President Donald Trump was yesterday a crucial decision in the war that began a few days ago between Israel and Iran: whether or not to enter the fight helping Israel to destroy the nuclear enrichment facilities in Fordo, which are underground, at a depth to which only the largest “antibunker” bomb in the United States can reach, launched by US B-2 bomber.
If he decides to move forward, the United States will become a direct participant in a new conflict in the Middle East, facing Iran exactly in the type of war that Trump swore in his two campaigns he would avoid. Iranian officials have already warned that the participation of the United States in an attack against its facilities will endanger any possibility that may still have to reach a nuclear disarmament agreement, which Trump insists that he is still interested in reaching.
At one point, Trump had encouraged his envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, and possibly to vice president JD Vance, to offer to meet with the Iranians, according to an American official. But on Monday Trump published on social networks that “everyone should evacuate Tehran immediately,” which hardly constitutes a sign of diplomatic progress.
Trump also said Monday that “I think Iran is basically at the negotiating table, they want to reach an agreement.”
The urgency seemed to increase. The White House announced late Monday that Trump abandoned in advance the summit of the seven group due to the situation in the Middle East.
“As soon as I leave here, we are going to do something,” Trump said. “But I have to leave here.”
It was not yet clear what I intended to do.
If Vance and Witkoff met with the Iranians, according to the officials, the probable Iranian interlocutor would be the country’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who played a key role in the 2015 nuclear agreement with the Barack Obama government and knows all the elements of the extensive Iranian nuclear complex. Araghchi, who has been Witkoff’s counterpart in the last negotiations, said his opening to an agreement in a statement: “If President Trump is sincere in terms of diplomacy and is interested in stopping this war, the next steps are important.”
“A telephone call from Washington is enough to amordazar someone like Netanyahu,” he said, referring to Benjamín Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister. “That can pave the way to return to diplomacy.”
But if that diplomatic effort fails, or the Iranians still do not want to yield to Trump’s main demand that, ultimately, they must end all the enrichment of uranium on Iranian soil, the president will still have the option of ordering that Fordo and other nuclear facilities are destroyed.
According to experts, there is only one weapon for that task. His name is Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or GBU-57, and weighs so much-about 13,600 kilograms-that can only be transported by a B-2 bomber. Israel does not have the weapon or the bomber necessary to raise it and position it on the objective.
If Trump is contained, it could mean that Israel’s main objective in the war will never be completed.
“Fordo has always been the heart of this issue,” said Brett McGurk, who worked in matters of Middle East for four successive US presidents, from George W. Bush to Joe Biden. “If this ends with Fordo still enriching, then it is not a strategic gain.”
That has been true for a long time, and in the last two years the US army has perfected the operation, under the thorough scrutiny of the White House. The exercises concluded that a single bomb would not solve the problem; Any attack against Fordo would have to occur in waves, with the B-2 throwing one bomb after another for the same hole. And the operation would have to be executed by an American pilot and team.
All this was in the world of war planning until the initial salvas of Friday morning in Tehran, when Netanyahu ordered the attacks, stating that Israel had discovered an “imminent” threat that required a “preventive action.” New intelligence data suggested without describing the details, indicated that Iran was about to convert their fuel reserves into arms.
American intelligence officials who have followed the Iranian program for years agree that Iranian nuclear scientists and specialists have been working to shorten the time it would take to make a nuclear bomb, but did not observe great advances.
However, they agree with McGurk and other experts: if the fordo installation survives the conflict, Iran will retain the key equipment he needs to continue on the path towards the pump, although first he had to rebuild much of the nuclear infrastructure that Israel has left in ruins during days of precision bombing.
There may be other alternatives to bombard these facilities, although they are not safe. If the electric current to Fordo is cut, by saboteators or bombings, it could damage or destroy the centrifugators that rotate at supersonic speeds. Rafael Grossi, general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Monday that this could have occurred in the other great uranium enrichment center in the country, Natanz. Israel cut the electricity supply to the plant on Friday, and Grossi said the interruption probably caused the centrifugers to get out of control.
Trump rarely speaks of Fordo by name, but has occasionally alluded to the GBU-57, because he has sometimes told his assistants that he ordered his development. That is not correct: the United States began to design the weapon in 2004, during the government of George W. Bush, specifically to collapse the mountains that protect some of the nuclear facilities in the depths of Iran and North Korea. However, Arsenal was tested and added during Trump’s first mandate.
Netanyahu has pressed for the United States to make available its “Antibunker” bombs from the Bush government, but until now it has been in vain. However, people who have spoken with Trump in recent months affirm that the issue has emerged repeatedly in their conversations with the Prime Minister. When asked about it, Trump usually avoids a direct response.
Now the pressure increases. Former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who resigned in a break with Netanyahu, told Bianna Golodryga de CNN on Monday that “the work has to be done, by Israel, by the United States”, an apparent reference to the fact that the bomb would have to be thrown by an American pilot in an American plane. He said Trump had “the option to change the Middle East and influence the world.”
And Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican for South Carolina, who often speaks on behalf of the traditional and hard line of his party, said Sunday in CBS that “if diplomacy is not successful” he will urge “President Trump to go with everything to make sure that when this operation ends, there is nothing standing in Iran in relation to his nuclear program.”
“If that means providing bombs, provide bombs,” he said, and added, in clear reference to the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, “the bombs that are. If that means flying with Israel, fly with Israel.”
But Republicans are far from being united in that position. And the division in the party around the decision to use or not one of the most powerful conventional weapons of the Pentagon to help one of the closest allies to the United States has revealed a much deeper division. It is not just about paralyzing Fordo centrifugers; It is also the opinion of the Maga Movement about what kind of wars the United States should avoid at all costs.
The anti -interventionist wing of the party, to which the influential presenter of Pódcast Tucker Carlson has given his most prominent voice, has argued that the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan is that getting involved deeply in another war in the Middle East only entails risks and no benefit. On Friday, Carlson wrote that the United States should “abandon Israel” and “let them free their own wars.”
“If Israel wants to free this war, he has every right to do so,” he continued. “It is a sovereign country and can do what you please. But not with the support of the United States.”
In the Pentagon, the opinion is divided for other reasons. The Bridge Colby, Undersecretary of Defense for Policies, the number three position of the Pentagon, has long held that each military resource dedicated to the Wars of the Middle East is a resource that deviates from the Pacific and the containment of China. (Colby had to clarify his opinions about Iran to be confirmed).
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For now, Trump can afford to keep a foot in each field. If you make another attempted coercive diplomacy, you can convince the faithful of Maga that they are using the threat of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator to bring the conflict to a peaceful end. And you can tell the Iranians that they will stop enriching uranium in one way or another, either by diplomatic agreement or because a GBU-57 implode the mountain.
But if the combination of persuasion and coercion fails, you will have to decide whether this war is from Israel or the United States.