Latest news with #Hiroshima-style
Chicago Tribune
20-07-2025
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Robert A. Pape: To prevent nuclear war in the Middle East, America needs to change its nuclear doctrine
The world is moving closer to the brink of nuclear war in alarming ways that are more dangerous and harder to anticipate than during the Cold War. The famous 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a harrowing near miss, but today's nuclear dangers are more complex. This is due to a variety of factors, particularly coming together in the Middle East: increasing tensions across the region, growing risks of nuclear proliferation, and now perils of surprise military attack during crises involving states with nuclear weapons or on the cusp of nuclear weapons. Israel's recent 12-day war against Iran is a harbinger of potentially growing nuclear dangers to come. For the first time in history, two nuclear armed states — Israel and the United States — bombed a state, Iran, with a major nuclear program that many believe is on the threshold of acquiring all the physical and technical capacities necessary to produce nuclear weapons within a matter of months. For sure, the 12-day war involved a series of attacks and counterattacks that were terrifying to live through, and there was great relief when they came to an end. However, the future is even more concerning. First, Israeli and American bombing did not obliterate Iran's nuclear program, as President Donald Trump astonishingly declared before he received bomb damage assessments. As is now widely agreed among U.S. defense intelligence, Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan did not eliminate Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Although uncertainly remains about Iran's next steps, there is little doubt that Iran could attempt to produce a 'crude' bomb in a matter of months. And it is important to understand, a 'crude' bomb means a Hiroshima-style weapon that could lead to the deaths of 80,000 people from the immediate effects of the blast. Second, future information about Iran's nuclear program is fraught with high degrees of uncertainty. From the beginning, Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors to have tremendous access to monitor its nuclear enrichment program. True, these inspections have fluctuated over time and have never been as fully comprehensive as many would have liked. However, for decades, the quarterly IAEA reports have been crucial for high confidence assessments about the scale of Iran's enrichment program and whether vast amounts of enriched uranium have not been siphoned off to develop nuclear weapons. Now, Iran has reportedly banned IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities, and the fear and suspicion about a surprise nuclear breakout will grow over time. Third, and most important, the 12-day war shows that the fear of surprise attack is now fully justified. It is important to recall that the war started June 13 with a stunning, Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear sites. Israel's bolt-from-the-blue strike occurred without warning and while Iranian negotiators were preparing to meet with their American counterparts just days later. Given these events, Israel, the United States and Iran now face the specter of one of the most terrifying scenarios for nuclear war: the 'reciprocal fear of surprise attack.' That's a situation in which both sides of a potential conflict fear being attacked first, leading them to consider — and possibly launch — a preemptive strike to avoid being caught off guard. The most worrisome aspect is that striking first in these circumstances has an element of rationality. If one side thinks the other is preparing for a surprise attack, then attacking first, even if it carries risks, may be the best way to reduce one's own losses. Of course, nuclear war is so horrible that the reciprocal fear of surprise attack may never lead to an actual outbreak of war. If so, then the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would not be a problem in the first place. Alas, we need to take this danger seriously. What can be done? Although there are no perfect solutions to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack, there is one step that would significantly matter: For the United States, Iran and Israel to declare that they would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a crisis involving Iran. The general idea of 'no first use' pledges, as they are called, arose during the Cold War, but the United States has never been willing to make such a promise. At the time, this was thought of in the context of the U.S., Europe and Soviet contest in which America needed the implicit threat of the first use of nuclear weapons to offset the Soviet conventional military threat to U.S. nonnuclear European allies. The Middle East is clearly different. America's main ally, Israel, is a powerful nuclear weapons state and so does not rely on U.S. nuclear weapons to deter attacks on its homeland. For the United States, Israel and Iran to agree a limited no-first-use policy would not end the tensions over Iran's nuclear program. However, it would energize negotiations and avoid some of the worst ways that a nuclear war could inadvertently occur. The Nobel Laureate Assembly to Prevent Nuclear War taking place at the University of Chicago recently was a perfect place to begin a national conversation about the value of adapting U.S. nuclear doctrine to today's realities in the Middle East. If this assembly of the most brilliant minds on the planet could recommend this historic step in which the U.S., Iran and Israel each pledge they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the dispute involving Iran's nuclear program, this would be a meaningful step toward preventing nuclear war in one of the most dangerous regions in the world.
