matter, Israel’s intelligence assessments are that Iran was very close indeed to attaining nuclear weapons — as in, building and delivering a working bomb. Closer, that is, even than Netanyahu’s public estimate.

The Iranians have the enriched uranium, produced at their now largely destroyed main enrichment facility at Natanz. It has likely been stockpiled at the Isfahan site, also targeted by the IAF. In 2023, the IAEA reported evidence of uranium enriched further, to 83.7 percent purity, just short of weapons-grade, by the advanced centrifuges at the relatively invulnerable Fordo facility.

Critically, too, they have developed the highly complex nuclear detonator — the engineering device that causes the nuclear explosion of the bomb’s uranium core. And they have long had the missile capacity to deliver such a device.

Putting all the required components together, should Iran have chosen to do so, I was given to understand, was a matter of no more than two months, and possibly as little as a week.

Or, rather, it would have been — before Israel launched its attacks.

Why is that no longer the case, given that the 60%-enriched uranium would be headed to the thus-far impregnable Fordo, and given that Iran has the knowledge — which cannot be destroyed in aerial attacks — to complete its program?

Well, for one thing, Israel believes that its raids are relentlessly destroying the knowledge.

At a presser on Monday evening, Netanyahu said Israel had killed 10 of Iran’s senior nuclear scientists and would soon reach several more. (Indeed, that number is now understood to have risen to 14.) These scientists, I was told, are the elite of the nuclear weapons program, the small group of experts with the knowledge and experience to bring Iran’s nuclear weapons drive to fruition. They can be replaced, of course, but their successors are less adept.

Additionally, having raided Iran’s nuclear weapons program archive in Tehran in 2018, in one of the most daring operations in Mosssd
...sees all, knows all, gets 'em all in the end...
 history, and brought home vast quantities of material in a convoy of trucks, Israel in a barely reported air assault this week blew up all manner of documentation and other materials relating to the project, including the archive’s computer backups.

What Israel believes it is managing to do, in other words, is set back the program by eliminating its key personnel, and depriving their successors of the institutional memory to efficiently and rapidly revive the program.

Physically tackling the centerpiece Fordo facility would plainly be more straightforward were President Donald Trump
...Never got invited to a P.Diddy party...
 to bring the United States into the conflict and order B-2 bombers to drop a series of the ultimate bunker-busting "Massive Ordnance Penetrators," the GBU-57," consecutively through a hole into the site, built into a mountain, until it was destroyed — a potential scenario sketched out by the New York Times

...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
 on Tuesday.

Trump "will decide on what is good for America," said Netanyahu on Monday. "We will accept any assistance."

But Israel does not believe Fordo is impenetrable. "We are continuing to destroy nuclear targets systematically," said Netanyahu. Others in the know suggest cryptically that there is more than one way to breach even the most inaccessible and fortified targets.

A central characteristic of Israel’s attacks on Iran since Friday is the intelligence material that has enabled them. Israel achieved air control through western Iran to Tehran, took out all air defenses en route, destroyed vast numbers of missile factories and launchers, is battering nuclear sites, and has eliminated those nuclear scientists and the regime’s key military chiefs, and their deputies and their successors, in pinpoint strikes.

I wrote on Friday that "The assessment in the security establishment is that this was the right and necessary moment to strike — before Iran has rebuilt defenses destroyed in Israel’s far less dramatic attack last October, and at a time when intel on the Iranian [nuclear] program is regarded as particularly strong."

The concern in the security establishment is that its intelligence on the regime’s nuclear program would not have been "particularly strong" for very much longer — another indication that the ayatollahs’ push for the bomb was entering its final phase.

All the signs are that Israel is responding just in time, and moving to separate an ideologically and territorially rapacious regime from the weaponry with which it intended to pursue the destruction of Israel and hegemony in this region and beyond.

REGIME CHANGE: ’WE’LL BE VERY HAPPY’
Regime change is not a formal Israeli government goal of the war itself, but there can be no doubt that it is a desired result.

From the start of the attacks, Netanyahu has declared to the Iranian people that their "liberation from tyranny is closer than ever," and IAF strikes on symbols of the regime, notably including its state media facilities, are overtly intended to weaken its hold on the public. In an interview on Tuesday with his favorite Hebrew TV outlet, Channel 14, Netanyahu asserted that 80 percent of Iranians "hate" their rulers.

As is frequently the case, National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi has been among the most revelatory government officials on this issue.

