Experts caution that Israel cannot disrupt Iran’s nuclear advancements without assistance from the United States. In fact, further attacks might provoke Tehran to speed up its quest for nuclear weapons.
Recent airstrikes targeted various sites within Iran, following Israel’s claim of establishing dominance over Tehran’s airspace.
Using American-made warplanes, Israel has conducted multiple strikes on facilities associated with Iran’s nuclear and missile development programs. Israeli military officials have proudly stated that top military figures in Iran are now fleeing in response to these attacks.
But despite Israel’s early success, questions have already arisen over whether the Jewish state is capable of reaching its targets as described by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Speaking on Monday, Netanyahu said Israel was ‘pursuing three main objectives’ in Iran: ‘The elimination of the nuclear programme, the elimination of ballistic missile production capability, and the elimination of the axis of terrorism.’
Unless Israel’s most powerful ally decides to enter the fray, then Jerusalem is likely to fall at the first hurdle.
‘Without active US military participation, Israel’s operational ceiling remains constrained,’ said Dr Andreas Krieg, an expert in Middle East security and senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, told MailOnline.
‘Destroying Iran’s deeply fortified sites like Fordow or Isfahan requires bunker-busting capabilities that only the United States currently possesses. Israel cannot ensure the decisive elimination of Iran’s enrichment capability without them.’
Krieg also warned that continued attacks by Israel may have the opposite of their intended effect.
Going after Iran’s nuclear programme could ‘reinforce Tehran’s belief that a nuclear deterrent is not only justified but essential for regime survival’.
‘Rather than halting Iran’s nuclear trajectory, the strikes may serve as a powerful vindication of the logic that drives Iran’s long-term nuclear ambition – deterrence through capability,’ he said.
The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), buried deep beneath the mountains near the holy city of Qom, is one of Iran’s most secretive and heavily fortified nuclear facilities
Though Israeli jets have damaged several above-ground nuclear-related facilities and other key strategic assets, the bulk of Iran’s nuclear resilience lies underground in labyrinthine complexes designed to survive.
The Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), buried deep beneath the mountains near the holy city of Qom, is one of Iran’s most secretive and heavily fortified nuclear facilities.
Built in defiance of international pressure and revealed to the world only after Western intelligence agencies exposed its existence in 2009, the site was deliberately constructed far underground to shield it from aerial bombardment.
Enrichment centrifuges housed within its fortified chambers are capable of producing uranium at near-weapons-grade levels.
Access to the site is tightly controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and inspections by international observers have long been a flashpoint in negotiations.
So far, Israel has targeted multiple Iranian nuclear sites and has damaged the Natanz FEP. But Israeli security officials confirmed on Tuesday that the air force has not targeted Iran’s underground Fordow nuclear facility.
To have any hope of eliminating it without resorting to its own nuclear weapons, Israel would likely need to harness the power of some of the world’s most powerful conventional bombs.
The 30,000-pound (14,000-kilogram) GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a US-made bunker-busting bomb that uses its weight and sheer kinetic force to reach deeply buried targets, could manage to take Fordow out.
This terrifying munition can penetrate some 200 feet (61 meters) below the surface before exploding, and the bombs can be dropped one after another, effectively drilling deeper and deeper with each successive blast.
In theory, the MOP could be dropped by any plane capable of carrying the weight.
But Israel has neither the bomb, nor the capability to deliver it.
‘Only the US Air Force’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is capable of deploying the MOP,’ Krieg explained. ‘Without these assets, Israel’s capacity to destroy the core of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure is severely limited.’
And, even if Fordow could be destroyed, a successful strike would not erase Iran’s nuclear ambitions, according to Krieg.
‘The fundamental challenge remains that Iran’s nuclear programme is not just a collection of facilities. It is also a body of knowledge, personnel, and dispersed technical infrastructure. Much of the scientific expertise survives the bombings.
‘Iran has long decentralised and concealed aspects of its programme precisely in anticipation of such scenarios.
‘This means that unless there is sustained international pressure, robust inspections, and political change within Iran, the regime can, and likely would, rebuild over time thanks to its scientific base and global black-market procurement networks,’ Krieg said.
Only the US Air Force’s B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is capable of deploying America’s huge bunker-busting GBU-75 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP)
Airmen look at a GBU-57, or the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bomb, at Whiteman Air Base in Missouri
This handout satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant in central Iran on June 14, 2025. Launched early on June 13, 2025
Fire and smoke rise into the sky after an Israeli attack on the Shahran oil depot on June 15, 2025 in Tehran, Iran
In a worst-case scenario, Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel will not stop bombing until Iran’s nuclear programme is wiped out could backfire, driving Tehran closer to the very weapon Jerusalem is trying to prevent.
