IRAN’S NUCLEAR FALLOUT

The late Senator and presidential candidate John McCain once said: “The only thing worse than bombing Iran is letting Iran get the bomb.” His words ring true today more than ever, as the theocratic regime presses ahead with its nuclear enrichment program, enriching uranium to 60% purity, a hair’s breadth away from weapons grade. When the mullahs signed Barack Obama’s deeply flawed nuclear deal in 2015, they were already accomplished liars, denying they were trying to develop a bomb and claiming their nuclear program was solely for peaceful energy purposes. With vast reserves of oil and gas it was clear that the Islamic Republic had no need for nuclear energy. But the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal was raced through by Obama, determined to leave his footnote in history after two terms of relative inaction in the White House.

It quickly became clear that the deal was one-sided, containing page after page of clauses relating to the lifting of sanctions, in return for which the West got very little, apart from a few scant paragraphs detailing Iranian cooperation in slowing down its nuclear enrichment process for a period of up to 15 years. Regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were limited to the Natanz site in Isfahan Province, the country’s main underground nuclear facility with over 19,000 operational centrifuges. Natanz itself was first revealed by the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), the main democratic opposition group, in 2002; until that point it had been a closely guarded secret site, undiscovered by Western intelligence agencies. The JCPOA deal restricted IAEA access to non-military sites, despite almost all the theocratic regime’s nuclear activities being undertaken by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on their military sites. It was little wonder that President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the USA from the deal in 2018, during his first term in office, describing it as “the worst deal in American history.”

The lifting of sanctions under the terms of the JCPOA released an estimated $150 billion in frozen assets, providing a windfall for a regime whose biggest export is war and terror. The mullahs used the windfall to fund Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the brutal Shi’ite militias in Iraq. They ploughed further resources into developing intercontinental ballistic missile systems capable of being fitted with a nuclear warhead. As always, their main target is their hated enemy Israel, which they refer to as a “cancer” and solemnly swear to “wipe off the map”. The fall of their key ally, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the decapitation of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, has put the brakes on their warmongering ‘axis of resistance’ objectives, but the threat of a nuclear strike continues. In January, Rafael Grossi, head of the IAEA, told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Iran is “pressing the gas pedal” on enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels.

Nor should anyone be in any doubt that the mullahs would use a nuclear bomb if they had one. The doctrine of mutual assured destruction or MAD, which deterred the Soviets and Americans from unleashing nuclear weapons during the Cold War, has no significance in the theocratic regime. In 2007, Professor Bernard Lewis, a leading authority on the Middle East and Islamic studies, said: “To these fanatics mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent, it is an inducement. We know already [from the Iran-Iraq war] that they do not give a damn about killing their own people in great numbers. They are giving them a quick free pass to heaven and all its delights.” Indeed, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the fundamentalist Shi’ite cleric who hi-jacked the 1979 revolution in Iran, was on record as saying in a 1981 speech: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. I say let this land [Iran] go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.” His philosophy is strictly adhered to by the current Supreme Leader – Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has shown his disdain for the lives of his own people by embarking on a frenzy of executions. Over 1,000 have been hanged in the past year, including may political prisoners.

Back in the White House, Donald Trump has reimposed his ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions campaign, adding to the woes of the mullahs’ dictatorial regime. They now need a nuclear weapon to reassert their dominance in the Middle East. Their clandestine development program is racing ahead in multiple secret sites across the country, often deep underground. Donald Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu have warned that they will never allow the Iranian regime to produce a nuclear weapon. Military action is therefore a clear option. However, Western appeasers, desperate to avert a military strike, continue to dangle the carrot of a resurrected JCPOA in return for the lifting of sanctions. The mullahs grasp this option with enthusiasm, in the full knowledge that they would never adhere to its nuclear decommissioning provisions.

Western leaders who make a case for a Palestinian State, fail to understand that the Iranian regime sees such a solution as Palestine totally replacing the State of Israel, which they regard as an alien intruder on their sacred land. They cannot envisage any situation involving a two-state solution, where Palestine would exist peacefully side by side with Israel. The appeasers are therefore pursuing a phoney proposition, which will never be accepted by the mullahs. It must surely by now have dawned on even the most ardent appeasers that the mullahs will not be stopped, either by increasingly harsh sanctions, or endless diplomacy and negotiations. The only possible outcome must be a military strike on the regime’s nuclear installations or the overthrow of the regime by a nationwide uprising. The mullahs laid the foundations for a military strike when they launched a barrage of 200 missiles at Israel on 1^st October 2024. The Iranians, who normally relied on their proxy militias for such attacks, had broken cover and invited direct Israeli retaliation. They didn’t have to wait for long. The Israelis launched a series of “precise and targeted” airstrikes on Iran on Saturday 26 October 2024, exposing the complete inadequacy of the mullahs’ air defences. The operation no doubt emboldened the hawks in Tel Aviv and Washington DC who see a comprehensive elimination of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear assets as the only way to guarantee future peace in the Middle East.