Why It Was Time To Fold Iran's Nuclear Aspirations

"Iran continued supporting acts of terrorism through its proxies and partner groups -- such as Hezbollah, Ansar Allah [Houthis], Hamas and al-Ashtar Brigades -- in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon. Palestine, Syria and Yemen."

"[Iran is the world's] leading state sponsor of terrorism." 

"[The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps [IRGC] has supported terrorist] recruitment, financing and plotting across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas." 

U.S. State Department, Country Reports on Terrorism, 2023

 

"Over the past 40-plus years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has targeted dissidents, western opponents, Israelis and Jews in assassination plots, abduction plots and surveillance operation that facilitate both." 

"Iran has carried out such external operations around the world."

Combating Terrorism Center, West Point, 2022 study 

Iranians burn US and Israeli flags during an anti-Israel rally in Tehran on June 20. Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

 

Last month the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that found Iran had stockpiled sufficient enriched uranium to build nine nuclear bombs. The IAEA chastised the regime for its attempts to shield areas of its nuclear program from their inspectors. The regime is known to have been developing weapons able to carry out its plans to annihilate Israel, enriching uranium to 60 percent, a short step from producing the 90 percent enrichment for the creation of an atomic bomb.

 

Iran's fixation on destroying Israel is not a covert operation. In 2005, then-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stood before the General Assembly of the United Nations and spoke of the need to see that Israel was "wiped off the map". He spoke too of the otherworldly aura he felt surrounding him, attributable to the unseen presence of the Hidden Mahdi, soon to be revealed, and with that the world would be destroyed, Armageddon. Only those faithful to Islam would be guaranteed a place in Heaven.

 

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Photo: Justin Lane/EPA

That guarantee would be assured only for Shi'ite Muslims, all others would perish; non-Muslims and Muslims in the majority who practise the Sunni version of the faith. Until that blessed event occurred, the Islamic Republic focused on destroying the Jewish state, a long tradition of violent enmity targeting Jews that turned afterward on others deemed unfit to live. The fascist element of most such ideologies. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke of Israel as a "cancerous tumour" to be "removed and eradicated".

 

This man of God, albeit the God of Islam, advocated on his website for a "final solution" to address Israel's existence; reminiscent of the Nazi genocidal fixation that produced the Holocaust. Through its proxy terrorist militias in Iraq, Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, as their benefactor, inciting them to act on behalf of Islam's injunction to jihad, the Islamic Republic tutored and armed and financed strategies of terrorist attacks against Israel over the years, culminating in the Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023 of southern Israel resulting in thousands of terrorists and Gaza civilians raping, looting, torturing, murdering Israeli children, women, and the elderly.

 

Hamas is still  holding 52 dead and living Israelis as hostages, of the original 250 that were abducted out of Israel and held by terrorists and Palestinian civilians in inhumane conditions of starvation, torture and sensory deprivation. That was the latest mass atrocity forced on Israel. Previous events included attacks on international Jewish targets by Iran's proxies in past years in South America, that terrorized Jews, destroyed their institutions, and left diaspora Jews to mourn their dead.

 

Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 was shot down in 2020 by the IRGC -- ostensibly confusing the civilian airliner with an incoming U.S. missile -- after take-off from Tehran, killing all 175 passengers and crew on board. Iran's dread reputation as one of the world's most lethally ruthless regimes posing a threat to other countries has been well earned. Iran ranks 163 of 165 countries listed on the "Human Freedom Index" published by the Cato and Fraser Institutes. Iranian civilians are repressed and oppressed by their ruling mullahs. Women are forced to adhere to a strict dress code or face imprisonment and sometimes death.

 

When Iranians rebelled in 2022 after the arrest and murder of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurdish woman whose crime was failure to wear a hijab in the prescribed manner, the regime cracked down to the extent of killing an estimated 550 protesters, and arresting close to 20,000 demonstrators. Iran's sharia code of law saw it carrying out executions yearly at a rate far exceeding any other country. Some 975 people were hanged last year, among them political dissidents and those arrested for protesting Mahsa Amini's murder. 

 

An Israeli Air Force pilot is seen heading to an F-16 fighter jet before taking off for strikes in Iran, in a handout photo published June 22, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

It was past time for the Islamic Republic's aspiration to achieve nuclear status to be forcefully denied, when negotiations to persuade it to relinquish its nuclear plans fell on deaf ears. Israel began an aerial bombardment over a week ago to destroy Iran's nuclear plants. In the process with pinpoint accuracy the Israeli Airforce eradicated leading political, military, nuclear-scientific and IRGC figures involved in strategies meant to annihilate Israel.

 

The bombardment was relentless, hitting nuclear plants, military bases, IRGC training centers, and the regime's national network towers. Iranian airports were hit, planes destroyed, the country's naval bases hit as well as their ships. Israeli planes flew over Jordanian airspace, refuelled in midflight and continued on to Iran, hitting the capital Tehran, in its planned mission to destroy Iran's nuclear program, and its ballistic missile production sites and weapons depots.

 

Iran counter-attacked, sending drones and missiles into Israel.  Most of the projectiles were met in midair by Israeli defense technology. Those that landed generally did so in open spaces. It was, for the most part, debris from the drones and missiles hit en route before landing, that caused most of the damage, on falling to earth. But there were some direct missile hits, causing injury and death to Israelis, in fortunately small numbers. Warning sirens sent people to bomb shelters, interrupting the course of normal days for over a week. 

"[Israel is] very, very close [to achieving its goals in Iran]. We are setting them back, we are removing the threat."

