Above: the entrance of a nuclear reactor in Bushehr, Iran.
WJ Hennigan – TIME Magazine Nov 24, 2021
Less than a week before world powers resume negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East says his forces stand ready with a potential military option should talks fail.
“Our president said they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon,” General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, tells TIME. “The diplomats are in the lead on this, but Central Command always has a variety of plans that we could execute, if directed.”
Iranian negotiators are set to meet with European, Russian and Chinese counterparts in Vienna on Nov. 29 to discuss the possibility of reining in the program in exchange for easing international sanctions. The U.S. will not take part in the talks at Iran’s request, and American officials have repeatedly warned that time is running out to restore the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
President Joe Biden has made clear that the U.S. has no desire to engage in yet another destabilizing war in the Middle East, but officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department have worked to develop so-called “Plan B” options should diplomacy fail and Iran opt to build the bomb, ranging from additional sanctions to military action.
Iran is now further along in its nuclear weapons program than ever, producing stocks of uranium enriched to 60% purity, edging closer toward 90% weapons-grade material, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. watchdog. McKenzie believes Tehran has not made the decision to press ahead with manufacturing an actual warhead, but he shares concerns with America’s Middle East allies about the progress Iran has made.
“They’re very close this time,” McKenzie says. “I think they like the idea of being able to breakout.”
The Institute for Science and International Security, a non-profit think tank that specializes in nuclear weapons analysis, issued a report in September that found Iran could produce enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon in a month under a “worst-case breakout estimate.” After breakout begins, Iran could produce a second weapon in less than three months, then a third in less than five months.
Iran has stone-walled IAEA inspectors’ access to its facilities for months. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the agency’s director general, said Tuesday his team has been unable to access surveillance footage inside nuclear facilities and subjected to “excessively invasive physical searches.”
Even if Tehran decides to amass enough fuel for a bomb, McKenzie says, the nation hasn’t yet standardized a design for a warhead that’s small enough to be affixed atop any of its arsenal of 3,000 ballistic missiles. Nor has Iran shown that it can build a reentry vehicle capable of surviving the searing heat, pressure and vibration of falling from space back to Earth. “We haven’t seen any of that,” McKenzie says. “That’s what’s going to take a little time for them to build.” He estimates it would take Iran more than a year to develop this capability with a robust testing program.
US soldiers clear rubble at the Ain al-Asad military airbase in Anbar province after an Iranian missile strike. Click to enlarge
Iran has, however, shown its missiles have a proven ability to strike targets with precision, McKenzie says. In January 2020, Iran launched more than a dozen Qiam-1 and Fateh-313 ballistic missiles from launch sites at three bases in western Iran that hit two Iraqi bases, Al Asad and Erbil, where hundreds of Americans were stationed. The missiles turned buildings, aircraft and living quarters into smoldering rubble. No one died, as most had managed to shelter in underground bunkers and trenches, but concussions from the blasts injured 109 American troops.
“Those missiles hit within tens of meters of their targets,” McKenzie says. “The one thing the Iranians have done over the last three-to-five years is they built a very capable ballistic missile platform.”
There have been no formal international negotiations with Tehran since June, a month before Ebrahim Raisi was elected as Iran’s president. The new hardline leader has sought more favorable terms on the nuclear deal, insisting that the U.S. remove all economy-crippling sanctions in exchange for Iran halting its nuclear activities. He maintains the nation’s nuclear program is peaceful and accuses U.S.-ally Israel of carrying out unprovoked military strikes, including assassinating Iranian scientists and attacking facilities. One such attack knocked out the IAEA camera systems at the location.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied these allegations but has long voiced its displeasure with the JCPOA. “Even with the return to an agreement, Israel is of course not part of the agreement. Israel is not bound by it,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Tuesday. “We will maintain our freedom to act.”
When President Donald Trump abrogated the 2015 nuclear agreement in May 2018, his administration turned the global financial system into a weapon against Tehran. His “maximum-pressure campaign” resulted in more than 1,500 sanctions against Iran along with companies and individuals who did business there, including the nation’s central bank, national oil company and other vital sectors of its economy. It triggered an exodus of corporations and financial institutions that would rather abandon their investments in Iran than risk U.S. Treasury Department sanctions. Iran’s economy-sustaining oil exports plunged to historic lows.
The Biden Administration has shown a willingness to roll back some penalties, but the prospect of easing terrorism-related sanctions is politically problematic. If the President removes them, he will almost certainly be criticized for looking soft. “There is no legal barrier to how far the President can go in undoing Trump’s sanctions, but the political cost in certain areas is prohibitive,” says Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. “A narrow path remains open, but the odds of a diplomatic breakthrough are not looking promising at all.”
Republicans, Israel and Gulf nations have all pressured the White House to address what they say are Iran’s “malign activities.” Tehran is involved in every serious conflict in the Middle East, almost always on the side of America’s enemies. On Oct. 20, for instance, U.S. officials say Iranian-linked fighters launched a drone attack against a U.S. military base at al-Tanf in eastern Syria. There were no U.S. casualties, but buildings were destroyed. “We had a little bit of luck,” McKenzie says. “We’re in the middle of a battle drill. We had people out manning positions, so no one was killed as a result of that. But that is solely due to our action and not the action of the enemy, who was clearly trying to kill Americans.”
