By Mike Whitney
The Unz Review
July 4, 2025
If Iran resumes enrichment while rejecting IAEA inspections, then Trump will target Iran's underground facilities with a low-yield B61-11 nuclear weapon
You can usually tell which side won a war by simply observing 'what happens' after the hostilities end. Following the announcement of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, millions of Iranians poured onto the streets of Tehran, chanting patriotic songs and waving flags in a spontaneous display of jubilation. In contrast, there were no festivities or celebrations in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem where the mood was noticeably more somber and gloomy. What this indicates is that most people believe that Iran won the war.
We are not ignoring the fact that Iran's threshold for success in the conflict was much lower than Israel's. As the aggressor, Israel needed to achieve its strategic goals to claim victory, while Iran only needed to withstand the assault, which it managed to accomplish with great ease. Regardless of whether this benchmark is equitable, the result is evident: for 12 days, Iran held its own, matching Israel's aggression blow-for-blow, eventually forcing Israel to seek a ceasefire. In short, Iran won.
Israel made a number of miscalculations in its approach to Iran which severely undermined its chances of success. It's two biggest mistakes, were its overconfidence in its own multilayered air defense systems (Note- Arrow 2, Arrow 3, David's Sling, Iron Dome and THAAD) which proved to be woefully inadequate in defending the country's strategic assets. Israeli war planners also grossly undervalued Iran's impressive ballistic missile capability which exceeds Israel's dated arsenal and ranks among the best in the world. In last week's article, we provided a long list of the key military, intelligence, industrial and energy facilities that were obliterated by Iran's precision guided ballistic missiles and which Israel's ineffective air defense system failed to intercept. We now believe that Israel's military experts must have realized -no more than a week into the fighting- that they were gravely over-matched and needed to find a diplomatic off-ramp pronto. But -for whatever reason- they stubbornly persisted with their anemic offensive for nearly a week hoping for a miracle. When the miracle failed to arrive, Netanyahu goaded Trump into bombing Iran's nuclear sites in order to establish a pretext for ending the conflict. In short, Israel had been looking for a way to end the hostilities long before the fighting formally ended, which means they knew their strategic aims would not be achieved.
The outcome of the conflict has been particularly instructive for Israeli leaders who now realize that they are incapable of winning a conventional war with Iran. Unfortunately, that lesson has ominous implications for the rest of the world as no one seriously thinks that Netanyahu is going to ditch his life-long dream of a Greater Israel extending across the region. If a conventional war against Iran cannot be won, then Israel must escalate to the next level of military confrontation. That is the rationale behind Netanyahu's unexpected trip to Washington next week. He wants Trump to lead the next round of fighting with a nuclear bomb.
In my opinion, people are so relieved that the conflict lasted just 12 days, that they are ignoring the signs that the world is be on the brink of something truly horrific. This is from Tuesday's Times of Israel:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Washington early next week to meet with US President Donald Trump, a White House official confirmed to The Times of Israel Monday night, amid intensifying efforts by Washington to end the war in Gaza and free hostages held there for nearly two years.
The July 7 visit will mark Netanyahu's third trip to Washington to meet Trump since the US president returned to office in January 2025, and will come exactly two weeks after Israel and Iran agreed to a US-brokered halt to a 12-day air war that saw long simmering tensions between the arch foes explode into open conflict for the first time....
The second US official said Trump would also discuss Iran and Syria during the meeting with Netanyahu. According to the official, the president planned to use the meeting to tout military achievements during the war against Iran. Though primarily an Israeli-led offensive, the US briefly joined on June 22 by attacking three Iranian nuclear sites, dropping massive ground-penetrating bombs on the hardened subterranean Fordo facility and firing missiles at the Natanz and Isfahan plants....
Trump has claimed that the US strikes "obliterated" Iran's nuclear capabilities, but other US officials have offered more measured assessments amid lingering questions over how badly the program was damaged and the effectiveness of the bombing campaign....
Iran has consistently denied seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. However, it enriched uranium to levels that have no peaceful application, obstructed international inspectors from checking its nuclear facilities, and expanded its ballistic missile capabilities. Israel said it had recently taken steps toward weaponization. Times of Israel
The article is largely a diversion aimed at concealing Netanyahu's real motive which is to draw Trump deeper into Israel's war with Iran. I assure you, Bibi is not looking for Trump's input on developments in Gaza nor will the US determine whether there's going to be a ceasefire with Hamas or not. The only rational explanation for Netanyahu's surprise visit is that he wants to persuade Trump on a matter of great urgency that requires man-to-man arm-twisting to ensure that Bibi 'gets his way.' Once Netanyahu convinces Trump to 'go nuclear', he thinks Iran will be forced to capitulate allowing Israel to impose its imperial diktat across the region. Here's former weapons inspector Scott Ritter discussing Iran with Judge Andrew Napolitano on Monday:
Note the following: 400 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride enriched to 60% is missing and no one seems to know where it is. The Iranians said the secured it and it wasn't impacted by the strikes. We know that since January 2021, Iran has been producing centrifuges that are no longer accounted for by the IAEA because Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018 in which accounting for centrifuges was part of the inspection regime.... (Iran ended its partial cooperation after the EU countries refused to honor their part of the deal by lifting sanctions)
Iran said they were no longer bound to the terms of the nuclear treaty and prevented the IAEA account for the centrifuges. You can build a lot of centrifuges in four years, and Iran has over a dozen buried sites similar to Fordow that could be easily converted, in fact, they were in the process of declaring a third uranium conversion facility when the bombing took place. My point is, there is nothing stopping the Iranians from building advanced centrifuge cascades in other locations now undeclared, because they don't trust the IAEA because the IAEA spied on Israel on behalf of Israel and the United States and provided critical information that was used to destroy facilities and assassinate scientists.
