"Nuclear war" by other means

Unlike many others in this area of ​​the planet, where religious and all other conflicts have been erupting since man domesticated the first animals, the reason for the new war in the Middle East is not oil but uranium. The fierce armed conflict between Iran and Israel, which is causing civilian and military casualties on both sides of the Zagros mountain massif, began on Saturday, June 13, with a surprise missile attack on everything nuclear in the Islamic republic. The operation was explained as an urgent, preventive action because, allegedly, Iran was close to assembling its first nuclear bomb.

Satellite images taken before and after the attack on the famous Natanz nuclear facility, which was one of the main targets, show the entire facilities and then their ruins. The observer of these recordings can clearly see that the action was clearly planned long in advance and when it was started, it was carried out very systematically. The targets were carefully selected parts of the plant, and one can see the great precision of the operation, which under the name "Rising Lion" was jointly carried out by the Israeli army, the IDF, and the Mossad intelligence service.

The facility known as Natanz, about 220 kilometers south of Tehran, officially known as the Shahid Ahmadi Rishan Nuclear Facility, was used to enrich uranium. It is about the fact that the process known to physics as the fission of the atomic nucleus, which is the basis of both the operation of the reactor and the monstrous bomb explosion, occurs in the so-called fissile isotope of uranium U235, of which there is only 0,72 percent in natural uranium. The rest is the uranium isotope U238, so for any use it is necessary to "enrich" it - in order to use it in reactors, it is necessary to increase the proportion of U235 from 3 to 5 percent, while all 85 percent is needed for a bomb.

Natanz is a facility that had halls 30-40 meters underground where the enrichment centrifuges were located. That's why, after the first reports, it remained an open question whether the Israeli bombing had any effect. But three days after the attack, the International Nuclear Energy Agency IAEA issued a statement that the presence of more dangerous chemical substances was registered inside Natanz, which could only be released by destroying the uranium enrichment plant.

photo: ap photo

KILL THE MASTERPIECE OF THE NUCLEAR PROGRAM

On Saturday, Israel also killed the most influential nuclear physicist in Iran, Fereydoun Abbasi, a tough and enigmatic physicist who, when asked by a journalist about uranium, silently looked down the marble hall and said: "We are considering every possibility." For most in the West, Abbasi was known simply as "the mastermind of Iran's nuclear program." He is 2010/2011. was the only survivor of a series of Israeli assassinations of Iranian physicists. He was driving with his wife to the university and noticed a motorcyclist who placed a bomb on his car, after which he stopped and ran out of the vehicle with his wife, which then exploded.

Fifteen years later, the Israelis still managed to liquidate him. In addition to Abbasi, five other nuclear physicists from two universities in Tehran, the entire hard core of Iran's nuclear program, were killed. Although everyone is replaceable even in the toughest system, killing all the scientific leaders of a nuclear program at the same time is still not easily compensated. American journalists compared Israel's action to "sorting out a family business" in the iconic final scene of the film Kum, when the new head of the mafia family, Michael Corleone, kills all his enemies, real and potential, during the baptism scene.

But if you're not a fan of precision missiles, there's no doubt that you're worried about the whole situation, which has suddenly become, as it happens, very complex. People are dying all over Iran and Israel, hit by rockets, bombs and drones that manage to bypass both the Iron Dome and Iran's air defenses (already considered destroyed by the US). The possibility that Iran could, like the other nine nuclear powers, assemble its nuclear weapons is one of the biggest topics of international diplomacy, which is now apparently finally closed, in order to open a new one - war.

