Will the U.S. Help Israel Eliminate Iran's Nuclear Threat?
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Israel's campaign against Iran's military and nuclear sites is now into its fourth day, while Iran has struck back with ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities. How close is Israel to achieving its war aims? And what role is President Trump playing?

playing as he tries to negotiate, as he says, an end to the war. That's our subject for today on Potomac Watch. I'm Paul Gigo, editor of the Opinion Pages, The Wall Street Journal, and I'm joined today by an expert on all of these things, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Welcome, Mark. Great to have you here. Thank you, Paul.

Some real world, potentially world-changing events since Israel first struck Iran last week. Let's talk first just how do you think Israel was able to pull off what has been an extraordinary military and intelligence victory, certainly in the first instance, given the number of scientists it has been able to kill, the number of Iranian generals it has been able to kill, and the degree to which it has had

I think, open run of the Iranian airspace. Give us a little context for how they've been able to pull this off. Paul, the Israelis caught the Iranians literally and figuratively sleeping in their beds. I think that was part of, one, a very sophisticated deception operation that they ran prior to

launching these preemptive strikes. We can talk a little bit about the U.S. angle on that and President Trump's role in that. Two is intelligence dominance. They have deeply penetrated the

upper echelons of the security, military, and nuclear establishment. And the reason for that is because the majority of Iranians despise the regime. So they've got millions of Iranians, this huge pool from which to recruit. And it's not only Mossad operatives on the ground, it's Iranian agents. And for the first time, the IDF actually used those words, which was very interesting. Yeah, that's very interesting. So the Mossad is using Iranian dissidents and opponents of the regime. Yeah. And

I mean, the ratings have been on the streets since 2009, millions of them yelling death to the dictator. They clearly despise this regime. They want to see the regime go down. And Mossad has recruited them.

many Iranians to help them. And you don't achieve this level of intelligence dominance as a foreign intelligence services without having boots on the ground and literally Iranians who are prepared to help the Israelis and are part of the nuclear program, the security establishment, the military. I mean, they've really gone in and deeply penetrated this. Yeah, just extraordinary. I guess the air dominance that they're able to demonstrate as a function and part of the

October retaliation strike that Israel had after Iran had directly attacked Israel with missiles and drones. And Israel came back and didn't do what President Biden advised and take the win. Instead, they went and destroyed the S-300s. Those are the Russian missile defenses and radars and whatnot. And that's proved to be an enormous advantage this time. Yeah. I mean, the toughest institution to get into in the world is not Harvard.

And it's not even the US Air Force, it's the Israeli Air Force. I mean, it's incredibly difficult. It's incredibly elite group of fighters. And to get into that and become a fighter pilot requires enormous capabilities and training. And the Israelis are demonstrating it. They're also flying American planes. They've got more hours on our F-35s and 15s and 16s than we may even have.

And they're flying the best military equipment in the world with the best trained pilots. And they've been able to achieve remarkable success in taking out Iranian air defenses, not just the S-300s they got from the Russians, but the mobile air defenses, and really now own the skies and can attack at will. So how much damage do you think...

Iran has been able to do with its ballistic missile reprisal attacks. Certainly, they've killed some Israelis, some have landed, most have been intercepted, but not all. Yeah, I mean, dozens of Israelis have been killed, five, six hundred have been injured. You know, when the Iranians are firing hundreds of ballistic missiles, and these are one-ton warheads directly and intentionally at civilian targets,

The U.S. and Israel are cooperating. I've got U.S. fighter jets in the skies working with the Israelis, the Brits, and others to try to shoot down these ballistic missiles. Israel's got a three-tiered air defense system. They're particularly heavily reliant on the Arrow to shoot down these ballistic missiles. But yeah, the

94, 95% success rate at stopping that. That means 5% get through. And when they get through, they get through with devastating damage. Yeah. Particularly, I think one landed in Haifa in a residential area and a couple have gone into Tel Aviv.

And this is, as you saw, as we've seen in Ukraine, when ballistic missiles hit civilian targets, they do an enormous amount of damage. Let's talk about the Israeli war aims and what you think those are. Obviously, they want to degrade or destroy the Iranian military nuclear sites to the extent they can, particularly nuclear sites. How close are they to doing that?

