Israel’s military attacks on Iran have attacked the heart of the country’s leadership and military leadership program, creating a possible emptiness in the upper part of the regime that could hinder their ability to recover from the attack, experts say.
But, assuming that it can still, there is a scenario in which strikes could lead Tehran to abandon negotiations for their nuclear program and, on the other hand, hurry to build a bomb, according to analysts and former US officials.
The murder of the high Iranian military officers, as well as several nuclear scientists, will probably have caused fears in Tehran that Israeli intelligence had deeply penetrated the regime and that other higher figures could also be in danger.
Israel has previously achieved shameless murders within Iran, aimed at scientists from the senior government involved in the country’s nuclear program and the political leader of the Palestinian group backed by Iran Hamas when Visió Tehran.
“You have to assume that the system is in the shell,” said Alex Vatanka, of the Middle East experts. “They don’t know … How bad are infiltrated” by Israel.
Iranian media and the Israeli army said Israel’s strikes killed the senior military officer of Iran, Mohammad Hossein Bagheri on Thursday, as well as the commander of the revolutionary guards of Iran, Hossein Salami, and an important general in the revolutionary guards, Gholam Ali Rashid.
The senior military officers attacked had deep links with the Iran regime and were personally known by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatolá Ali Khamenei, particularly Bagheri, according to Vatanka. Khamenei promoted Bagheri to his position as head of the Armed Forces in 2016.
“Here is a personal element, which could be a factor in terms of what Khamenei decides to do,” he said.
Shahid Beheshti University said five professors were killed in Thursday’s attack and “some” family members.
The future of the nuclear program
The first wave of Israeli military attacks launched on Thursday inflicted serious damage to Iran’s nuclear program, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that air attacks will continue for “as many days as necessary” to ensure that Iran will not develop a nuclear arsenal.
But Iran has still buried the nuclear facilities in Fordow and elsewhere I could use if he chose to withdraw from the Nuclear Non -Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and terminate his commitment not to pursue nuclear weapons. In that case, Iran would need to enrich uranium levels to the levels of weapons, a brief technical step with its current reserve, and then build a nuclear eye. That effort could take approximately one year or more, most experts estimate.
The CIA declined to comment on whether there was any indication that Iran was moving to get out of the TNP and pursue nuclear weapons.
The president of the United States, Donald Trump, seems to be trying to use the Israeli military attack as a lever on Iran, pushing him to make concessions or face even more hard. But Iran can calculate that the time for negotiations has ended and chooses to build nuclear weapons, according to Ali Vaez, of the international crisis expert group.
“One of the strategic risks to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is the reaction potential,” Vaez said. Strikes “could encourage Tehran to reconstitute their program with a renewed urgency, driven by high resolution to achieve a credible deterrent element,” he said.
Iran has invested decades of effort and billions of dollars in the construction of its nuclear program, and Iranian political leaders portray it as a point of national pride, a symbol of independence and technological progress in the country.
Aaron David Miller, main member of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Think Tank, said Iran’s leadership will probably choose to develop nuclear weapons instead of renouncing the program that sees as a patriotic effort.
“It has become a national prestige and honor symbol,” said Miller in MSNBC.
“When everything is said and done, and this regime remains in power, which I suspect will do so, the Iranians will probably make the decision to do everything possible in an effort to arm themselves,” said Miller. “And Americans and Israelis will have to discover, over time, how to deal with that.”
Jonathan Panikoff, a former attached national intelligence officer for the near East of the National Intelligence Council of the United States, said Iran can conclude that looking for nuclear weapons is the only way to safeguard the regime.
Iran “can determine that the Israeli strike time accelerates so that the regime decides whether to obtain a pump, if it has not yet done it,” Panikoff wrote, now in the group of experts of the Atlantic Council, in an analysis. “The conclusion could be that he can no longer sit in the proverbial nuclear fence, and that he has to hurry for a bomb or risk never having one.”
For many Iranian political leaders, ensuring a nuclear weapon, or the capacity of nuclear weapons, is vital for the survival of the regime itself, he added.
But it was not clear if Israel’s military attacks could take a knockout stroke that would make it impossible to build nuclear weapons, some experts said.
Alex Plitsas, a former high -level official of the Pentagon and a member of the Atlantic Council, said it was likely that the Israeli assault, which included sabotage operations, had caused too much damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and equipment to allow Iran to hurry to build a bomb.
The Israeli attack of Iran was caught by the Israeli attack, despite the fact that Israel had sent clear warnings for years and in recent months it would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear program that advances, said Plits.
“The Iranians have read the signs of Israel badly again and again,” he said.
Even a successful series of strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites could only delay Tehran’s ability to develop the bomb up to two years, according to the previous comments of US officials and estimates of experts.
In 2012, Robert Gates, shortly after giving up as Secretary of Defense, said that military attacks against Iran’s nuclear program would probably fail at the end to prevent Tehran from developing the bomb.
“Such an attack would make an Iran with nuclear weapons inevitable,” Gates said at that time. “They would simply bury the program more deeply and make it more undercover.”
Iran argues that its nuclear program is designed for purely civil purposes to generate energy and research, but western powers have long accused Tehran of establishing the land for a nuclear weapons project, citing the enrichment activity far beyond what is required for peaceful uses. The United States intelligence agencies concluded that Iran had a nuclear weapons program but stopped the project in 2003.
A report in May of the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran did not completely cooperate with the UN inspectors and that the agency could not ensure that Iran’s nuclear program was “exclusively peaceful.”
On Thursday, the OIEA censored Iran for not complying with the non -proliferation obligations designed to prevent Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon. It was the first censorship of this type in 20 years.
Democratic legislators have criticized Trump for withdrawing, during their first term, the United States outside a 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran that imposed limits on their nuclear activities, saying that the decision opened the way to the current crisis.
