Dismantling Iran’s arsenal

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 17th of June.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Before we continue on: a reminder that WORLD’s June Giving Drive is in full swing. If you didn’t hear yesterday, we did surpass the first challenge last week and a new group of WORLD donors has stepped up with yet another—putting up a $161-thousand-dollar challenge gift in hopes of keeping that momentum going and, as we’ve emphasized many times ,it’s another reminder that nobody gives alone. We’re in this together.

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EICHER: All right, up first Israel continues to press its campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Ever since the early morning hours of October 7th, 2023 Israel has been at war with Islamic terror groups funded and armed by Iran. Now they’re fighting directly.

In the days leading up to Israel’s surprise counterstrike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure international concern over Tehran’s atomic ambitions spiked.

REICHARD: The International Atomic Energy Agency issued its starkest warning in years … formally declaring Iran out of compliance with nuclear safeguards. I-A-E-A pointed to a stockpile of highly enriched uranium … sufficient for multiple nuclear weapons.

That finding … along with Iran’s continued obstruction of inspections and growing public threats … helped set the stage for that direct confrontation.

GORDIS: This is the first time in many, many, many years that Israel is not fighting a terrorist organization. It's fighting a serious country.

Israeli Historian Daniel Gordis woke up to air raid sirens at 3am on Friday in Jerusalem. He spoke with our Washington Producer Harrison Watters.

GORDIS: We immediately, of course, all grabbed our phones and looked at them, and it was the home front command saying, basically, nothing's new, but you should be on the alert.

EICHER: Hours later Israelis learned of the strike on Iran. Here’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

NETANYAHU: In the past 24 hours, we've taken out top military commanders, senior nuclear scientists, the Islamic regime's most significant enrichment facility and a large portion of its ballistic missile arsenal. More is on the way.

Gordis, the historian, says the strike follows months of planning and nearly two years of war on multiple fronts.

GORDIS: The first thing is that we've destroyed the Ring of Fire.

That ring of fire has been a long-time strategy of Iran to encircle Israel—arming terror groups like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But since the October 7th attacks, Israel has put out most of the fire. And in December, the Assad regime in Syria collapsed, cutting off a major supply route Iran had used to arm its proxies.

REICHARD: Gordis says Iran opened itself up by launching missile attacks on Israel last year.

GORDIS: Because it did no significant damage to Israel. But what Israel was able to do, particularly in the response in October, was to take out many of the air defenses that would have made what we're doing now impossible or much more dangerous.

Still, Israel hasn’t knocked out all of Iran’s teeth. The regime’s underground nuclear facilities in Fordow are believed to have survived the strikes. Experts believe it holds much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium.

DUKE: They lack the capability to completely destroy and remove for eternity the Iranian nuclear capability.

That’s Darren Duke. He’s a retired Marine Corps colonel who served as a military attache to Israel from 2006 to 2009. He says the U.S. has reliably supported Israel’s defense against Iranian retaliation. But he told Watters that backing an offensive strike on Iran is a completely different matter the consequences of which Washington must weigh carefully.

DUKE: We should not underestimate the fact that the Iranians have spent decades not only building a domestic capability inside their own borders to respond militarily, but they have a worldwide, global network that they could operationalize in terms of terrorist operations around the globe.

Add to that the vulnerability of U.S. bases across the Middle East: prime targets if conflict escalates. The U.S. also has to consider its military readiness to deter other adversaries, like Russia and China.

EICHER: President Trump has warned: if Iran doesn’t return to the negotiating table Israel’s next move may hit even harder. Yesterday, Iran signaled it’s willing to talk.

Colonel Duke says that while many nations are calling for a ceasefire, many in the Middle East don’t really mean it.

DUKE: I will tell you, many Arab states, while they may be publicly criticizing Israel for the campaign, are quietly very pleased with what Israel is doing to reduce this threat to the whole region.

The U.S. and Israel agree that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. The challenge lies in how to stop it diplomacy or destruction.

DUKE: I foresee a return to negotiations in the future, because Israel will just be unable to remove the threat by themselves.

Historian Daniel Gordis says even if the U.S. does help eliminate Iran’s equipment and top scientists, the root of Iran’s nuclear problem lies deeper.

GORDIS: They have the knowledge, we can never take away the knowledge. So however this war ends, part of the settlement has to be either regime change, and the new regime simply says we have no nuclear aspirations, or if this regime stays in place, they have to forswear any kind of nuclear activity or Israel will simply keep doing what we’re doing, because we cannot allow this to happen again.

Gordis says Israel cannot wait on the U.S. to eliminate the threat of Iran and will continue alone if it must.

GORDIS: If the Jewish people learned anything from the 20th century, it is when somebody looks at you and says, I plan to destroy you or kill you, believe them, because we didn't In the past, and we paid for it dearly.

REICHARD: So far, Israel has claimed it has taken care to avoid civilian casualties, unlike Iran, which has targeted population centers in Israel.

Colonel Duke says the front lines of war don’t isolate the church. Very often, they reveal it.

DUKE: We should remember there is a church in each of these countries where we as Christians have brothers and sisters who are living under these threats and this disorder, and we should all pray that the church would be able to continue her work even as these wars go on, and perhaps because of these wars, that the gospel would go forward.

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