John Jefferson
Back in September, Israel successfully destroyed a bunker buried 60 feet underground, killing virtually all of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. Executing the operation involved about a dozen F-15s, each carrying six 2000-pound GBU-31v(3) joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) bunker-buster bombs. First the residential high rises over the underground bunker were systematically destroyed. Then a brilliantly planned operation was executed, involving dropping dozens of bunker-busters in a precisely timed pattern that eventually blasted through 20 yards of soil and rock to destroy the bunker. Only a few militaries in the world could have executed such an intricate and complex operation.
The point of the above description is not to praise Israeli military competence, but to show just how hard it is to destroy a bunker. This sheds concerning light on analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security that finds that two of Iran’s most important nuclear weapons facilities buried under at least 80 to 145 meters of rock (262 to 475 feet), with further protection from reinforced concrete that is very resistant to penetration and the ground shockwave produced by a bunker buster’s explosives. This makes taking them out problematic; the world’s most powerful conventional bunker buster, the United States’ 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker buster can penetrate only about 40 meters of moderately hard rock.
Still, multiple precision strikes by massive ordnance penetrators delivered by our B-2 stealth bombers could almost certainly severely damage or destroy Iran’s less deeply buried facilities. Even the more deeply buried facilities could be crippled by collapsing their entrances, although such facilities almost certainly have backup entrances that would allow them to continue with some level of function.
But even if our B-2s can evade Iran’s Russia-supplied anti-stealth radars and deliver enough GBU-57s to damage or destroy all the known facilities involved with nuclear weapons production and delivery, we still don’t really, truly know how much weapons-grade enriched uranium or plutonium—which can be quickly made into implosion-type fission bombs—the Islamic Republic has been able to acquire and hide away in secret locations.
This all adds up to great uncertainty around the idea that simply applying American airpower can stop Iran from getting the bomb. If not airpower, then what?
Well, there is always diplomacy. But given that Iran’s primary leader, the Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is filled with ideological zeal and hostility towards the West, it is hard to imagine a deal in which Iran would give up having nuclear weapons in its back pocket as the ultimate deterrent to being held accountable for being the world’s number one sponsor of terror.
This would seem to direct us to an unpleasant option—invasion and the defeat of Iran’s military, followed by scouring the country to remove every bit of equipment and material related to nuclear weapons production. Subsequent to the conquest, an agreement could be put in place that would set limits on Iran’s military, prohibit nuclear weapon development, mandate unrestricted inspection of nuclear power plants, and forbid the Iranian government from sponsoring terrorism under threat of immediate and overwhelming military force.
This rosy scenario may sound great, but talking about invading a heavily armed country with a population of 91 million that encompasses 636,000 square miles is much, much easier than executing such an invasion. Some analysts believe it would take 1.6 million troops and countless thousands of casualties to defeat and occupy Iran. Others note that Iran is one of the world leaders in producing the kind of drones that have proven so deadly in Ukraine and that the country has both ballistic and cruise missiles that pose a much greater threat to U.S. warships than even those successfully used by the Houthis to date.
One could look back at all the dire predictions of mass casualties that U.S. and coalition forces were predicted to incur prior to both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those never occurred, and it might be tempting to think that current dire predictions about taking on Iran are similarly flawed.
Yet there are some important differences between today and the early 90s and early 2000s. First, our depleted, DEI-weakened military is not nearly so powerful as it was heading into those conflicts. Second, putting together a coalition like we had back then is highly unlikely. Third, Iran’s large military is more technically sophisticated than Iraq’s ever was. Fourth, because we are waging a dangerous proxy war with Russia that has been responsible for killing many thousands of Russia’s young men, it would be foolish not to expect Russia to lend its considerable expertise and massive defense industrial base to help Iran deal casualties to U.S. forces in return. And finally, most analysts agree that Iran could in short order cobble together a number of fission bombs that would have a good chance of working even as it is defending itself from invasion.
This all adds up to making the invasion option a costly, unattractive and prohibitively risky option that a war-weary U.S. public will not support.
That brings us back to diplomacy and containment. While the chance to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power was fumbled by the Biden administration and may no longer be possible, it is still worth aggressively pursuing. And it is worth noting that the recently elected president of Iran, the cardiac surgeon and former health minister Masoud Pezeshkian, was the most moderate of the presidential candidates and has a history of advocating for more engagement with the West in order to obtain sanctions relief.
Consequently, starting on January 20 of next year, President Donald Trump will be able to leverage Pezeshkian’s desire to avoid looming sanctions. Another action Trump can take to put the United States into much better position, both military and diplomatically, is to follow through on his promise to quickly negotiate an end to the United States’ proxy war with Russia on terms that incentivize Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to once again to use his influence with Iran to help the U.S. curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The settlement must also make it more profitable for Russia to trade and cooperate with the West, as opposed to being forced by U.S. sanctions to more tightly align with countries like China, Iran and North Korea.
In parallel to the above efforts, the Trump administration will of course be working to expand the Abraham Accords to other Arab nations to further isolate Iran.
And finally, sometime in the not-too-distant future the elderly ayatollah will die, giving moderate Iranians an opportunity to decisively show they want to end the rule of anti-West radical Islamists and inaugurate a better, sanctions-free life for their children.
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