Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz ,داني سيترينوفيتش@citrinowicz
The Dangerous Illusion Behind the Iran Campaign regarding Tehran's nuclear capabilities
One of the central problems with the current campaign against Iran is the deeply flawed strategic assumption on which it was built. The war was justified on the premise that Iran was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear bomb and that only military force could stop it. But neither assumption withstands serious scrutiny.
First, it is critical to state clearly and repeatedly: Iran was not on the threshold of producing a nuclear weapon. Despite alarming rhetoric, there has been no public evidence nor any intelligence report by the American IC, that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei made the political decision to weaponize Iran’s nuclear program. Even after the June strikes, there are no indications that Tehran has resumed an organized weapons program. Iran’s nuclear advances were certainly troubling and destabilizing, but enrichment capability is not the same as an active decision to build a bomb.
Second, the campaign itself demonstrated the limits of military power. Despite massive strikes on enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow back in June ("midnight hammer") and on the nuclear complex in Isfahan, discussions in Washington and Jerusalem still revolve around Iran’s remaining nuclear potential. That alone should make one fact unavoidable: there is no lasting kinetic solution to the Iranian nuclear challenge. Airstrikes can damage facilities and delay timelines, but they cannot eliminate the scientific knowledge, industrial expertise, and technological infrastructure Iran has accumulated over decades.
More troubling still, the campaign may ultimately accelerate the very outcome it sought to prevent. The decapitating of Ali Khamenei, "togther" with the longstanding fatwa against nuclear weapons, and the growing dominance of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could push Tehran toward a fundamental reassessment of its nuclear doctrine.
For many inside Iran’s security establishment, the lesson of recent events may be painfully simple: states without nuclear deterrence remain vulnerable to external attack. If that conclusion takes hold in Tehran, military action may end up strengthening the internal arguments in favor of weaponization.
The broader strategic logic behind the war now appears equally questionable. The campaign was driven in large part by the belief that the Iranian regime was uniquely weak and that sustained pressure could destabilize, perhaps even collapse, the Islamic Republic. But the regime survived. Not only did it remain intact, it also preserved meaningful capabilities in both the nuclear and missile domains. That reality raises a difficult but necessary question: if the regime remains in power while retaining significant strategic capabilities, has the campaign actually improved the long-term security environment?
The answer is far from obvious.
Since the United States withdrew from the nuclear agreement in 2018, Iran has accumulated irreversible knowledge and experience in enrichment, centrifuge development, and nuclear infrastructure. That reality cannot be bombed away. The uncomfortable truth is that diplomacy, however frustrating, imperfect, or politically unpopular, remains the only viable path for constraining Iran’s nuclear program over the long term.
This does not mean trusting Tehran. It means recognizing strategic reality. A negotiated framework with intrusive inspections, limitations, and verification mechanisms may not solve every problem posed by Iran, but it can buy time, reduce risks, and prevent the emergence of a far more dangerous scenario.
Because if this conflict ends with the Islamic Republic still standing, while preserving substantial nuclear capabilities and concluding that only nuclear weapons can guarantee regime survival, the world should not be surprised if one day it wakes up to a nuclear-armed Iran.
#ira
