The Washington Post is reporting today that the U.S. military has given President Trump a plan to go get the Iranian uranium that has allegedly been the focus of this administration’s campaign, such that it is. It’s hard to express what a really bad idea this could be.
Limiting Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon remains a top goal of the administration. But this plan, experts say, would represent an enormously difficult endeavor of a type never before attempted during wartime. The mission would require the airlift of potentially hundreds or thousands of troops and heavy equipment to support the excavation and recovery of radioactive material. That could take weeks, former defense officials have estimated, and take place under fire deep inside Iran.
You don’t say. Speculation is that the uranium may have been moved to the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center before the U.S. and Israeli bombs fell. If it’s buried there, it’s going to be a considerable shit-show getting it out, while under intense fire, deep in central Iran. And it won’t be a quick snatch and grab.
The best way to recover the material would be after a ceasefire and accompanied by IAEA personnel, said retired Gen. Joseph Votel, who has led both U.S. Central Command and U.S. Special Operations Command. “But if you have to fight your way in,” he said, it could be feasible.
“There’s a lot of risks associated with it. This is a very high order of complexity. There likely will be casualties,” he said. “But this is the problem set for U.S. Special Operations forces. It’s what we do. We have people who are specifically trained to go into these types of environments.”
I recognize that Gen (ret) Joseph Votel is a serious operator and no one’s fool. But come on. “It’s what we do.” This is a completely unprecedented operation and could go sideways so quickly. One has to wonder if the military analysts outlined the cost and benefits of such an operation. Despite stupid and moronic statements by SecDef Pete Hegseth about preventing Iran from ever getting a nuclear bomb, there are better options. I talked about these options in previous post, not that I have any particular inside advantage on this issue.
Here's How the U.S. Govt Could Get Iran's HEU
This will be a short post today. Last week, I was in Livermore, California, participating in a biosecurity conference hosted by the Center for Global Security Research. It was a really interesting two days, broadly covering issues such as nation-state and terrorist biological threats, the role of AI and biotech, private-public partnerships, public healt…
It’s just madness. You have to wonder if the Chairman offered three options to the president on eliminating the Iranian nuclear material, and whether this was option three.
Option 1 - negotiate with Iran and get it out of the country without kinetic options.
Option 2 - bomb Isfahan (again) and bury the stuff deeper. Maybe it gets dispersed a bit, but we don’t care. Zero U.S. casualties.
Option 3 - go in hard with a large ground element and anticipate significant casualties for a prize that Iran can reconstitute over time.
You never are supposed to pick option 3.
