There are several aspects of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities that deserve further discussions:
- Non-proliferation issues
- Retaliation by Iran
- Consequences of unlawful behavior
Before the U.S. and Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities Iran was a long standing member of the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The IAEA, tasked with verifying the adherence to the NPT, was able to inspect Iranian facilities. It knew, down to the milligram, how much enriched Uranian Iran had produced and where it was stored.
Western intelligence services as well as the IAEA did not only confirm that Iran had no nuclear weapons. They confirmed that Iran did not even have a nuclear weapon program. There were no plans to produce any weapons.
All that is now in doubt.
The NPT's objective was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology and to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. The second part was the reason why non-nuclear nations have joined the treaty.
The U.S. demand that Iran should stop all enrichment of Uranium, as needed for civilian nuclear reactors, and the attack on Iran's peaceful nuclear facilities make it obvious that Iran is getting deprived of all the positive elements the NPT had promised. There are also serious concerns that the IAEA has leaked the names of Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel which in the end led to their assassinations.
From Iran's side a continuation of its membership in the NPT and any cooperation with the IAEA have lost their purpose. There is no longer any reason to stay within the agreement. Iran is likely to leave the NPT.
That does mean, and does not make it more likely, that Iran will start to produce nuclear weapons. There are principal, religiously bound reasons why it has so far refrained from doing so. Those have not changed.
Iran has said that it had moved all enriched Uranium from its Fordow enrichment site shortly before the U.S. strike on the installation:
A senior Iranian source claimed to Reuters that before the U.S. attack on the Fordow nuclear facility last night (Sunday), all of the stock of enriched uranium at the site was transferred to another location.
At the same time, satellite images captured a large convoy moving near the underground nuclear facility two days before the attack. It is believed that this may be documentation of the transfer of the enriched material.
Some 400 kilogram of Uranium, enriched to 60% of U-235 isotopes needed for fission chain reactions, were squirreled away. The IAEA does not know where they are. Iran also still has a sufficient numbers of its most modern centrifuges needed for further enrichment. It can produced more if it needs those. Iran also has several other bunkers, similar to the Fordow and Natanz sites, which were build and equipped to eventually house additional enrichment facilities. Those sites are not (yet) known to the IAEA and have never been inspected.
I do expect that Iran will leave the NPT. It will 'go dark' about its nuclear program. It will not announce where it will do what with the nuclear material it has. The IAEA will no longer be allowed to have knowledge of it. This will make Iran a 'latent' nuclear weapon state even while it refrains from having a nuclear weapon.
Some might argue that Iran will not do that as it would make further U.S. attacks on it more likely.
Hello? The U.S. has just attacked Iran without ANY cause. It is likely to do so again, independent of whether Iran stays with the NPT rules or not.
Being a 'latent' nuclear weapon state constitutes an additional deterrence. The longer Iran stays in that state, the higher the risk for any attacker to be countered by nuclear means.
The attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities were not done to prevent it from getting nuclear weapons. The attacks are to provoke a violent response which can then be used to launch an all out war with the end-purpose of regime change in Iran.
[The Israeli government launched its attacks on Iran under the operation name 'Rising Lion'.
The flag on the left is the flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The flag on the right, depicting a lion in front of the rising sun, is the flag of Iran under the former dictatorship of the Shah. The U.S. and Israel are currently promoting the son of the deposed Shah of Iran as the future leader of the country. 'Rising Lion' was and is thus an obvious reference to a regime change operation in Iran.]
There is however no easy way to regime change Iran. The Iranian society is largely standing behind its government. That government is well established and seen as legitimate. It does not depend on one person. Even the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is easily replaceable. The regular military is counterbalanced with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This makes a military coup plot untenable.
Unless there is a large scale foreign land invasion, supported by this or that minority in Iran, there is no chance to topple the Islamic Republic. The U.S. no longer has the Cold-War army that would potentially be able to do such.
Iran is likely to take additional measures in revenge for the attack on its nuclear facilities. It may well launch a symbolic strike against one U.S. base in the Gulf. But it is unlikely to do an all out attack on all U.S. assets in the Gulf region. That is still an option but it will be reserved for later.
Any measures taken now in response to the attacks on its nuclear facilities will likely by designed to NOT give the U.S. a pretext for additional attacks on Iran.
The main enemy of Iran is still Israel. Iran has established an attritional war against it. Daily attacks by drones and medium range missiles against Israel are designed to deplete its air defenses. Only after that is done will the strikes get more serious. Israel depends on air defenses manufactured and provided by the U.S. Their production is limited and it depends on the availability of rare materials. China is currently withholding rare earth licenses from U.S. weapon producers. This will further decrease the availability of air defense items.
Israel knows that it can not sustain an attritional war with Iran:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that Israel aims to avoid a "war of attrition" with Iran, the Times of Israel reported.
"We won't pursue our actions beyond what is needed to achieve [the goals], but we also won't finish too soon," Netanyahu was quoted as saying.
It is not for Netanyahoo to decide when the current war ends. (Just like it is not for Zelenski to decide when there will be a ceasefire in Ukraine.) Israel is already in a war of attrition. Iran will continue to wage it.
Iran will, as said, avoid a direct war with the U.S. military as long as it can. But it will implement measures that will squeeze the U.S. as best as it can. It is likely to close the Strait of Hormuz for all energy transports that are destined to reach countries which support its enemies. Transports to China, India and global south countries will continue. U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, and the U.S. itself, will suffer. Oil prices will increase – at least for those who oppose Iran.
To implement that does not even require openly hostile measures. Loud announcements, plus a few explosions next to tankers going from the Gulf towards Rotterdam, is all that is needed to deprive any such transports of insurance. The global 'free' markets create the consequences.
When the price of oil reaches above $100 per barrel the U.S. economy will move into a recession. During the midterm election the Republican party will lose the majority in the House and Senate. Trump will become a lame duck.
Trump attacked Iran without even an attempt to provide a sound reasoning. There was no false flag incident or any serious argument of weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. attacked Iran simply because it could do so.
Trump is thereby not only in breach of the U.S. constitution, which requires Congress to declare a war. The U.S. war of aggression against Iran is also a breach of the U.S. Charter. Its attacks on civil nuclear installations is a breach of the Additional Protocols of the Geneva Convention which prohibits these.
We are now in a new world disorder:
The first major consequence, in broader terms, is that this strike dealt a final, irreparable blow to what little remained of the post-war international legal and institutional framework. That order was already in tatters — shredded by a year and a half of Western-backed genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But this latest attack makes it official: Western powers no longer feel the need to cloak their actions in legality, morality or even the façade of diplomatic legitimacy.
…
Today, even that pretense is gone. In Gaza, and now with the strikes on Iran, the gloves are fully off. What we’re witnessing is a regression to a kind of global lawlessness — a “might makes right” free-for-all where nothing is off limits: not the mass slaughter of civilians, not the bombing of nuclear sites, not even the complete sidelining of international institutions.
That the U.S. is doing this, with open support of its European proxies, is not only a danger for the international system but also for the domestic population of these countries:
This isn’t only a threat to international security. It’s also a profound threat to what little freedoms we still have left within the West itself. Make no mistake: the Western ruling classes’ open embrace of Mafia-style gangsterism abroad also means that they will have no qualms about brushing aside whatever ethical, legal, constitutional and democratic constrains that still stand in the way of their desperate, hallucinatory bid to preserve the crumbling order.
We have already seen this in the illegitimate suppression of protests against the genocide in Gaza. It will proliferate from there. The West is, slowly but accelerating, sliding from a 'rule of law' status into the darkness of unbound fascism. It is on us to prevent that.
