Last chance to stop Iran’s nuclear push must be taken

Less than 10 days after Israel launched Operation Rising Lion to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program, the Jewish state, the US and the world have arrived at “one of the genuine hinge moments of history”, as Joe Kelly wrote from Washington this week.

White House sources report Donald Trump, who has never wavered in his stance that Tehran cannot be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon, has approved plans to attack Iran. The US is best equipped militarily to do so using its 13,600kg bunker-busting bomb, designed to be carried by a US B-2 stealth bomber, although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the Israel Defence Forces will hit all Iranian nuclear facilities. That, he said, included the heavily fortified uranium-enrichment plant built deep inside a mountain at Fordow, southwest of Tehran.

Mr Trump says he will make a final call about the US attacking Iran within two weeks. Should he fail to do so, the theocratic regime, while much weakened by Israeli strikes that effectively have decapitated the Islamic Republic’s military high command and caused serious damage to its military and nuclear infrastructure, will have a chance to regroup (possibly with Russian support) and limp through the next few months or years, eventually returning to its obsession to gain nuclear weapons.

In pausing his final decision for up to two weeks, Mr Trump has left room for Iran, however unlikely, to return to negotiations about giving up its nuclear program. On Friday, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the coming two weeks would be an opportunity for “de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy”. Most importantly, Senator Wong declared Iran “must come to the table and it must stop any nuclear weapons program”. Mr Trump had given Iran the opportunity to engage in diplomacy, she said, “and they should take it”. Peace cannot exist in a world in which Iran has nuclear weapons, as Mr Trump has said repeatedly and correctly.

That is why it is in US interests to provide Israel with whatever it needs to succeed in its mission, Mike Pompeo, Mr Trump’s former secretary of state, argued in the New York Post this week. “A nuclear Iran would pose a threat to peace everywhere,” Mr Pompeo wrote. “It would enable the regime to effectively hold the world hostage, with the power to disrupt the global economy or coerce other powers into bending to its will. It would insulate the dictatorship from popular pressure for change and allow the mullahs to continue their role as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.”

While a sharp, effective US attack on Fordow and other deeply concealed nuclear facilities is justified, Mr Trump’s reluctance to do so immediately could be influenced by the need to consider potential repercussions for the 40,000 US soldiers, sailors and aircrew stationed across the Middle East, including in Bahrain, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Potential, retaliatory terror attacks on US interests around the world also need to be factored in. Iran, regardless of its pretensions about faith and peace, has no respect for human life in the “Great Satan” (the US), “Little Satan” (Israel) or their allies.

The malevolence of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his extremist theocracy was writ large when an Iranian ballistic missile with a large warhead struck Beersheba’s Soroka hospital in southern Israel, where 700 patients were being treated. About 80 people were injured. It was yet another example of Israel paying a price in blood in pursuit of a noble cause and doing the world’s “dirty work” for “all of us”, as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says.

Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities and enriched uranium supply would not be without risk. As Chris Uhlmann writes today, Mr Trump “faces a diabolic choice” that has no easy answers: “The weight of what happens next now rests on Trump in the two-week window he has taken to assess whether a negotiated settlement has any chance of success.” There is also contradiction at the heart of Mr Trump’s decision, as Kelly notes, that while suggesting Tehran is weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon, the US President has given the regime another 14 days to strike a deal. It is a complicated picture, made more so by the deeply divergent views held by the President’s closest advisers.

Whatever the US decides, it is clear that for Israel, there is no turning back. It is also clear that senior figures in Israeli military and intelligence believe they could seriously degrade the Fordow facility without US help. In addition to the fact millions of lives in the Middle East, Europe and the US itself could be saved by stopping Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power, the world’s fragile geostrategic balance of power should be factored in.

Taking down Iran’s nuclear program, as Mr Pompeo said, would send Iran’s autocratic allies, Russia and China, a strong message. The danger presented by the anti-Western axis, which is growing more powerful, was underlined this week when North Korea sent 6000 construction workers and soldiers to help rebuild Russia’s Kursk region from damage incurred during the Russia-Ukraine war. In 2024, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un finalised a comprehensive strategic partnership with Vladimir Putin that transformed them into military and economic allies. Destroying Iran’s nuclear program would be a significant blow against authoritarian dictatorships and a powerful boost for Israel and the democratic, free world.