"We won’t pursue our actions beyond what is needed to achieve [the goals], but we also won’t finish too soon. When the objectives are achieved, then the operation is complete and the fighting will stop."

"I have no doubt that this is a regime that wants to wipe us out, and that’s why we embarked on this operation to eliminate the two concrete threats to our existence: the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat. We are moving step by step towards achieving these goals. We are very, very close to completing them." 

"I told him [President Trump' of our need to act, and he understood it very well. And I knew that when push comes to shove, he would do the right thing. He would do the right thing for America. He would do the right thing for the free world. He would do the right thing for civilization."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  

Members of the Israeli security forces check the apparent remains of an Iranian ballistic missile lying on the ground on the outskirts of Qatzrin, Golan Heights, Israel, on Monday, June 23, 2025. (Photo by MICHAEL GILADI/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty

 

The United States under its president, Donald Trump, made a decision to get involved, using the only heavy-duty bombs capable of penetrating the mountain fastness of Iran's major uranium-processing installation at Fordow. With all of Iran's major nuclear plants destroyed, its airforce now decimated, its naval fleet destroyed and its leadership in disarray, what could not be accomplished through diplomacy has now seen success through the medium of armed conflict. 

 

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon in Washington, June 22, 2025, after the US military struck three sites in Iran, directly joining Israel’s effort to destroy the country’s nuclear program. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

 

"Completely and Fully Obliterated"

 

"We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan."

"All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on t heir way home."

"This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!"     

U.S. President Donald J. Trump 

President Trump with his Cabinet in the Situation Room of the White House as the U.S. conducts strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran. June 21, 2025.  White House

 

And so the suspense ends, the commitment made, the attacks to deprive the Islamic Republic of Iran of its coveted aspiration has melted away. Even if Russia and North Korea have responded by vowing to provide Iran with the nuclear treasure it so avidly sought. Early Sunday the deed  was done, The American military directly linked with Israel's war on Iran's nuclear program, smashing its ballistic rocketry agenda, destroying its airports and planes, and bombing its naval vessels, targeting for assassination military, political, nuclear chiefs, most particularly those within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

 

Iran, stressed the American president, now faces a choice that will impact its future and its very being: "peace or tragedy". Yet Iran's nuclear agency while confirming the attacks on the nation's atomic sites responded by reaffirming its work will proceed, that no outside agency can impose on the Islamic Republic any impediment to its choices and decisions, inspired by its theocratic devotion. 

 

Israel's long-thought-out strategy in response to the existential threats uttered time and again by Iran's Supreme Leader linked to its adamant search for nuclear weaponry to match its advancing missiles technology was launched precisely because diplomacy efforts have failed time and again, despite the urging of the UN's Antonio Gutteres' insistence on the effectiveness of diplomacy over military action. Israel's purpose was clear; to systematically eradicate air defences and offensive missile capabilities along with constructive damage to Iran's nuclear enrichment plans.  

 

Yet although the strategy and its brilliant aerial execution achieved all the stated objectives, there was just so much and not more that even Israel's well-trained and -armed military could produce when faced with the conundrum of how to penetrate deep into a mountainside to destroy a nuclear enrichment plant lodged there. "Your bold decision to target Iran's nuclear facilities, with the awesome and righteous might of the United States, will change history", lauded Israel's Prime Minister, delivering his message of deep appreciation to the American President. The U.S. "has done what no other country on Earth could do", he concluded.

(COMBO) This combination of pictures created on June 22, 2025 using handout satellite images released by Maxar Technologies shows Iran's Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), northeast of the city of Qom on on June 19, 2025 (top), and Iran's Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), northeast of the city of Qom, after US strikes on the site June 22, 2025 (bottom). (Satellite image 2025 Maxar Technologies / AFP)

 

It was soon revealed that six bunker-buster bombs struck the Fordo facility, while 30 Tomahawk missiles were fired by American submarines located 645 kilometres' distance to strike the sites of Natanz and Isfahan. Predictably, Iran pledged retaliation should the U.S. link to the Israeli assault. As far as Trump is concerned he has no interest in having American boots on the ground in Iran in line with his re-election pledge to avoid foreign conflicts. "The last thing you want to do", he said to reporters, while still mulling over how to proceed, two days before the U.S. bombing intervention.

 

On the other hand, after months of fruitless talks on de-escalation of Iran's nuclear enrichment program, the president vowed he would not permit Iran to work toward success in nuclear weaponry. In an effort to head off American involvement in Israel's attacks on Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned any strike targeting the Islamic Republic would "result in irreparable damage for them", while an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman warned that "any American intervention would be a recipe for an all-out war in the region".

 

Israel's offensive prepared the ground, presenting an opportunity to permanently destroy Iran's nuclear sites. What was needed to destroy Fordo, however, was something Israel did not have in its military armaments. An appeal was made to Mr. Trump for the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, whose weight and kinetic force could penetrate and explode deeply buried targets. And only the B-2 stealth bomber could deliver the bomb. The B-2 is part of the American arsenal, flown by American pilots only.

A B-2 bomber arrives at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, June 22, 2025. (AP Photo/David Smith)

 

Believed able to penetrate about 61 metres below the surface before exploding, the bombs can be dropped one after another, each successive blast drilling deeper and deeper. Iran has been producing highly enriched uranium at Fordo, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Strikes by Israel at the Natanz nuclear site caused nuclear contamination at the site itself, not the surrounding area, according to the IAEA.  

"We know exactly where the so-called 'Supreme Leader' is hiding."

"He is an easy target, but is safe there -- We are not going to take him out [kill!], at least not for now."

President Trump