Marc Champion: Netanyahu's big gamble risks a quicker Iranian bomb

There are three immediate questions to answer about the war that Israel has started with Iran, all of which lead to the most important of all: Can this achieve Israel’s stated goal of ensuring, once and for all, that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon?

If it can, then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to launch Israeli jets against a much larger nation of close to 90 million people would, depending on the nature of the targets struck and level of civilian casualties, be justified on both strategic and moral grounds.

The destruction of Israel is a declared policy of the regime in Tehran and one it’s been acting on for decades. There’s no doubt, despite denials, that Iran’s uranium enrichment program is designed to produce weapons-grade fuel; it’s practically there, with a growing stockpile concentrated to 60%, a level far beyond any conceivable civilian use.

So, even though Israel has a nuclear deterrent of its own, as a tiny “one-bomb” country it can’t take the risk of allowing such a hostile power to also have one.

But whether the air strikes can indeed succeed is a very big “if.” It’s more likely that Israel can do no more than delay Iran’s nuclear program by a few years. And if that’s the case, it becomes impossible to justify the certain bloodshed and unknowable consequences of starting this war, because it would at best gain no more than the diplomacy it displaced.

Both the abandoned 2015 international nuclear deal with Iran and any agreement that might realistically have come out of U.S.-Iranian talks that were due to resume on Sunday would do as much — only without loss of life, or the risk to regional stability and global markets.

So, in trying to unpick what Israel’s military action can achieve, the first of my three questions is: Why now? Netanyahu has for years been trying to persuade the U.S. to help him take out Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment sites. Yet he chose the early hours of Friday morning to go it alone.

One clear reason is that Iranian air defenses have been severely degraded over the past year. So, too, has the potential for retaliation that Iran built up over decades by arming both Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Hamas, in Gaza, with missiles. Those changes in the strategic environment have created a window to attack at much lower risk to both the Jewish state and its pilots than in the past. And it’s an opportunity that won’t, as Netanyahu has correctly said, last forever.

A second reason is equally clear and much more disturbing: The personal political interests of the Israeli prime minister. The belief that Netanyahu has been dragging out and expanding the war in Gaza for selfish reasons is now widely held within Israel, let alone outside. Conflict keeps him in power by avoiding a government collapse. It also puts off an inevitable post-war inquiry into the extraordinary failures of security and policy that allowed Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist rampage to succeed on his watch.

It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that Netanyahu’s decision to attack has come just days after he and his cabinet narrowly survived a vote of no-confidence in the Knesset, and at a time when the broad popular support he once enjoyed for continuing the fight in Gaza has evaporated. A conflict with Iran promises to again rally Israelis around the flag in ways that his policies in Gaza no longer do. Motives matter. They can drive decisions that otherwise wouldn’t be made.

Another vital question is whether Netanyahu’s plan for success in the war he’s started is predicated on drawing in the U.S. I don’t have access to classified information, or a direct line to the Israeli prime minister’s calculations. But the consensus among military analysts has long been that Israel can do only limited damage on its own; to succeed, it needs the 15-ton bunker-buster bombs that only America has.

These weapons are thought essential because Iran’s most advanced centrifuge cascades for enriching uranium are buried 60 to 90 meters (197 to 295 feet) under a mountain at Fordow, about an hour’s drive south of Qom, home to the Islamic Republic’s most important seminaries. Iran has been building an even deeper facility to replace the surface one at Natanz, an hour further south.

We know from the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the Vienna-based IAEA, that neither Fordow nor an above-ground Iranian nuclear center at Isfahan were among the 100 initial targets attacked by 200 Israeli jets on Friday. Nor was there any sign of radiation leaks at the Bushehr nuclear power plant or the largest enrichment site, at Natanz. This makes sense.

The first priority for any complex bombing campaign would be to neutralize air defenses and reduce Iranian options for retaliation, by hitting missile bases and the commanders who would coordinate their use. The primary targets should come later.

Whether Donald Trump allows the U.S. to become the proverbial dog wagged by an Israeli tail may well now rely on Netanyahu’s biggest gamble of all, which concerns the third question: How will Ayatollah Ali Khamenei choose — or be able — to respond.

As of Friday morning, Iran’s Supreme Leader had authorized the launch of about 100 long-range drones against Israel, most if not all of which appear to have been shot down. In a statement, Khamenei pledged revenge against the Jewish State, both now and over a long future, so there’s more to come. He didn’t, however, mention the U.S. That was in stark contrast to Iranian warnings before the attack, which had pledged to hit America’s personnel and Arab allies in the Gulf should any attack occur.

Khamenei no doubt understands that any such action would draw U.S. forces into the fight. So too would a retaliation against Israel that targets civilian centers. So, whether through caution or lack of capacity to do more by conventional military means, Khamenei may not force Trump to involve U.S. forces. That risks leaving Israel to conduct a weeks-long campaign of air strikes against hardened uranium enrichment sites that may not succeed.

Out of the same caution, Khamenei may also avoid any dramatic public gesture such as declaring Iran’s withdrawal from the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Either way, the stakes are now extraordinarily high and the outcome for Israel is uncertain. Iran already announced an acceleration to its enrichment program in response to a mere vote of censure by the IAEA last week. So it seems probable that, rather than back down, the regime in Tehran will now seek to build a nuclear arsenal as fast as it can.

The risk to Netanyahu is that Khamenei can walk this tightrope between hitting back hard enough that he isn’t damaged at home by appearing weak, but not so hard as to draw in the U.S. and its bunker-busting bombs. If he can pull that off, then Israel’s attack could backfire spectacularly, even while showing its continued technological and military superiority. Rather than destroy or even delay Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power, there’s a danger that this war of choice brings it closer.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Europe, Russia and the Middle East. He was previously Istanbul bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal.

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