Washington DC, June 24, 2025 --  

America's attacks will only boost Iran's commitment to build an atom bomb. 

It took less than a day for America's B-2 bombers to fly halfway around the world and drop bunker busting bombs on Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear sites.  Easy peasy.  This combined with Israeli air strikes on nuclear scientists and support facilities has undoubtedly set back Iran nuclear program.  But for how long?

Let's be clear: Iran still has the capability to build an atom bomb.  Knowledge, once gained, is not easily lost.  Senior scientists and engineers, even dead ones, leave documentation of their work for more junior colleagues.  Every year a new crop of young scientists graduates, and those ahead of them advance their expertise.  Given the will to create a nuclear weapon, it is only a matter of time.

Before the bombings, Western intelligence agencies estimated the time for Iran to assemble a crude atom bomb in terms of weeks or months.  Creating a miniaturized warhead deliverable via missile would take much longer, but a big crude device still allows clandestine delivery via ship, truck or passenger aircraft.

It will be awhile before intelligence agencies can reassess Iran's breakout timeline.  In the best case scenario, Iran will have lost all of its highly enriched uranium and most all of its centrifuges.  Even if starting from zero on uranium, Iran's scientific knowledge technical expertise is far more advanced than it was 20 years ago.  It can build new and better centrifuges and get back to where it was in far less time.  Think years, not decades.

Under less rosy scenarios, especially if Iran managed to squirrel away highly enriched uranium and centrifuges from bombed sites, as it claims,  Iran may again be on the threshold of producing a weapon in a number of months.  Any hidden highly enriched uranium can be quickly and secretly processed to bomb-grade material in any centrifuges not destroyed (or new ones in production nearing completion.) Whether it is a few months or a few years, the end result will be the same: Iran, Israel and America will then be right back to where they were last week, but with less actionable intelligence given the important lessons Iran has learned about secrecy.

It is hard to imagine Iran's theocracy making  deal  now to end its nuclear program.  It did that back in July 2015  with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but Trump pulled America out of the deal, and Iran got bombed anyway.  The only way to end the theocratic regime's drive for a bomb is by ending the regime itself -- in favor of a more trustworthy negotiating partner.   But how?

Its bloody invasion of Iraq soured the American public on Middle Eastern wars, and Trump won the presidency actively campaigning against such adventurism. America will not invade. Israel, by contrast has more motivation. But it is tiny and has no ability to occupy a big country with 10 times its population.  Changing the regime without an invasion requires not only assassination and destabilization (which Israel has already tried), but a whole lot of good fortune that may never arrive.

Remember that Russia attacked Ukraine with the expressed intent of toppling its regime.  But three years of relentless bombing and  a ground invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands has failed to achieve this goal. The very leaders Russia wishes to topple are alive and well and still in power.

By many accounts, the Iranian government faces far more public resentment than the government of Ukraine.  And poor performance in war sometimes leads to domestic unrest -- it toppled the regimes of both Ottoman Turkey and Imperial Russia at the end of World War I. 

But to date, there has been no uprising in Iran. And it remains possible that Iranians will rally behind their government, even if hated by many, because people will naturally resent foreign aggression.  Time will tell.

The problem for Israel and America is that time is not in their side.  There is no doubt that time will allow Iranian nuclear scientists and technicians to rebuild their capacity until the Ayatollahs have the bomb. Next time things come to a head, Iran may have the ability to pop a crude nuke on Tel Aviv or Manhattan.

For Israel and America, it's now regime change or bust.  And that "bust" is the really unpleasant explosive kind accompanied by a mushroom cloud in the sky.

Related Web Columns:

No Turning Back, December 24, 2024

Great Satan No More, June 3, 2014

Fire the Memory Sticks, September 28, 2010

Deal With It, The Inevitibility of a Nuclear Iran, July 20, 2010

Unstoppable Disaster
The Coming Conflict with Iran, December 11, 2007