Can America End Tehran’s Nuclear Aspirations Without Boots on the Ground?

If President Trump is serious about removing a nuclear “dark cloud” that he says has long hovered over the Middle East, he might need to overcome a bipartisan opposition to dispatching troops to Iran.Prior to last June’s 12-day war, which targeted such nuclear sites as the Fordow and Natanz facilities, the Islamic Republic possessed about 970 pounds of uranium enriched to near-bomb level. While some of that stockpile might now be buried deep under bombed-out rubble, at least half is likely stored in tunnels near Isfahan, according to the United Nations nuclear watchdog. “What we believe is that Isfahan had until our last inspection a bit more than 200 kg, maybe a little bit more than that, of 60 percent uranium,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s chief, Rafael Grossi, told reporters at Paris on Monday.With a little push, that cache of 440 pounds of highly enriched uranium could in short order fuel five or six nuclear bombs. It is yet to be located and taken away from the regime’s hands. America would “likely wait until Iran is more secure to conduct a major excavation effort requiring heavy construction equipment to dig into the tunnels and secure assets like HEU and disable the new enrichment plant inside,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’s non-proliferation program’s deputy director, Andrea Stricker, tells the Sun. Then again, she adds, if safe access to the facility at Isfahan has already been ensured by America, Israel, or both, “a commando option could be feasible.”Although Mr. Trump indicated on Monday that the war might end sooner than originally planned, he doesn’t seem to have abandoned the goal of ending the threat of a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic. That danger, he said in his news conference Monday, “was always a dark cloud hanging over, not only Israel, which was going to get wiped out” but the rest of the region as well. Mr. Trump “has drawn a red line, and that is that Iran cannot have a weapon, and yes, they say they don’t want one, but all of their actions indicate the exact opposite,” top negotiator Steve Witkoff told CNBC on Tuesday, adding, that the president is “just not the right guy to tangle with, and I would suggest they don’t.” Describing the futile negotiations he had conducted with Iranian diplomats in the lead-up to the February 28 launch of Operation Epic Fury, Mr. Witkoff indicated that further negotiations over the nuclear program are unlikely to produce different results. “It’s the same question today that we had when we were negotiating with them,” Mr. Witkoff said. “Do they actually want to make it, have a diplomatic solution here? And, so far, the evidence suggests no.”Unless the Tehran regime agrees to remove the remaining enriched uranium and allow IAEA inspectors to verify that it no longer aspires to build a bomb, then, America and Israel might very well need to act militarily to end the threat. Back in June, America opted out of bombing the Isfahan site. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Dan Caine, told senators in a classified briefing that the site was too deeply-dug to be penetrated by Massive Ordinance Penetrator bombs, known as bunker busters.“Unless that calculation changed, the best option may be to secure the highly enriched uranium in person to neutralize it and ensure against recovery,” Ms. Stricker says. The Department of Energy’s Mobile Packaging Program includes scientists trained in detecting uranium enrichment centrifuges, extracting and packaging them prior to securely loading them on cargo planes to be taken out of places like Iran. Israel has a similar program as well. Using such units would likely entail dispatching troops to secure the work. “We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday. Deploying boots on the ground to Iran has “pretty much been ruled out,” the former chairman of the House foreign relation committee, Michael McCaul, a Republican, told CNN Tuesday. Yet the presence of American or Israeli specialists at Iran’s nuclear sites might be the only feasible option to block the regime’s path to a nuclear bomb. “Wisely” the president “does not rule options out as commander in chief,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said Tuesday, when asked about boots on the ground in Iran.

Can America End Tehran’s Nuclear Aspirations Without Boots on the Ground?

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