ATOMS FOR PEACE

The nuclear program has been developing in Iran since the 23s. Paradoxically, Iran received its first nuclear capabilities from the United States through the "Atoms for Peace" program. During the latter peaceful period and the reign of Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran planned to build as many as 1968 nuclear power plants that would solve the issue of electricity production in this great country. Since at that time nuclear energy was understood by most non-aligned countries as a desirable peacetime activity, in XNUMX Iran joined the famous NPT agreement of the United Nations, which prohibits the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

However, after the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran broke ties with the West and various forms of international cooperation stopped. In the reports of the Institute for Science and International Security from Washington, it is stated that with the revolution darkness is falling on the nuclear program in Iran. Developed research in physics, a significant number of personnel trained in America and Europe, as well as several test reactors represent a stake in thinking about the Iranian bomb both at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna and Israel, and among the mullahs who lead the new Islamic State. The idea of ​​gradually redirecting the nuclear program towards military goals after the Islamic Revolution is coming slowly. During the next decade, Iran will cooperate with Argentina in nuclear research, and from the 1s, close cooperation with France, Pakistan, and finally the Russian Federation began. It is Rosatom that will participate in the construction of the first civil nuclear power plant, Bushahr 12, which was put into operation on September 2011, 1000. Today, Iran has one Busher nuclear power plant with a Russian VVER-1000 reactor of XNUMX MW, while it is building two new ones in the same place with the Russians.

FURTHER INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS AND THE SPY UNDERTAKING OF THE CENTURY

The Russians have been providing Iran with enormous technical assistance since the 11s, and thanks to this, Iran is building a non-trivial research network led by the Nuclear Energy Organization. In parallel, there is a whole series of centers for nuclear technologies, secret and public, the most famous of which is the aforementioned Natanz. With the initiation of greater activity in uranium enrichment centers, concern begins to grow in Israel, and then in the US and Europe. After September 2001, XNUMX, with the beginning of the "war against terrorism", it is no longer questioned in the Western media that Iran is violating the NPT agreement and is secretly making nuclear weapons.

Since 2002, along with the increasing tightening of rhetoric, Iran has completely changed its approach and started to openly say how it is actually enriching uranium at two sites. With the traditional volleys of accusations against the Zionists, it becomes quite natural that the leaders in Iran, among them the late President Ahmadinejad, somehow announce the development of the Iranian nuclear bomb and say that America will "regret it". Various sources are increasingly testifying to high activity in Iran's nuclear facilities, and IAEA inspectors, despite the NPT agreement under which they can inspect signatory countries, are increasingly denied hospitality.

During a decade of international sanctions, Iran loses hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. Namely, with the further development of the nuclear program, the United Nations since 2006 has introduced a series of sanctions requiring Iran to immediately stop further production of nuclear fuel. However, the sanctions completely miss the mark. With them, things become bleak in the economy, but as the threat of an American invasion diminishes, and with sanctions Iran has less and less to lose, the development of nuclear weapons is more and more intense. New reactors, new factories and new mines are opening.

However, around 2010, Iran's nuclear venture is hit by a series of unusual events. There is a dramatic series of murders of leading physicists, which are initially reported as Mossad actions, including the aforementioned assassination of Abbasi. The killings were followed by unusual explosions at Iran's nuclear facilities.

As David Patrikarakos writes in a comprehensive book Nuclear Iran, which was released in the USA and England in 2012, during 2009, researchers at the Natanz plant noticed that the centrifuges (which are used to separate radioactive ore in a long and expensive process) began to explode by themselves for some reason. It will turn out that the cause of this is one of the most dramatic espionage stories of this century - the Iranian centrifuges were allegedly infected with the Stuxnet computer virus written for that purpose. The virus was "inserted" into the software of the equipment that was purchased in Europe while the ship was traveling across the Indian Ocean to Iran.

WAR BY OTHER MEANS

After the Stuxnet attack, Iran changes its policy and negotiations begin. A real diplomatic hurricane has been going on for three years, and in an endless series of meetings, an agreement is beginning to emerge. In Lausanne, the permanent members of the Security Council together with Germany, designated as P5+1, are meeting to sign a document with Iran in April 2015 that will trace the path to the Iran deal. Diplomatic activities continue and Abbasi personally gives an interview in June in which he talks about Iran's readiness to assume obligations.

