US, Israel bombs failed to take the fight out of Iran regime

The thorough drubbing Iran received during the “12-Day War” has imparted no humility or penitence to the radical regime. By Wednesday, Iranian lawmakers had reverted to factory settings, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” as they approved a bill suspending cooperation with U.N. nuclear inspectors. This irrational ferocity bears no relationship to the magnitude of Iran’s defeat, but it does warn that America and Israel have not yet held a final reckoning with Iran.

For 20 years, the Iranian regime has quarreled with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), an international body that provides oversight of the nuclear stockpiles of nations without nuclear weapons under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Their disagreements sharpened over the past year, as the IAEA noticed that Iran had rapidly increased its uranium enrichment, expanding its stockpile by nearly 50% every three months. As of May 31, the Iranian regime had enough enriched uranium for 10 nuclear bombs.

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On June 12, the IAEA officially held Iran in noncompliance with its oversight for the first time. Iran reacted defiantly, revealing that it had secretly built another nuclear enrichment facility and declared its intention to increase its uranium enrichment even further. That night, Israeli airstrikes began. After nine days, Iranian air defenses were non-existent, its retaliatory missile launchers had been severely degraded, and its nuclear weapons program had sustained heavy bombing; American bombers then iced the cake with bunker busters to damage Iran’s subterranean centrifuges.

Throughout all of this, Iran publicly maintains that its nuclear program is entirely peaceful and that it has no intention of building nuclear weapons. But no civilian purpose requires uranium enriched to this level — only needed for making bombs. Thus, the Iranian regime misled the IAEA, expanded its enrichment capacity at great cost, and submitted its country to devastating bombing — all to obtain enriched uranium with no civilian application. All this was allegedly to defend the principle that Iran has a sovereign right to enrich uranium.

But on Wednesday, the Iranian Parliament chanted the quiet part out loud, connecting their mantras, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” with a bill to suspend cooperation with the IAEA. Which is it? Is their nuclear program peaceful? Or does it bring death to their geopolitical adversaries? Both Israel and President Trump correctly deduced the answer.

Of course, the regime’s defiance outruns its power. While “there is much debate about the degree of [damage] — annihilation, total destruction, etc.,” said IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, “everyone agrees … that very considerable damage has been caused.”

Assessments of the destruction wrought by American bunker-busters on Iran’s Fordo enrichment facility are necessarily incomplete because the evidence lies buried under a mountainside crater, where neither Iran nor anyone else has been able to reach it. Regardless, “given the power of these devices and the technical characteristics of a centrifuge, these centrifuges are no longer operational because they are quite precise machines. There must have been significant physical damage,” Grossi concluded.

Israeli officials concurred, “The devastating U.S. strike on Fordow destroyed the site’s critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.” The strikes have “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”

Not only are Iran’s centrifuges damaged and its fission material literally buried under the rubble, but Israel also eliminated Iran’s nuclear scientists, leaving no one to resume work on the nuclear weapons program, even if they had sustained less physical damage.

Thus, with its pursuit of nuclear weapons temporarily stymied, the Iranian regime has fallen back to familiar ground on which it is competent: the repression of the Iranian people. Iran’s internal crackdown began as soon as the bombs started falling, including street checkpoints and widespread arrests. One human rights group has recorded 705 political or security arrests since the beginning of the war, especially in the Kurdish region in Iran’s extreme northwest. Iran has charged many of these prisoners with spying for Israel — although no one knows how accurate those charges may be — and has already carried out several executions.

Meanwhile, Iranian regime figures have declared that their nuclear weapons program will continue. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei declared that the Iranian regime is “determined to preserve” its right to “enjoy nuclear energy … under any circumstances.” “This industry is deeply rooted in our country, and they will not be able to uproot it,” insisted Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi.

The upshot seems to be that the U.S. and Israel have taken the Iranian regime out of the fight, but failed to take the fight out of the Iranian regime. This irrational, extremist government will continue to make itself a thorn in America’s side wherever and whenever they have the opportunity.

“Whether we think Iran has been set back months, or years, or metaphysically forever,” said National Review editor Mark Antonio Wright, “if the ayatollahs decide to return to working on their clandestine nuclear program, it will require Israel and/or the United States to at some point ‘mow the lawn.’”

“The strikes look like they were a success — and the world is better off today than it was two weeks ago, thanks to the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump,” he added. “But the problem of the Iranian nuclear program isn’t over — unless, that is, the Iranians themselves want it to be.”

The point is, Americans should be clear-eyed about what sort of victory Trump won. He did not turn Iran into a friend or an ally, nor remove them from the totalitarian axis of U.S. adversaries that includes Russia, China, and North Korea. These were not the goals because these goals were far too costly to achieve. But the U.S. and Israel did neutralize Iran’s military threat, providing years of peace until the regime is able to rebuild; the final reckoning is not over, but it is long delayed.

Originally published at The Washington Stand.