dave I think Netanyahu suckered Trump into doing his bidding
Well, thank you. I was beginning to think that I was the only one with that opinion. He has been shopping the same story and “necessity” of an intervention with every president since at least Bush Jr. In the current guy, he finally found someone gullible (or arrogant, war-happy, exceptionalist…?) enough to go along with it. In short, Binyamin played him like a Stradivarius. He was also likely the source of the bee in Mr. President’s bonnet in 2018 that resulted in withdrawal from the JCPOA, which is the disastrous decision that directly led to the current events.
However, I think you (collectively, but especially Mr. President and his entourage) should take a few minutes to take stock of the facts before you congratulate yourselves, pound your chests and chant, “Me Beat! Me the BEST!!! Mission accomplished!”. The current supposition is that they may have moved their enriched stockpile. Several hundred kilograms of enriched fissile material isn’t something you just throw into a briefcase and run. Has the possibility that they knew what was coming been considered? Maybe it was already on the move, to other smaller, even more clandestine sites that no one knows about, with the “more advanced” reactors that they were threatening to install already in place, completing the enrichment process to weapons-grade as we debate the matter. In fact, maybe this was already the case before the Israeli jets even left their hangars.
If any of that is anywhere close to the truth, all this action will have done is ensure that they understand that such a weapon is essential as a deterrent, in the same way that you don’t see people routinely thinking about the same type of operations against North Korea. They have them and, like Israel, are not signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and have made quite the show of testing them, as if to issue a warning to any would-be hostile nations.
My idle, unqualified suppositions will gain credibility if we soon see Iran explicitly withdraw from the treaty and expel all inspectors. Or, they may take the scenic route, give the superficial impression of complete compliance, allowing inspectors into all of the “destroyed” sites, while clandestinely completing their work until they’re ready for a show, in the style of Chairman Kim.
That’s the problem: we really don’t know, and we don’t know what comes next. I think it’s presumptuous to allow ourselves the false sense of security; that due to this “accomplishment”, we’re safer today than we were in early June. If anything, I’d say that it’s much the opposite, for a number of reasons.