Nine days after the al-Tanf attacks, the U.S. Treasury Department announced new sanctions against two senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members and two affiliated companies for supplying lethal drones and related material to insurgent groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Ethiopia.
There is no dispute among Biden officials that Iran is a bad actor intent on expanding its influence in the Middle East, either directly as its military forces and Iranian-backed political groups have done in Iraq and Syria, or by funding and equipping proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The question is how much the Biden Administration is willing to tolerate to restore the nuclear deal.
Removing economic pressure on Tehran is not currently part of the negotiations set to restart next week. In response to Iran’s insistence that all U.S. sanctions be lifted, Secretary of State Antony Blinken publicly questioned Iran’s willingness to pursue diplomacy and implied an ultimatum if Iran chooses not to “engage in a meaningful way and get back into compliance.” The U.S. and other JCPOA signatories—Russia, China, Germany, Britain, and France—will consider “all of the options necessary to deal with this problem,” Blinken told CNN on Oct. 31.
There are no great options, says Henry Rome, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm. “In theory, there are four options: Iran getting a bomb, Iran getting bombed, Iran restraining its program through diplomacy, or Iran hovering on the edge of those three at the same time,” he says. “At this point in time, we’re in that uncomfortable position where diplomacy is not working and the bomb/be bombed options are unacceptable. It’s not a sustainable position, but it’s where we are right now.”
Even before Trump took office, the U.S. was responding to Iran’s regional expansion with military, intelligence and diplomatic countermeasures. Trump’s decision to unilaterally walk away from the nuclear deal accelerated the confrontation, but the willingness for talks indicates the two nations see some value in de-escalating tensions.
McKenzie believes it’s best to take a multilateral approach. “We have made a conscious decision to work this through diplomatic channels, he says. “And I would just tell you, it’s better to approach it from a collective perspective, rather than as a single problem, as we did for awhile.”
Some sort of military action involving Israel and Iran will certainly take peoples minds off footballers dropping down with cardiac problems…
Oh No, not again, who told us they have Weapons of Mass Destruction? Tony Bliar?
Are we going to fall for it? Of course we are, our leadership would never lie to us………… would they?
USA opens up its southern border while keeping a hawk’s eye on any danger to Mafia HQ. There is ONLY Jewish politics.
actually Iran needs to develop nukes as israel has been attacking evey country in the middle east except saudi arabia
all protected by stupid yanks of course
Time magazine? Hennigan has his head up his arse. The only solution is to put Russian and Chinese military on the ground in Iran & break the sanctions. The US and Isreal don’t have a viable military solution. To successfully strike deeply buried nuclear facilities, has no certainty of success, & a high chance that distant lands will be contaminated. However, the real purpose of military actions is to topple the Iranian regime and send Iran back to the stone age, because this is what Israel wants, & they would do the same to Turkey.
Speaking of Turkey, there’s been a run on the Turkish Lira. While inflation is fairly high at 20%, the Turkish economy is in pretty good shape. Their national debt is a fraction of Western nations, so there is no justification, apart from Israel’s two failed coups. They want Erdogan gone. They would do the same to Greece if they could get away with it.
We should keep in mind that before Covid, the banking system was on the verge of collapse. This new Covid strain, fictitious or from Porton Down, is just another excuse for more QE. Both the US & UK economies are beyond repair. Inflation, print, inflation, print. They’ll do anything to protect stocks and house prices from real price discovery. virtually every market is being rigged by the big banks. They have created fear scarcity, in order to jack up demand.
There’s only so long they can run the Covid fear game. Sure, it will be a 20yr show with intermissions, but sheeple will get bored, so they’ll keep jacking the anti, but at some point, they’ll need some big wars, & don’t be fooled by this China has a bigger navy. They have more ships, but less tonnage, so the US generally has bigger boats, but even so, when you combine the US, Canada, EU states, UK, Japan & Australia, you have more naval power than China and Russia combined. That is not to say this is that important, as future big wars will be decided by EM weapons, weaponised weather, man-made tsunamis, bioweapons, missiles, and ICBM’s. Take your pick, they can flood a coastal city using conventional explosives, or nukes.
A word to the young people reading this: The Jews have been shouting that Iran is VERY Close to producing a nuclear bomb since before your parents even met each other.
Iran has been a year away from producing a nuclear weapon for the past 20 years.
“U.S. General Says Iran Is Nearly Able to Build a Nuclear Weapon.” Good. They’re going to need it to protect themselves against the satanic rabid jackal Israelis and the demonic Israeli’s deranged lackeys the Jewnited States, Jew-K. and Jewrope. Iran should build as many nuclear bomb as fast as they bloody can if they want to survive as a sovereign nation.