Bringing down the regime is "certainly not a defined goal of the operation," he said in a Channel 12 interview on Tuesday night, "because we know that the only people who can bring down the Iranian regime are the Iranians."

"But we’ll be very happy if, as the very important, consequential result" of Israel’s attacks on this "extremist leadership," it suffers the same fate as other such regimes, Hanegbi went on, referring in particular to the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria.

"Not only would we not be sorry, it would be the best thing that could happen for the world, for the region and certainly for Israel," he said. "Do we have the means to carry this out ourselves? Absolutely not. Will what we are doing today lead to this kind of result? There are those who believe so."

ASYMMETRY
A wise man pointed this out to me, and I am happy to share it: "In the coverage of the conflict between Israel and Iran, we need to really emphasize the asymmetry between the interests of the two states: Iran would like to destroy Israel and Israel... would like not to be destroyed by Iran. This is not a situation where evenhandedness is appropriate."

HOW MANY ARROWS?
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday morning that the IDF is "running low" on Arrow missile interceptors. The IDF responded to the report with a bland statement that it was "ready to handle any scenario" but does not comment on "matters related to munitions."

It seems highly improbable that the IDF, having directly planned this operation for many months and worked on it more broadly for years, would have gone to war with insufficient supplies of its prime missile defense interceptors.

The IDF had anticipated that Iran would fire 600 ballistic missiles in its initial response to Israel’s strikes early on Friday. In fact, Iran fired none at all in those opening hours. To date, it has fired some 400, and is believed to have some 1,800 left.

’THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL PLAN’
The stunning early success of Israel’s assault on Iran’s nuclear and military capacities and personnel has refocused Israeli anguish on the failures of October 7, 2023. As was the case when Israel detonated thousands of explosive-laced pagers on their Hezbollah owners in September, we agonize anew at the unfathomable, willful blindness of the political, military and intelligence echelons that left Israel wide open to the monstrous mass-murdering Hamas
..the braying voice of Islamic Resistance®,...
 and that still sees 53 hostages held in Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
, 20 of them believed to be alive.

By the same token, however, it is worth pausing to internalize what might have become of Israel had Hamas fully coordinated its invasion with its then-far more potent fellow proxy Hezbollah, and with their Iranian sponsor.

A scenario in which not only was Hamas leading thousands of snuffies through the useless border fence under cover of heavy rocket fire, but Hezbollah was also attacking full force in the north, and Iran was firing hundreds of ballistic missiles all across Israel, is too terrible for words.

The likelihood of any such coordinated attack taking Israel by complete surprise would have receded the more widely it was discussed and planned, with Israeli intel presumably far more likely to have realized what was about to unfold and the political and military leadership able to prepare in time.

But it is important to highlight that the four designated goals of this attack on Iran, as approved by the security cabinet and revealed by Hanegbi on Friday, include attacking Iran’s capacity to destroy Israel via a multifront ground invasion.

Hanegbi stressed that while some may deride this ambition, the Iranian leadership continues to believe it is absolutely feasible.

Similarly, the IDF on Friday issued a statement specifying that its Intelligence Directorate "has collected and analyzed vast quantities of intelligence materials that reveal the regime has a concrete plan to destroy the State of Israel, which they call ’The Destruction of Israel Plan.’"

And it put out video material to underline the point.

"In parallel to the efforts of the Iranian regime to obtain nuclear weapons, the regime has focused on manufacturing tens of thousands of missiles and UAVs, and is advancing plans for a combined ground offensive against Israel on multiple fronts simultaneously," the IDF said, in a bombshell statement that was barely reported in the fast-moving early hours of the Israeli operation.

"Materials collected during the war show the coordination between the Iranian regime and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, including after the October 7th Massacre, which demonstrates how the regime plans to re-arm the terrorist organizations," it added.

Military sources have elaborated that Iran’s ground invasion plan involves undermining the regimes in Egypt and Jordan, to enable a coordinated attack across every frontier. In recent days, again barely noticed, the IDF has announced that it is bolstering deployments on the Jordan border and in the north.

Via its nuclear program, with its ballistic missile development, and with an intended multifront ground offensive, Iran’s ayatollahs were confident they were on the way to wiping Israel out. In initiating a preemptive campaign to stop them, the IDF Spokesman said on Friday, "the State of Israel was left with no choice."
Posted by: trailing wife 2025-06-19
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=766741