For President Trump, To Fordow Or Not to Fordow, That is the Question

Just to be clear, Israel never wanted American boots on the ground. Ever.

They have always been crystal clear about that.

No American blood shed.

Militaria. Weapons. Ammo. Firepower. Yes.

Only the United States has the 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs necessary to take out the Fordow Nuclear Weapon Plant buried  half a mile underground.

Would Churchill or Truman balk at taking out Hitler’s nukes?

Watch What Happens at Fordow

That is Iran’s most-heavily fortified and deepest nuclear facility.

Seth Cropsey: the crown jewel in Iran’s nuclear program, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, remains. Housing several thousand centrifuges and buried 80 to 100 yards underground, the facility would allow Iran to reconstitute a fissile material stockpile even if other elements of its nuclear infrastructure are badly damaged. Israel has two options to destroy Fordow. It can drop a large number of 1,000-pound and 5,000-pound bunker-busters, using its understanding of the facility’s design to maximize damage and dig through layers of soil, rock and concrete. This would take several strike waves, increasing the risk that Iran’s remaining air defenses might “trap” Israeli fighters. Alternatively, Israel could stage a commando raid, physically sabotaging the site, with profound risks to personnel. The most natural option is, instead, an American strike on Fordow. The U.S. developed the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or MOP, a 30,000-pound bunker-buster. Depending on facility design and penetration angle, it would likely take between three and eight MOPs to cripple Fordow. Each B-2 stealth bomber can carry two MOPs. The U.S. could conceivably mix MOPs and lighter weapons to use B-52s, B-1s, or stealth fighters, in the strike package. The point, putting aside the technical specifics, is that the U.S. has a one-shot opportunity to finish Iran’s nuclear ambitions, one that would take no more than a few airstrikes. This would also trigger regime destabilization (Wall Street Journal).

Trump Faces a Churchillian Choice on Fordow

Historian Andrew Roberts makes a parallel with Churchill’s decision to destroy the French Vichy fleet as it sat at Oran in Algeria—preventing it from falling into the hands of the Germans:

Preemptive action sometimes works, but it requires remarkable leadership qualities. Does President Trump have them? Only the United States has the 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs necessary to shatter Iranian nuclear ambitions. For if Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning in its nuclear facility 300 feet underground at Fordow, then Israel will have only scored a tactical win, rather than the strategic victory she needed. The successes against the upper echelons of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, military high command, and nuclear scientists are commendable, but nothing like enough. Only the United States has the 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs necessary to shatter Iranian nuclear ambitions. So what does Trump do then? The point, putting aside the technical specifics, is that the U.S. has a one-shot opportunity to finish Iran’s nuclear ambitions, one that would take no more than a few airstrikes. This would also trigger regime destabilization… Counterintuitively, perhaps, President Trump would never deserve the Nobel Peace Prize more than if he destroyed Iran’s capacity for nuclear blackmail…. Donald Trump today has it in his power to act with Churchillian ruthlessness and wreck Iran’s nuclear—and thus regionally strategic—ambitions for a generation. I fear he will not do this, however, for as his constant tergiversations over tariffs have shown, his bark tends to be much worse than his bite. If he does not, he ought to remove Winston Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office….” (Free Press).

The whole essay:

Andrew Roberts: Trump’s Churchillian Choice at Fordow

History has taught us a clear lesson: Believe the threats of dictators

“Preemptive action sometimes works, but it requires remarkable leadership qualities,” writes Andrew Roberts. “Does President Trump have them?”

By Andrew Roberts

On Wednesday July 3, 1940, Winston Churchill had a decision before him as hard as any he ever had to take in his long career of statesmanship. If the Vichy French fleet stationed at Oran in Algeria were to fall into German hands, as seemed highly likely, it would, when combined with the German and Italian navies, pose an existential threat to his country, which after the Fall of France was already gearing itself up for the Battle of Britain.

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The French admiral would neither hand his fleet over to the Royal Navy, scuttle it, nor sail it to Canada. So, after some anguished heartache, the lifelong Francophile Churchill ordered it to be sunk, which it was with the loss of 1,299 French sailors.

There are some moments in history when a sudden act of opportune ruthlessness readjusts the world toward a safer path.

In the Middle East, these include Israel’s surprise attacks that saved her from certain invasion in the Six-Day War of 1967 and her destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981. Going back far further, impending invasions of Britain were foiled by Francis Drake sending fireships against the Spanish Armada in August 1588 and then-Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson preemptively destroying the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1801.