Western nations have been strangling Iran economically, and Jew controlled media slagging Iran at every turn thus brainwashing the plebs, even when Iran was complying with the international agreements, so why should Iran listen to a stinking word from any of the Legion of Doom countries that are the puppets and rape dolls of organized Jewry?
When Israel opens up their nuclear program for inspection and limitations AND removes the nukes they already have planted in the U.S. and certain Jewropean countries they have been using as blackmail, then and only then should any country, especially one so high on Zionist’s target list, consider complying with any international oversight. Israel should have already been invaded and the bulk of the population slaughtered several times over by now, along with the destruction of organized Jewry which has been nothing but a pox upon humanity.
Iran has been demonized relentlessly since the Shah was overthrown. Since 1982 Iran has been on the verge of a nuclear weapon, but during the reign of the puppet Shah, who’s family all now live on the California coast just north of Santa Barbara, General Electric was proudly developing nuclear power for Iran.
But when the Shah fell during the Iranian revolution, Iran became Zionist enemy #1. Now nuclear armed Israel has been shrieking to attack Iran on a daily basis. The bib untold story is how little shit Israel stole 200 Davy Crockett warheads and has been using them on a regular basis, like the recent grain silo attack. Israel, which has not signed the NNPT, has 2,000 nukes and is using them – but wants to attack Iran which has none and says it is not pursuing them, and has signed the NNPT and is being inspected on a regular basis.
BTW since the USofA has signed the NNPT treaty it is illegal to give Israel even one cent.
Obviously it is Israel that is the aggressor, not Iran, and Iran has a lot to fear after watching all the neighboring states get leveled. Iran should get nukes and aim them at Tel Aviv, as that is the only way to stop the mad supremacist Jews.
The reptiles in Israel are salivating on attacking Iran.
Israel did attack Osirak reactor.
And the Syrian reactor:
THE RUNDOWN | Inside Story: Israel’s Attack on the Syrian Nuclear Reactor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYFWSRztPhc
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Remember Wesley Clark memo? “finishing off with Iran”
Syria (Endgame Iran) Iraq, Syria… Iran explained by General Wesley Clark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDtnLm-GOkM
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https://internationaltimes.it/debunking-10-lies-about-syria-and-assad/
when they say 2 weeks that means the plan on the table is to attack in 2 weeks.
Israel also attacked the USS Liberty and the World Trade center twice.
the entire world needs to point nukes at Israel and say next attack we all are going to vaporize Israhell
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Probabilities: they will attack Iran, the axis of US-Israel has a long list of false flags and invasions, provacations, and outright blitzkreigs. They have stated their intention to attack Iran hundreds of times, they will lose face if they don’t, and with the fag military rapidly in decline, they have to do it now. Israel needs to wipe it’s ass with the US military one last time.
When? During the reset, when the stock, bonds, and real estate crash.
The attack will be over the top and a huge distraction to the collapse of the everything bubble
The Omicron virus is and anagram for MORONIC
and oh yeah the sheep are all masking up again
so this time when they say Iran is on the verge that means the demonic Jewish political apparatus has found the courage to risk the attack.
these people are completely insane
expect the return of the Dark Age soon
As the scamdemic has shown, the goyim are stupider than ever, so of course they will believe it. The UK government will rerun the Iraq war scare stories.
Same U.S.A. Generals that won the War in Afghanistan?
Ohh.. Come on ?? Iran has a nuclear weapon since 1998 as being reported by NastyYahoo…
Countdown to death of a planet, Israel announces on Television and their papers of Operation OMEGA.
How many hundreds if not thousands of nuclear war heads does Israel have and the information (secrets and control of communication) they handed over to the USSR and Red China which were created out of the US and financed out of US (Primary) and Europe (Secondary). How many nuclear warheads are in the Submarines built by Germany for these things “as they are not people and their teachers are responsible (Teacher def. Rebbe or Rabbi and their false doctrine of pure hate and stolen concepts). US is OWNED by Israel as is the UN and all banking systems as well as the media (thanks Britain for being in the forefront of being the most evil nation on earth as known by those who write in India “Great Game India”) and yours is the most evil of empires and will go down in flames as you believe yourselves to be chosen too but are hated as you are finding out. How many wars have the US, UK, Israel been in in their lifetimes? Practically perpetual while Persia (Iran) has done nothing agressive for the last 200+ years.
Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion – Freemasonry will be our Nursery for our plans. Stupid goy, the nations of the world are filled with BS and false history and the UK and US are the most stupid of all and you backward spelling as if you were legitimate but you have no understanding of the Septuagint/Talmud/Kabbalah that states those who are not Jewish or Cryto-Jews (Van Rosenvelt, Bush, Trump), Phoenicia/Samaria is the first to be named goy and you ARE THE ENEMY YOU FOOLS.
I am not sure if Isreal has any nukes. I also doubt that the UK’s nuke stockpile is fully operable. in another article today, there’s an image showing tanks on a train, supposedly being moved to the Eastern front. Well, I seriously doubt they are actually combat-ready.