So, we don't know where the centrifuges are, we don't know where the already enriched uranium is...and let's say the Iranians did enrich it to over 90%, the facility that converts it into metal that will be used in a weapon is 100 meters underground untouched. So, Donald Trump doesn't know what he's talking about or he's simply lying to the American people, but there's no professional in the world who would say that Iran's nuclear program has been totally destroyed The evidence directly contradicts that assertion. Will Trump Nuke Iran; Interview with Scott Ritter, You Tube, 6 minute mark
There it is in black and white. Iran has abandoned transparency because the IAEA used its access to nuclear sites to conduct espionage on Israel's behalf. So, now, all the IAEA cameras have been removed, and the inspections have stopped. There is no longer any monitoring of Iran's sites. If we couple that development with the fact that Trump is determined to prevent any additional enrichment, then we have the makings of a pretext that will be used to justify the upcoming attacks on Iran's nuclear sites; only this time, conventional "bunker busters" will be replaced with some variation of the low-yield, earth-penetrating B61-11 nuclear bomb, which is designed to penetrate hardened underground targets before detonating. That is the logical upgrade from the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) that were previously employed.
Keep in mind, there are a number of fanatics in the US foreign policy establishment who would like to see the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons lowered so these species-ending munitions could be used on the battlefield or -in this case- to eliminate the threat of WMDs falling into the "wrong hands". This is no longer a far-fetched prospect but a highly likely probability as new alliances grow stronger challenging Washington's ability to preserve the rapidly-collapsing "rules-based order.". The temptation to use "tactical" nukes will eventually be too seductive to resist.
In any event, there is nothing a Zionist warlord like Netanyahu would prefer more than to have his good friend Trump spearhead the next aggression on Iran by lobbing a few nuclear bunker busters in the direction of Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan. In Bibi's mind, that would pave the way to Iran's capitulation followed by Israel's de facto domination of the entire region. Game. Set. Match.
Bottom line: Israel lost Round 1 to Iran which means they must up-their-game. That is why Netanyahu has planned an emergency meeting with Trump, so Israel can activate Plan B. Regrettably, Iran has made Bibi's job easy for him by terminating relations with the IAEA, which has turned Iran's nuclear program into a black box. Netanyahu will use Iran's action as proof that they have resumed enrichment and are just days from developing a nuclear weapon. Trump will feel compelled to act more aggressively than before by giving the green light to a more forceful attack. Here's more from Ritter:
Bottom line: I believe Donald Trump is committed to a policy of regime change. He would like to have the nuclear program eliminated...but he's boxed himself into a corner because what happens when it is discovered that the nuclear sites are intact (US bombs did not "obliterate" them), so now you have a nuclear enrichment program that Trump said he would never allow to exist. So what happens? Will Trump Nuke Iran; Interview with Scott Ritter, You Tube
Ritter's analysis is hard to refute, after all, he's merely connecting the dots while assuming that Trump will stick to his original pledge to totally eliminate Iran's uranium enrichment program. If that can't be achieved with conventional weapons, then Trump will move up the escalatory latter to nukes. It all seems pretty straightforward. Here's Ritter again:
Judge Andrew Napolitano- So what's he going to do? Do you think Trump will be tempted to use nuclear weapons on Iran?
Scott Ritter- Yes...... The fact of the matter is there's only two ways to take out the Iranian nuclear program. One: The Iranians do it voluntarily. (Regime change followed by abandoning enrichment.) The other way is nuclear weapons, and there's a war plan in place that is already designed to do this. (In his first term) Trump was told our conventional munitions can't do this, that it would require nuclear weapons. So, a new nuclear deployment plan was developed making nuclear weapons available to target these facilities. So, I think Trump will probably go into a long-range regime change game now, but if that fails, Trump may have no choice but to either reverse course....or use a nuclear weapon.
Look, DARPA, (Note- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is a research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Defense) took two years -according to Sec-Def Pete Hegseth- to come up with this 'strike option' against Fordow, so, if it didn't work, what other options do you have? (implying that the use of nukes is inevitable)
I am fearful that the domestic opposition that could stop a war isn't manifesting itself, so, unless something else happens, I'm afraid we are on a weeks or months-long path towards the potential of nuclear weapons being used against Iran. Will Trump Nuke Iran; Interview with Scott Ritter, You Tube
Of course, we could be wrong. It could be that Netanyahu actually wants to discuss a ceasefire in Gaza with his dear friend, Donald Trump. But we think that is highly unlikely. We think Bibi is laser-focused on Iran, the last significant obstacle blocking the Zionist dream of Greater Israel and regional hegemony. All he needs to do is convince our credulous president that Iran is building a bomb and can only be stopped with a nuclear bunker buster. It might take some coaxing, but Bibi is certainly 'up to the task'.
After that, it's just a matter of getting American pilots to drop the bombs.
Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.