Israel should attack Iran’s nuclear program while it can — and before the desperate Iranian regime detonates a bomb.
Iran is the world’s most aggressive state sponsor of terrorism, and has been seeking to develop nuclear weapons for decades. It is said to be very close to being able to do. That is why Israel and (at times) the U.S. have taken actions, both overt and covert, to undermine the Iranian nuclear program, and have threatened to attack it, as a last resort.
Until recently, Iran had several deterrents against such an attack. One was the presence of the Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist organization, Hezbollah, in Lebanon. Hezbollah built a stockpile of hundreds of thousands of rockets, which it aimed at Israeli cities, and built a network of tunnels, arsenals, and hideouts near the Israeli border, preparing for a future invasion of northern Israel. Israel knew that if it ever attacked Iran, Hezbollah would attack it with great force.
Another deterrent was Syria. The Iranian regime, together with Russia, developed an alliance with dictator Bashar al-Assad. Iran used Syria as a conduit for weapons to Hezbollah, and used the Syrian military as a buffer against Israel. Syrian air defenses, bolstered by Russian radar and surface-to-air missiles, were both an early warning system and a deterrent. Israel attacked weapons convoys, but avoided more ambitious plans, especially given the Russian presence.
The fact that Israel could not easily fly over Syria meant that it would have had to use longer and more circuitous routes. Israel did retaliate against two Iranian ballistic missile attacks this year, but did so from outside Iranian airspace. The fact that Israel had to look for alternatives also made its plans more vulnerable to disruption — as in 2012, when the Obama administration leaked plans for an Israeli attack from Azerbaijan, in order to thwart it.
The Obama administration preferred to use diplomatic means, even though it participated in a covert effort to use a computer virus, Stuxnet, to confound Iranian centrifuges. The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran was the result of Obama’s efforts, though it was full of loopholes, effectively allowing Iran to become a nuclear power after roughly a decade. President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, and President Joe Biden wasted years trying to restore it.
Iran took advantage of Biden’s diplomatic dithering to accelerate its uranium enrichment and to encourage its proxies — including Houthi rebels in Yemen, whom the Biden administration foolishly removed from a list of terror groups.
Over the years, Obama and Biden gave Iran access to billions of dollars in previously frozen assets, ransom payments, and oil revenues. These allowed Iran to fund its terrorist proxies, as well as its nuclear program and its advances in ballistic missile and drone technology. Iran soon created a “ring of fire” around Israel — Hezbollah in Lebanon; Hamas in Gaza; terror groups in Judea and Samaria; Shiite militias in Iraq; and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
But Iran, and its proxies, underestimated Israel’s will to fight — even when under pressure to relent from the Biden administration.
After Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering 1200 people and kidnapping 250 more, Israel destroyed Hamas. Hezbollah joined in the attack on Israel, firing rockets at civilian communities and farms — and Israel eventually struck back, eliminating Hezbollah’s leadership and uprooting it from the Israeli border.
With Hezbollah weakened, Syria’s rebels took the opportunity to strike at the Assad regime, which had depended on Hezbollah as its shock troops in a genocidal civil war. The regime crumbled unexpectedly as the rebels advanced.
With Assad gone, and his troops in hiding, Israel knocked out almost every major weapon they left behind, including Syria’s notorious chemical weapons. Israel also eliminated Syria’s air defenses — just as it damaged Iran’s in October.
The Iranian leadership, which until now has had the luxury of fighting its wars on other people’s territory, is now at it weakest point since the Iran-Iraq War, and possibly since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. It can no longer deter Israel or the U.S. — or other regional enemies — using conventional means. It could accept President-elect Donald Trump’s offer to negotiate a new relationship as an alternative to war.
Or it could choose, as North Korea did, to go nuclear.
Once the Iranian regime establishes that it has nuclear weapons, it will enjoy new immunity from attack — especially as it has demonstrated the ability to launch missiles at Israel and other countries.
Going nuclear has its risks, as well — including international economic sanctions — but there are certainly some elements of the Iranian leadership who understand that the regime’s losses in the war it started could encourage its domestic opponents to rise up against it.
Therefore there is a very real danger that Iran will rush to develop a nuclear weapon — and there is a real opportunity to prevent it from doing so, one that may not return soon if the regime can rebuild its defenses and its terror proxies.
Israel, and the world, would regret missing this opportunity.
Biden told Israel not to attack Iran’s nuclear sites, but he is on the way out. Trump has said Israel should attack, but wants calm by the time he takes office.
It’s now or never.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.