Preemptive action sometimes works, but it requires remarkable leadership qualities. Does President Trump have them?

Only the United States has the 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs necessary to shatter Iranian nuclear ambitions.

For if Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning in its nuclear facility 300 feet underground at Fordow, then Israel will have only scored a tactical win, rather than the strategic victory she needed. The successes against the upper echelons of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, military high command, and nuclear scientists are commendable, but nothing like enough. Only the United States has the 30,000-pound “bunker-busting” bombs necessary to shatter Iranian nuclear ambitions. So what does Trump do then?

Benjamin Netanyahu certainly feels the weight of history on his shoulders. The son of a distinguished historian and an avid reader of books by and about Churchill, he said three days ago, “Generations from now, history will record our generation stood its ground, acted in time, and secured our common future.”

He is right. And history could record that about President Trump too if he acts decisively.

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If Trump has before him the Churchillian option, it is not hard to see who represents Neville Chamberlain in all of this. President Obama’s adamant and repeated refusal to help the Iranian opposition—either overtly or covertly—during his eight years in office wrecked its brave efforts to replace the regime, and gave the lie to his pretensions to be a new John F. Kennedy. His cringing, appeasing Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) utterly failed to stop the sinister, inexorable spinning of the centrifuges, and came at the cost of lifting key sanctions and unfreezing assets.

It was neither joint (because Iran cheated) nor comprehensive (because it did not require Iran to abandon its nuclear program) nor a viable plan of action, although it did produce the sickening detail of pallets being loaded with billions of dollars and transferred to the regime in Tehran. Joe Biden then continued his master’s policy of trying to mollify Iran, unsuccessfully. For all his obtuse, dangerous wrongheadedness throughout the 1930s, at least Chamberlain never subsidized the Nazi regime with British taxpayers’ money in the way Obama and Biden has with Americans’.

The United States has suffered so much at the hands of Iran since the humiliations of the Carter administration during the U.S. embassy hostage crisis between November 1979 and January 1981 that no one would resent it finally setting things right. There is hardly a government in the world that would not sleep easier knowing that the theocracy in Iran had been denied the power to initiate a third world war.

Counterintuitively, perhaps, President Trump would never deserve the Nobel Peace Prize more than if he destroyed Iran’s capacity for nuclear blackmail. For once Iran goes nuclear and thus becomes inviolate, it is only a matter of time before it acquires the intercontinental delivery systems that will threaten the rest of the world, including the United States.

There are grave risks attached, of course, which should not be underestimated. Iranian terrorist sleeper cells will probably be activated in the West, such as the one plotting kidnappings and assassinations recently uncovered in London. The mullahs’ penchant for attacking soft civilian targets such as synagogues and cultural centers is well known, and indicative of their frustration and rage at their failure to devastate Israel due to the technical genius of her Iron Dome defenses.

We should believe the threats of dictators. History is littered with times that the West assumes that dictators were exaggerating or merely playing to their domestic audiences, but were in fact being coldly truthful. When Hitler stated in January 1939 that a world war would destroy the Jewish race in Europe only eight months before he deliberately started it, or Stalin promised that the Comintern would strive to undermine western democracies, or Vladimir Putin claimed that there was an “historical unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples” while massing an army on Ukraine’s borders, the West ought to have listened, rather than assuming they were bloviating.

We should similarly believe the Iranian mullahs’ considered and oft-repeated promises to use a nuclear bomb to annihilate Israel. These threats are not idle; they are meant in cold blood. The imams of Tehran want to turn Israel into a sea of molten, irradiated glass, and even the hitherto-pussycat International Atomic Energy Agency now admits that it is ramping up efforts to obtain the means to do so.

Western leaders such as Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, and Keir Starmer who are currently bleating about “de-escalating the Middle East” should recognize that easily the best way of doing that is to defang the chief exporter of terror there.

The United States has never had such an opportunity to rid the world of a specter that has haunted the Middle East for decades, and possibly might not again while what my friend and Free Press columnist Sir Niall Ferguson calls “the Axis of Ill Will”—China, Russian, Iran, North Korea, and their proxies—builds ever-closer ties.

Donald Trump today has it in his power to act with Churchillian ruthlessness and wreck Iran’s nuclear—and thus regionally strategic—ambitions for a generation. I fear he will not do this, however, for as his constant tergiversations over tariffs have shown, his bark tends to be much worse than his bite.

If he does not, he ought to remove Winston Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office, as he should not be able to look in the eye the man who said at the time of the Munich Agreement in October 1938, “Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigor, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

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