Weekly Commentary: After Leak Only Nukes Viable Solution

Dr. Aaron Lerner 17 April 2025

The moment someone leaked to the New York Times that we were planning a commando raid against the Iranian facilities buried deep in mountains that option was off the table.

Until that NYT report, the Iranians may have assumed that the Americans had come up with a novel conventional way to destroy Fordow and Natanz using GBU-57/AB bunker buster bombs or something more advanced,

But now Iran is no doubt launching an intensive upgrade of its arrangements for foiling commando attacks. Such a program could even include collapsing the entrance tunnels with provisions to keep the stranded Iranian staff alive as crews clear out the rubble.

With a conventional solution off the table, we return to the estimates of the effectiveness of a precision double or triple tap of nuclear warheads.

Thanks to their remote isolated locations, nuclear attacks on Fordow and Natanz would not endanger a significant civilian population.

And this would be a very special case. A clear and present danger when no viable conventional alternative exists.

I am extremely pessimistic this option will be chosen.

And its not because Mr. Trump would rather have the Jewish State nuked in the future than take his place in history as the first leader to use a nuke since WWII.

It is because his team, and many others, are convinced that the Iranians really don’t believe in their religion.

They cannot accept that, under velayat-e-fqih (guardianship of the jurist) the religious leadership of Iran could actually direct the military to prepare the ground for the return of the Mahdi via an apocalypse.

After all the crazy things we have seen people do in the name of religion, I fear that the “nukes to prevent regime change” school are making one hell of a bet on our collective future.