It Was Right to Bomb Iran’s Nuclear Sites Now

Israel woke up on the morning of June 25^th to what passes for normal here for the first time since our attack on Iran began on June 12^th.

With the lifting of all restriction by the Homefront Command, which has been incredibly proficient in handling the minute-by-minute changes in safety regulations resulting from the war, life was able to be lived here without the concern that a siren might go off and we would have to find a safe place within minutes.

Of course, we are not out of the woods yet. The war in Gaza continues, 50 hostages, some dead, some hopefully still alive, remain under Hamas control and people are still being killed there on both sides. With the recent death in Gaza of seven members of the IDF our military losses in the Hamas war are now passed 800 people. That means some thousands of Israelis have lost their spouses, children, grandchildren, parents or siblings in a war we never wanted, but was thrust upon us after the Hamas massacre of October 7^th.

In the aftermath of our attack on Iran and the bombings by the US as well, the analysts both here in Israel and even more so in the US, are now actively debating whether or not the Iranians were really working on developing a nuclear bomb along with a delivery mechanism or if we and the US were perhaps premature in attacking Iran at this time.

I would submit that it does not matter one wit if Iran was actively working on a bomb, or a delivery mechanism, or if they were one week away, one month away or one year away from achieving that goal. A non-attitudinal assessment of the situation could lead to only one conclusion, that regardless of where they were in the process that process needed to be stopped completely or at least significantly delayed.

One need to only look at the facts on the ground, as the saying goes, and make an assessment on those which are actually agreed to by everyone, including the skeptics. They are:

• A country that is enriching uranium at the 80% level when enrichment levels for peaceful uses of atomic energy are generally at 10% or below, cannot claim that the reason they are doing so is for peaceful purposes.
• The fact that they are doing their best to hide all of their activity adds credence to the suspicion that their goals are anything but peaceful.
• A country whose leadership’s stated goal is death to Israel and death to America needs the world to take those threats seriously.
• Such threats gain further credence from the fact that Tehran had a doomsday clock that counted down the hours to 2040, the expected year of the demise of Israel, until we destroyed it some days ago.
• Iran’s attempt to build, finance and arm a ring of fire around Israel by supplying proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to fight Israel on their behalf, has earned them the title of the world’s biggest supporter of international terrorism.

When all of these factors are present and that country is less than a 15-minute ballistic missile flight to Israel, missiles that were coming at us on a regular basis both from Iran and its regional proxies, we needed no other reason to pre-empt another attack and attempt to decimate Iran’s war making capability.

In the case of the US, given Iran’s stated objective that after Israel, America was next, it was obvious that the US should have supported our efforts as they did last week. Frankly both of us should have done this years ago.

As such the arguments now regarding why Iran should not have been attacked because we really don’t know how close the Iranians were to having a nuclear bomb are, at best, specious. The fact is, if we and the US would have waited until we were both sure, by the time we were sure the nuclear bombs would probably already have been on their way towards us.

US President Trump, in my opinion, should stop trying to deal with this issue of whether or not Iran was close to developing a bomb. On that score he cannot even get agreement within his own administration as his national security team and the White House staff are in disagreement. Rather he should change the focus to having made a decision on the basis that Iran has openly threatened the US and has demonstrated its willingness to make good on its threats. Nothing else is needed to justify what was done. Iran got what it deserved.

To be sure we have been blessed to have come through this war with minimal, but yet very sad, casualties and with an Iran now significantly less of a threat to our existence than they were just a month ago. While it is not yet clear how much damage has been done to their nuclear program, there is no question that heavy damage has been inflicted on that program via US involvement, while we have destroyed much the country’s military defensive capabilities. For that alone the world should thank us for doing their dirty work.