Why Trump might bomb Iran again

President Trump has already warned Tehran that he’ll be back if Iran tries to revive and advance its nuclear program, following the strikes by B-2 stealth bombers.

Judging by the comments of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Trump may find himself with this dilemma sooner than he thinks.

Iran could return to enriching uranium in “a matter of months,” according to Rafael Mariano Grossi, IAEA’s director-general, in an interview with CBS News over the weekend.

However, a number of questions need to be asked before the B-2s take off again from their Whiteman Air Force base in Missouri. 

Trump hopes that the combination of twelve days of Israeli air raids and the one-off attack by seven B-2s each armed with 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) will persuade the Tehran regime to give up any ambitions of building a bomb and focus all efforts on a long-term diplomatic deal to bring the nuclear nightmare to an end.

The chances are slim. The survival of the Islamic Republic under the leadership of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei largely depends on its often-stated position that Iran has the right to enrich uranium and it will never give that up, however many “western” bombs fall.

The IAEA chief clearly believes that, despite serious damage to the three main nuclear sites, Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, Iran still has sufficient stocks of unharmed gas centrifuges secreted away to continue the process of enriching its 900-pound stock of 60 percent-grade uranium, potentially to reach the 90 percent level required for a bomb.

Grossi’s assessment unfavorably, for Trump that is, echoes the somber report leaked from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency soon after the B-2 bombing of the three nuclear sites, which claimed the strikes had only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months.

There are important nuances here. There can be little doubt that the 14 MOPs dropped through ventilation shafts to reach a long way down towards the deeply buried nuclear plants caused a lot more damage than the DIA seemed to be implying. 

Furthermore, and crucially, the bombings did destroy (or “obliterate,” in Trump’s language) the metal conversion facility at Isfahan whose role was to transform enriched uranium gas into dense metal, a process known as metallization, which is one of the key last stages of forging the explosive core of a bomb.

CIA director John Ratcliffe reportedly told a classified congressional hearing that the destruction of the sole metal-conversion plant would put back Iran’s suspected nuclear bomb program by years.

So, whether the 900 pounds of highly-enriched uranium Iran developed are buried under rubble at Isfahan or one of the other sites, or have been removed to an unknown bunker (depending on which report you believe), the destruction of the metal-conversion plant is a plus for Trump’s obliteration mantra; and possibly a reason for the President to hold back the B-2s for a second go for the moment.

That’s not to say he won’t be tempted to launch another bombing raid if Tehran refuses to cooperate on the offered diplomatic path. Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told the BBC that the US would have to rule out any further strikes if diplomatic negotiations were to be resumed. Trump isn’t going to fall for that one.

The other big question: what will Israel do?

Trump knows that he won’t face any trouble from Congress if he decides to bomb again. Attempts by the Democrats to obligate the president to seek authority from Congress before pursuing more attacks on Iran were thwarted by the Republican-majority Senate in a 53-47 vote. 

The other big question: what will Israel do?

Mossad and the rest of the Israeli intelligence apparatus will be keeping the closest eye and ear on what Iran does next after seeing its prized nuclear facilities hammered by nearly two weeks of targeted strikes.

Last week, Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, ordered the military to draw up an “enforcement plan” against Iran, including maintaining air superiority over the country and taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent progress in Tehran’s nuclear program.

“Operation Rising Lion [codename for the Israel Defense Forces’ twelve days of attacks] was just the preview of a new Israeli policy,” Katz wrote on X.

So, Operation Rising Lion has been granted longevity. That has to mean further attacks on nuclear sites and against nuclear scientists in the future, whether Trump and the B-2s are going to be involved or not.