Iran's Uranium is No Longer the Point

After all the bad noise last week, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency warned that Iran could be back to enriching uranium in just a few months. This is at odds with the White House’s victory tour assessment of having “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. To paraphrase Dire Straits, if “Two men say they're Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”

The 4717 wouldn’t dismiss the idea that both of them are. Last week the we assessed that the program was not obliterated – for one thing, no radioactive fall-out after the strike. Secondly, the Russian scientists working a Fordow all evacuated just prior to the strike – and it seems slightly insane that they wouldn’t just take the stuff with them. The lot would fit in a mid-sized sedan. Still, the strike likely knocked the capability to do much with that fissile material by (hopefully) years. True, this is just kicking the can down the road, but with a little luck we might have out-kicked the threat of an Iranian regime that has both the capability and political will to actually use a nuke.

To tease out the signal from the noise: the pile of uranium, and whether or not they can get more of it, really isn’t the point any more. Before it got hyper-political, the assessment was that the Islamic Republic had enough yellowcake for a few nuclear weapons - say four. They’ve still got that much, and if not, can get more from abroad. Just look at the map: Iran shares a border with Pakistan - which sells nuclear know how like its a Vo-tech school - which shares a border with China (just don’t tell India). To the north, just across the Caspian Sea, is Russia. Iran will get the uranium it wants.

The question, then, isn’t that pile of weapons grade uranium, but a) the ability to weaponize it and b) the political will to use it. Iran’s ballistic missile program is worryingly good and a lot more accurate than its Russian made air-defense system. The tricky little blind-spot in all of this is Iran’s ability to make a war-head. It’s complicated - go watch Oppenheimer. From that grim blind-spot, we work to the next question: “If they’ve got one, what are they going to do with it?”

The proxy network Iran spent decades building to project power is a shambles. The powerful allies that allowed that protected the middle weight regime from blow back have left the Islamic Republic to its face its fate alone. The Ayatollah is more or less hiding in the presidential bunker. He’s scared - yet another grim blind spot: It’s hard to predict what someone “scared out of their wits” will do. That’s why they call it that. Lash out or proceed with caution?

Right now a dash for the nuke seems inevitable - but intent is not actualization. Nor does it answer the question of political will. If the threat to the regime is not existential - read: if someone stops tweeting about regime change from the presidential account - the clerics running Iran might ease up on enfant terrible act and make some attempt to behave like a real country. That more than anything else would stabilize the regime.

If the Ayatollah is a true believer in Iran’s mission to make the entire world Shi’a - then this would be a failure. If he’s more interested in maintaining the regime (almost certainly the case) then the calculus shifts, but you get something close to the same answer: To use one, or four, nuclear weapons would trigger a reaction that would end the regime. It might obliterate Israel in the process, but the odds are against it and Tehran knows this.

In short, a first strike would leave the devilish Sunni Muslim, Jewish and Christian non-believers all looking at Iran and muttering, “Well, at least that’s over.”

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