Update: Israel Launches Air Attacks on Iran

Rumors of war, once again fueled by questionable intelligence, are roiling the Middle East.

JERUSALEM (AP) 8 pm EDT Thursday — Israel attacked Iran’s capital early Friday, with explosions booming across Tehran as Israel said it targeted nuclear and military sites.

Earlier today, SpyTalk reported:

More than two decades after the United States invaded Iraq on the basis of phony evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the growing prospect of another war, this time pitting the U.S., Israel, or both, against Iran over its nuclear program, hovers like a ghost over Washington’s calculations in the Middle East.

On Wednesday,  the spectre of a new conflict appeared when the British Navy warned commercial shipping of “increased tensions” in the waters in and around the Persian Gulf that “could lead to an escalation of military activity.”  That quickly prompted the State Department to authorize the evacuation of all nonessential personnel and their dependents from the U.S. embassies in Baghdad, Kuwait and Bahrain. 

These precautionary moves come amid unrelenting pressure on President Trump by GOP hardliners to abandon his diplomatic effort to end Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and give Israel the green light to attack Iran’s  nuclear facilities. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long wanted to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, which his country views as an existential threat. As the Obama administration negotiated what became the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli air force to conduct long-range exercises over the Mediterranean Sea that matched the 1,074-mile distance between Israel and Iran to demonstrate its readiness to attack. Israel conducted similar exercises recently.  Israeli officials have told the Trump administration that Israel is fully ready to launch an operation into Iran, CBS News reported Thursday.

“One way or the other, Iran will not have nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said last April in a speech.

Iran has warned it would retaliate for such an attack with missile barrages targeting not only Israel but also U.S. military facilities in the region. 

“All of [America’s] bases are within our reach,” Iranian Defense Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirizadeah said Wednesday, according to Reuters. “We have access to them, and we will target all of them in the host countries without hesitation.” 

The question at the center of these tensions is the exact status of Iran’s nuclear program. Just how close is the Islamic Republic to developing a nuclear weapon and what are its intentions?

Iran has repeatedly insisted it has no interest in developing nuclear weapons, citing its status as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But on Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, declared Iran was in breach of non-proliferation obligations. 

In an angry response, Tehran announced it was opening a new uranium enrichment center and equipping it with advanced centrifuges — an escalation that was almost certain to complicate nuclear talks—and perhaps even invite an attack—with the United States set to resume this weekend in Oman.

Last month, the IAEA issued a damning quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program, which was summarized and analyzed by nuclear experts at the Institute for Science and International Security , an independent Washington-based research institute. 

According to the Institute’s  analysis of the IAEA’s findings, Iran has amassed a large stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium, which can be converted into 233 kilograms (514 lbs) of 90 percent enriched weapons-grade uranium (WGU) in three weeks. Its experts said this is enough WGU to build nine nuclear weapons,  using 25 kilograms of WGU per weapon. 

Iran could produce its first 25 kilograms of WGU in as little as two to three days, these experts say, lending credence to the GOP hardliners who claim that Iran is just days away from building a nuclear device.  

The analysis goes on to say that Iran’s two major uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow and Natanz could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for 11 nuclear weapons in the first month, enough for 15 nuclear weapons by the end of the second month, 19 by the end of the third month, 21 by the end of the fourth month and 22 by the end of the fifth month.

“Iran has no civilian use or justification for its production of 60 percent enriched uranium, particularly at the level of hundreds of kilograms,” the Institute’s analysis says. “Its rush to make much more, quickly depleting its stock of near 20 percent enriched uranium, which has a civilian use in research reactors, raises more questions. Even if one believed the production of 60 percent is to create bargaining leverage in a nuclear negotiation, Iran has gone way beyond what would be needed. One has to conclude that Iran’s real intent is to be prepared to produce large quantities of WGU as quickly as possible.”

For now, such calculations are purely theoretical. According to U.S. intelligence,  Iran has not made the strategic decision to build a nuclear weapon, and despite the IAEA’s censure, it still remains a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. And even in the event that Tehran’s leaders decide to go nuclear, U.S. intelligence officials maintain Iran’s nuclear scientists would then need at least a year to miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit atop a ballistic missile. 

But a new claim by an exiled Iranian opposition group, plus a disturbing forecast for Iran’s long-range missile development, could begin to erode that consensus.

Iranian missiles (Press TV)

Hazy Alarms

On Thursday, Fox News reported that the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an organization of Iranian exiles based in France and Albania dedicated to the overthrow of the clerical regime in Tehran, claimed that Iran has had a secret project to develop a nuclear weapon since 2009. Named the Kvir plan, the NCRI alleged the project was launched under direct orders from Supreme Leader Khamenei and has operated ever since under the guise of shell commercial projects that focus on satellite-launching missiles. Over the past few years, these projects have managed to increase the range of those missiles which would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, the report said. . 

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the NCRI claim.  A recent Defense Intelligence Agency graphic illustrating Trump’s proposed space-based “Golden Dome” missile defense system said that by 2035, Iran will have an estimated 60 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting every corner of the United States.

Arguments against any U.S. or Israeli military action are led by no less than Trump and his top aides, including Vice President J.D. Vance, who are urging the president to stay his diplomatic course.  But Trump, who ran for a second term on a promise to end U.S. wars in the Middle East, now appears pessimistic that a deal can be reached. After five rounds of negotiations, he complained this week that the Iranians continue to insist on their right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, a demand that both he and the Israelis firmly reject. 

“They do not want to give up what they have to give up — you know what that is: They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We want just the opposite. And so far they are not there. I hate to say that because the alternative is a very, very dire one.” 

White House officials say the sixth round of talks is now in doubt. Moreover, the  two-month deadline for the nuclear negotiations that Trump set forth in a formal letter he sent to Khamenei at the end of March is fast approaching. In that letter, Trump warned that if a deal wasn’t reached within that time frame,  he would take decisive measures to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, according to officials familiar with the letter. Those measures, the officials said, could include a further tightening of economic sanctions, allowing Israel to attack Iran, coordinating a joint U.S.-Israeli attack, or attacking Iran unilaterally. 

But right now, the military option is garnering the most attention. Earlier this week, Gen. Michael Kurilla, the top U.S. military officer for the Middle East, told the House Armed Services  Committee that he had provided Trump and defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with “a wide range of options” employing overwhelming military force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. 

Yet despite Trump’s growing pessimism over the prospect of a nuclear deal with Iran, he doesn’t appear ready to abandon the negotiations. In a tense 40-minute phone call with Netanyahu on Monday, Trump ruled out any U.S. attack on Iran until he determines that the nuclear talks have failed, according to Israel’s Channel 12 and the Kan public broadcast station, which quoted two sources familiar with the conversation. The sources also said Trump did not provide Netanyahu with a clear answer on whether he would agree to an Israeli strike against Iran or participate in such an attack. 

That has left some observers wondering what’s really behind the evacuation of nonessential U.S. diplomatic personnel and their dependents from Iraq, Kuwait. Could it be just psychological warfare?

Mark Dubowitz, the hardline CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, a pro-Israel Washington-based think tank, offered one possible answer on X.

“Israel is fully ready to launch an operation into Iran’ doesn’t mean it’s about to,” he tweeted. “It could mean the U.S. and Israel are coordinating a pressure campaign to force Khamenei to compromise — or face consequences. (open quotes) 

“Diplomacy with teeth,” he called it.