The Hill
05-07-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Iran nuclear deal without missile limits is a strategic mistake
Did you know that 10,000 ballistic missiles — each carrying one to two tons of explosives — could cause as much, or even more, devastation than a Hiroshima-style atomic bomb? Before Israel's three strikes on Iranian territory — the most consequential in June 2025 — Iran was racing toward mass production of precision-guided ballistic missiles. This wasn't hypothetical. Tehran was preparing to flood Israel's airspace with thousands of advanced rockets designed to overwhelm its multi-layered defense systems: Arrow, David's Sling and Iron Dome. The editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel wrote that it was the sober, unified judgment of Israel's intelligence and military chiefs that led to the preemptive strike. The country wasn't just weeks from a nuclear breakout — it was also on the verge of deploying a missile arsenal with the power to incapacitate Israel's economy, overwhelm its defenses and inflict mass civilian casualties. Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani once infamously called Israel a 'one-bomb country.' Today, that warning must be updated: Israel is now a '10,000-missile country.' According to veteran Israeli journalist Ron Ben-Yishai, Israeli intelligence concluded that Tehran was preparing to produce 10,000 ballistic missiles with the destructive force equivalent to two nuclear bombs. The hope that Israel's October 2024 strike on Iran's solid-fuel production sites would slow the program proved overly optimistic. Iran responded by accelerating production. Israel's Foreign Ministry later stated that Iran was moving to industrial-scale missile manufacturing. Iran was on track to become the world's leading missile producer, including intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching Europe, with payloads large enough to level city blocks. As one senior Israeli official explained, 'We acted because of two existential threats. One was nuclear …, the other ballistic… That threat was as existential to us as a nuclear bomb.' While much of the world has remained narrowly focused on uranium enrichment, Israeli intelligence had already concluded that Iran's ballistic missile buildup posed an equally urgent and imminent danger. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly cited Iran's missile expansion as a principal reason for the June 2025 operation. Yet global media coverage of the 12-day Iran-Israel conflict largely overlooked the larger strategic rationale for Israel's strikes. Headlines focused on the limited number of Iranian missiles that penetrated Israeli defenses. What was missed was the far more dangerous trajectory Iran was on: building a missile force capable of saturating and bypassing even the most sophisticated defense systems. That is why recent reports that President Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, may be exploring a nuclear-only agreement with Iran — one that excludes any restrictions on missile development — have deeply alarmed Israel's defense and intelligence establishment. Trump has denied offering sanctions relief or cash incentives, but the concern remains that the United States may be entertaining a deal that fails to address Iran's expanding missile threat. This is not a theoretical oversight. Iran has already adapted its military posture following each major clash — April 2024, October 2024 and June 2025 — improving its ability to evade Israeli and U.S. defenses. Unlike the short-range, low-yield rockets launched by proxy groups like Hezbollah or the Houthis, Iran's homegrown missiles are longer-range, heavier and more destructive — designed to reach deep into Israel's urban centers and critical infrastructure, producing the maximum amount of terror on the citizenry. A nuclear-only deal with sanctions relief that ignores Iran's missile program would not be prudent diplomacy. It would be strategic self-deception. Such an agreement would embolden the regime in Tehran, undercut Israeli deterrence, and almost certainly invite further escalation across the region. Regional instability would follow. As Israel National News recently reported, Iran's missile arsenal is dispersed across hardened bunkers, civilian neighborhoods and remote mountain ranges. These missiles are not going to disappear with a handshake. Rolling back this threat requires sustained diplomatic pressure, rigorous inspections, enforceable limits, and consequences for transgressions, something Iran is loath to agree to. Let's hope reports of a flawed nuclear deal leaving out the equally dangerous missile threat are mistaken. However, if they're accurate, Congress and the American people need to understand what is at stake. An effective agreement must shut down all of Iran's escalatory pathways, not just the nuclear one. Failing to address Iran's missile program in negotiations would be a strategic error for the U.S. and an existential risk for our ally, Israel. Eric R. Mandel is the director of the Middle East Political Information Network and senior security editor for the Jerusalem Post's Jerusalem Report.