Finally, on July 14, 2015, in Vienna, all parties sign the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA), a document that will be remembered as the Iran Agreement and which was probably the greatest success of world diplomacy in the 21st century. It obliges Iran to fully cooperate with the inspectors, to stop a significant part of the research and shut down some facilities while, on the other hand, the world lifts sanctions against Iran. In the following months, the plan from the agreement is realized, the nuclear threat disappears, and Iran begins to export 2,6 million barrels of oil per day.

Nevertheless, in the following years, evidence appears that Iran is not shutting down the program quickly and efficiently enough, and that its policy is playing a "double bottom". In the USA, Donald Trump is in power, and he makes the decision that the USA will leave the JCPA agreement, which has been prepared for years.

Things go back a decade. However, in Trump's new mandate, the topic is back on the table. Along with the tensions accompanying the war in Gaza, where the proxy armies of Iran, Hezbollah and groups in Yemen occasionally clashed with Israel, as well as constant attacks and the occasional drone war between these two countries, Iran and the US have repeatedly tried to move towards solving this issue. However, new attempts to make an agreement were not to the liking of Israel, which was worried that in the negotiations led by Trump, Iran would keep the program and one day build nuclear weapons.

It turned out that Israel's concerns were not unfounded. Late last week, the IAEA came out with its toughest assessment yet that Iran is in fact in violation of nuclear regulations. Analysts were concerned by reports that Iran was enriching uranium to 60 percent, and a whole host of other reports were causing anxiety in the West.

And then, on the morning of Saturday, June 13, Israel systematically launched an attack on all of Iran's nuclear capabilities, from human to technological to military.

photo: ap photo

CONTINUATION "NUCLEAR WAR" BY OTHER MEANS

In addition to targeting several nuclear facilities and causing considerable damage, as well as assassinations of physicists and a number of residences, the Israeli attacks also killed Major General Mohammad Bagheri, the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, and before that many other military leaders were killed, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, as well as the commander of the aviation. The Americans did not participate in the attack, the Israelis, as is their custom, carried it out themselves, but there is no doubt that the USA will protect Israel from the retaliation of a large and dangerous neighbor.

Already on the first day, Trump made a series of statements about the conflict, among other things, that the 60-day deadline he gave to the now dead Iranian leaders had expired, and as rockets began to fly from both sides, the rhetoric intensified in both Tehran and Washington. As the days pass, it is increasingly clear that Americans can hardly stay out of this conflict, which has far surpassed previous charades and which in all likelihood will not end quickly or easily.

However, what about Iran's nuclear program? Did he survive the assassination? As it happens in these circumstances, the main "nuclear event" happened. It is hard to imagine that the program survived and that we could now move towards a nuclear exchange. The real question is whether, even before the attack with 60 percent enrichment, Iran had the capacity to do anything at all, and secondly, would Israel embark on an attack on its nuclear capabilities that it has been preparing for decades, while leaving Iran capable of a nuclear response and flattening the narrow terrain between the Mediterranean and the Jordan Valley with one detonation?

Israel is paying the price of its decision with war, but on the other hand, Iran's nuclear program has not had a difficult moment in its decades of existence. IAEA reports on the circumstances in Natanz indicate that the uranium enrichment facility was destroyed. Killing the leading physicists is a significant obstruction and it will not be easy to replace them quickly. We can also talk about the side effect - the departure of the main "nuclear leaders" will change the circumstances on the political-military scene and it is not excluded that the classic war hawks will lead the way, which may actually mean more conventional conflicts than during decades of nuclear tensions. Iran's nuclear program appears to have been razed to the ground overnight, and the bomb won't be a hot topic in the Middle East for some time.

The conventional war, however, has just begun. In a paraphrase of Clausitz's famous saying that "war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means", now in the Middle East we have a war that is the continuation of "nuclear war" by other means. In the weeks and months that follow, we are waiting for hard words, exchanges of missiles and new tensions, new victims on all sides. And long years of general unhappiness for all.