Iran has long denied seeking nuclear weapons and says it has a right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, including enrichment, as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, is the only country in the Middle East widely believed to have nuclear weapons – a point Iranian commentators have long raised as an example of blatant hypocrisy.
But with the Israeli campaign exposing major strategic vulnerabilities for Tehran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and his group of trusted hardliners may feel that obtaining a nuclear deterrent is the only way to stop Netanyahu’s campaign.
The dismantling of Iran’s air defence capacities, the assassination of senior military commanders and the destruction of supposedly secure infrastructure has badly damaged Iran’s reputation as a highly capable military power.
That could decisively shift the internal debate among Iran’s ruling elite.
‘Even factions that were previously cautious about weaponising the nuclear programme may now see deterrence through nuclear capability as the only reliable shield against regime decapitation,’ Krieg warned.
‘Hardliners will argue, with new urgency, that only a nuclear weapon can ensure Iran is never again so exposed.’
The decision on whether Iran pursues this course of action largely rests with Khamenei, a man deeply influenced by the violence of his political past.
Imprisoned by the Shah of Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and later maimed by a bomb attack before rising to power in 1989, Khamenei remains fiercely committed to the Islamic Republic’s survival, a sworn enemy of Israel and deeply distrustful of the West.
Under Iran’s constitution, the Supreme Leader alone commands the armed forces and has the power to declare war. According to insiders, he listens carefully to advice from a trusted few but ultimately makes final decisions based on his own judgment and survival instincts.
‘Two things you can say about Khamenei: he is extremely stubborn but also extremely cautious. That is why he has been in power for as long as he has,’ said Alex Vatanka, director of the Iran Programme at the Middle East Institute in Washington.
‘Khamenei is pretty well placed to do the basic cost-benefit analysis which really fundamentally gets to one issue more important than anything else: regime survival.’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Israeli rescuers search through the rubble at the site of an overnight Iranian missile strike in Bat Yam
The Iron Dome, the Israeli air defense system, intercepts missiles fired from Iran, over Tel Aviv, Israel, 16 June 2025
If the US refuses to join Israel in assaulting Iran and manages to orchestrate a deal over the latter’s nuclear programme, Netanyahu will find himself in a difficult position.
Vali Nasr, an Iranian-American academic and adviser to several US administrations on Middle East policy, told Foreign Policy magazine: ‘Israel does not want a scenario in which Iran is accepted as part of the Middle East by the United States, has relations with the United States, and has more breathing room to retain its regional position.
‘A nuclear deal would address the nuclear problem, but it would not address Israel’s Iran problem… which is that this state is too big, it’s too powerful, it’s too influential, it’s too capable.’
With Israel now waging simultaneous military campaigns in Gaza and Iran, concerns will mount over whether the Israeli public can stomach a second protracted war.
Tolerance for an ongoing conflict with Iran will likely drop if Israel’s civilian population suffers mass casualties due to Iran’s ballistic and hypersonic missile strikes.
As Krieg put it: ‘Netanyahu may have bet on a short, high-impact campaign that would demonstrate Israeli strength and draw Iran to the negotiating table on Israeli and US terms.
‘But if Iran absorbs the damage and retaliates asymmetrically, and the US hesitates, Netanyahu risks facing an extended conflict with unclear objectives – one in which Israel bears the brunt of the costs alone.’
For now, the US appears unwilling to become embroiled in the conflict, provided that Iran refrains from attacking any American assets.
The Trump administration has insisted Israel acted unilaterally when it launched its attacks on Friday, and Trump is said to have personally vetoed an Israeli plot to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei.
Trump said he wasn’t ready to give up on diplomatic talks, and could send Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with the Iranians.
That said, Trump’s declaration that he left a G7 summit early to negotiate ‘something better than a ceasefire’ between Israel and Iran suggests Washington is losing patience and is expecting to see the conflict resolved sooner rather than later.
‘We’re looking for an end, a real end, not a ceasefire,’ he told reporters, and later warned the US would ‘come down hard’ on Iran if provoked and that ‘if they touch US troops, the gloves are off.’
‘The onus is on Washington to shape the outcome of this conflict. Either way, whether through diplomacy or military engagement, Trump has to make the strategic decision for how to advance,’ Krieg concluded.
