Stephen Cimbala, and Lawrence J. Korb
The US military strikes against Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities in late June presented a picture of military excellence that surprised Iran and much of the international community. The operation featured the most extensive use to date of B-2 spirit bombers in any single operation to attack Iranian targets at Fordow and Natanz with highly accurate GBU-57 (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bombs.
In addition, a US submarine fired some thirty Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAMs) against surface infrastructure targets at Isfahan. According to Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan (Razin) Cane, Operation Midnight Hammer involved more than 125 aircraft,
including seven B-2 stealth bombers, numerous fourth and fifth-generation fighters, and dozens of refueling tankers. Some 75 precision-guided munitions were used in Midnight Hammer, including fourteen GBU-57 MOPs used for the first time in combat.
What Are the After-Effects of the US Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Sites?
How much of an impact the US strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities would have on Iran’s future strategy and policy is a larger and more important topic. Authoritarian regimes based on solipsistic definitions of their historical achievements and myopic expectations of manifest destiny think in terms of years or even generations.
For Iran, the United States is the Great Satan and Israel its puppet. Iran also aspires to become the dominant power in the Middle East, eventually surpassing its Sunni rival, Saudi Arabia. In the view of the ayatollahs, becoming a nuclear weapons state would validate Iran’s claim to regional hegemony and establish a deterrent against Israeli nuclear coercion or first use. Mated to longer-range ballistic missiles, Iran’s nukes could cast a coercive or deterrent shadow not only across the Middle East but also over much of Europe and even North America.
Israel’s twelve-day war against Iran had set back its military capabilities even before the United States entered the fray. Significant destruction was inflicted on Iran’s ballistic missile force, its air defenses, its command and control, and its military and political leadership.
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