CNN
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The United States appears to be approaching participation in conflict with Iran on strikes at the country’s major nuclear facilities, such as the Fordaw fuel enrichment plant hidden deep in the mountains.
A few days after the attack on Israeli Iran and its nuclear program, Israeli leaders are waiting for US President Donald Trump to know if they will help them finish their work.
Trump is increasingly warming up using US military assets to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and exacerbate the idea of a diplomatic solution to the crisis, two officials familiar with the ongoing debate told CNN.
“I might do that, I might do that. I mean, no one knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, Iran has a lot of trouble and they want to negotiate. And I said, why didn’t you negotiate with me before all of this death and destruction,” Trump told White House reporters on Wednesday.
Iranian experts warn that attacks on the US could draw them into a muddy quagmire that is even more difficult than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The US attacks will lead to full-scale Iranian attacks on US bases in the region and a full-scale war between the US and Iran,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, told CNN.
Tehran may not be able to sustain a long battle with the US, but that’s not an easy war for Washington, he said.
“Iran is a very big country, meaning there are so many targets that the US has to hit to take Iran’s ability to fight back,” Parsi said, noting that this will happen when there is no widespread support for the war with Iran in Trump’s own camp.
The US strike against Iran is likely to consume “Pandora’s Box” and “probably the rest of President Trump’s president,” Ellie Guerranmaye, a senior policy fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations, told CNN.
“If you open this Pandora box, you don’t know where things are going,” Guerrammy said. “Trump has retreated from the brink of war with Iran in the past, so he has the ability to do so again.”
The Islamic Republic already believes Israel is complicit in Israel’s attacks on Iran, and the Israelis are attacking it with American weapons. And some Iranian officials say Tehran is already preparing for a “full and drawn-out war.”
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran would not retreat the day after Trump called out “I called for an unconditional surrender!” In a social media post.
“Let the Americans know that the Iranian state is not going to surrender. Their military intervention will undoubtedly bring irreparable damage,” Khamenei said in a national speech.
Directing our involvement in the conflict, Iran could activate the rest of the proxies in Iraq, Yemen and Syria, previously launched attacks on American assets in the region.
Knowing that they cannot win a conflict between Israel and the United States completely, experts say they can try to drain the ability to fight in conflicts that caused enemy will or depicted damages during the decade-old war that Tehran fought Saddam Hussain’s Iraq in the 1980s.
“Iran’s strategy may just try to keep themselves up, fight back as much as possible and ultimately try to shorten the war as short as Trump did in Yemen,” Parsi said.
After months of strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, the US has signed a ceasefire agreement with the group in Israel’s disappointment.
“The ways Tehran thinks he could win such a war of attrition is as follows,” wrote Abdullasor Dibsalah, a senior researcher at the UN Institute of Disarmament, about X.
“The US entrance to this war is a bad and costly decision for everyone,” Divsallar added.
In a Persian post directed at Trump in X, former Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Musabian, who currently lives in New Jersey, calls the president “President of Peace,” warning that Iran is likely to move advanced centrifugals elsewhere, perhaps seeking Iran.
“One wrong decision could not only take responsibility for Iran’s decision to build a nuclear bomb, but the consequences for Americans could lead the United States into a war that would be far more damaging than an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq,” writes Musabian.
Parsi said it would be only a matter of time before the bomb was constructed if Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed and the government chose to do so.
“Iranians have the know-how and ability to rebuild everything,” Parsi said. “(Attack) is about reverting Iran’s motivation to build nuclear weapons dramatically.”
Fordow is considered Israel’s most challenging and sought after target in its desire to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. However, what exactly exists within the secret facility is unknown, Parsi said.
“The main enrichment was done at Natantz (nuclear facilities). Fordau was doing other things and doing more research,” he said.
It is also unclear whether the US strike will successfully destroy a complex hidden deep in the mountains near the sacred city.
The Fordow main hall is an estimated 80-90 meters (approximately 262-295 feet) underground and is safe from air bombs known to be owned by Israel.
Yechiel Leiter, US ambassador to Israel, says that only the US Air Force has weapons that can destroy the site. However, analysts warn that even the American “bunkerbuster” bombs are no guarantee that the GBU-57/B, known as a massive weapon intruder, can do the job.
Israel’s relentless bombing of Iran and its nuclear facilities raised regional concerns about potential radioactive fallout.
Iran has only one nuclear power plant in the southeastern city of Boucher. Israel is not targeting it.
The bombing Fordow will not create the same risk as nuclear reactor bombing, two experts told CNN.
Scott Roker, vice president of nuclear materials security for the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said Fordow would not have a major risk of radiation dispersion, “Because the rich uranium is fresh, it’s calling it in the industry.”
“Because it is not running through a nuclear reactor, for example, when bombing Buchelle, an operational nuclear power plant, the radiation does not spread over a large area, to provide a lot of radiation dispersion.”
“It’s localized around the site, and it’s buried underground so you don’t know how much it will be released,” added Roecker.
Ben Ben Tareble, senior director of the Iranian program at the Foundation for Democracy (FDD), a Washington, DC-based pro-Israel think tank, described the potential damage as a chemical issue.
He said, but there would be some concerns.