“The reason I oppose it most fundamentally is that we cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities with air power alone,” Rosemary Kelanic, the director of the Middle East program at Defense Priorities, told the Washington Examiner. “I am very, very confident of that.”
Even if the U.S. deploys multiple bunker-busting bombs, it still may not be enough to destroy Fordow given its fortifications underground, which raises the question of what the president could turn to if the U.S. gets involved but airstrikes are not enough to destroy specific facilities.
“So even with bunker-busters, when you’re talking about sites like Fordow that are half a mile under mountains, there’s no certainty that the U.S. can actually completely destroy the stuff,” she added. “And so where does that lead you? Well, if the U.S. bombs them, and we’re not certain whether or not it will actually destroy its sites, or we’re not certain that we’ve gotten all the stockpiles. … If we leave it only partly disabled, that gives Iran every incentive to run for a bomb.”
Israel’s military may be able to destroy those facilities without U.S. support, though it would likely take either repeated strikes with smaller payloads or deploying special forces.
Kelanic predicted that U.S. involvement in offensive operations would ultimately result in U.S. presence to “finish the job that [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu started.”
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