So there's three main sites that the Israelis are targeting. There are a lot of other ancillary sites, but the three main sites are the Natanz Enrichment Facility, the Fordow Enrichment Facility, and Isfahan, which has three or two major conversion facilities and some, again, ancillary facilities.

They have been very successful against Natanz. Natanz is destroyed. The centrifuges are destroyed and are no longer operating. They've been very successful against Isfahan. They've taken out the two conversion facilities. The one conversion facility takes uranium and yellow cake. It turns it into a gaseous form, and that is then pumped into centrifuges to enrich to weapons-grade uranium. The other conversion facility takes enriched uranium

90% uranium turns it into uranium metal, and you need uranium metal in order to build a warhead. Israelis have destroyed both. And particularly the conversion facility for creating uranium metal that is necessary for a warhead, that is a major blow because that's the only facility that Iran has. It'll take at least six to 12 months, maybe longer, to rebuild that.

And so that has been a major blow. That's actually, I think the Wall Street Journal just reported that, an exclusive reporting in your news pages just overnight. That is serious. They've also taken out 14 nuclear weapons scientists. They've killed them. And their original target list was 15. So 14 out of 15 is pretty good. That doesn't mean they've taken out every weapons scientist in Iran. But Paul, I think for historical purposes, this would be like if

Robert Oppenheimer and his 13 top nuclear weapons scientists were killed in let's say February or March of 1945, a few months before the Trinity test.

where we tested a nuclear weapon. If Oppenheimer and his entire team had been taken out at that point, there were other brilliant physicists who could have replaced them, but it would have been much more difficult to advance that program in the timeline that they wanted. So I think that's where Iran is on the nuclear side. The last remaining site, which is the most difficult one, is called Fordow.

And that is an enrichment facility buried under a mountain. It goes hundreds of feet. It's hardened by concrete. The Israelis don't have the massive ordnance penetrators, the 30,000-pound bombs that the U.S. Air Force has. And they don't have the B-2 strategic bombers that you need in order to drop those bombs. So –

The Israelis are going to do their best with the ordinance they have, but obviously this is where the United States Air Force could really play a decisive role. U.S. Air Force has been training for many, many years for this mission. And by the way, they trained this mission against Israel.

a myriad of Iranian air defenses that they were going to have to evade and take significant risks, all of those are gone. We are going to take a break. And when we come back, I'll talk to Mark Dubowitz about whether or not the goal here of this mission should be regime change in Iran when we come back. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small.

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Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigo here on Potomac Watch, the daily podcast of the Wall Street Journal Opinion Pages. And I'm here with Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. So let's dig into Natanz in particular, because is Natanz been put out of action? That's also an underground site in part. Is it out of action because they've been able to take out the electric power

power that goes into it and on the surface? Or have they been able to get in and destroy the centrifuges which are there? Yeah, I mean, they've heavily bombed above ground Natanz. And as you say, there's a below ground facility. It's not as deep as Fordow. And they've been able to, through the sheer shockwaves of the bombs, having destroyed these very sensitive centrifuges. They've also taken out the architecture and the infrastructure of

An enrichment facility is really 80% infrastructure and 20% centrifuges. So they've been able to do massive damage to both. And the International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed just in recent hours that Natanz has been destroyed. But this is the challenge with Fordow. Fordow goes much deeper and is much better protected. Right.

And I keep getting mixed reports about whether Fordow has even been targeted yet. Do you have a sense of that? I think they've begun targeting it. They've certainly gone and they're doing it very carefully and deliberately, systematically taking out the air defenses around Fordow. Fordow is heavily defended, as you can imagine, because it is the crown jewel of Iran's nuclear weapons program. And so the Israeli Air Force has been taking out those air defenses to open up the skies. Now, open up the skies...

They're hoping for U.S. B-2 bombers, but even if U.S. B-2 bombers don't come, then the Israelis are going to have to keep hitting Fordow using their ordnance, and that will require multiple strikes. I mean, it's almost sort of – I don't know if you remember that scene in Top Gun 2.

at the end where the US Air Force with Tom Cruise went in and took out facilities and repeated bombing raids, precisely hitting a very sensitive node in that nuclear program. Well, that actually, that scene at a Top Gun was very much the Fordow scenario.

The Israelis, without massive warrants penetrators, are going to have to be repeatedly, precisely, and in a targeted way, and in a sustained way, hitting Fordow with the ordinance they have. Now, obviously, this would be much easier with the US Air Force. So you have touched on what I think is the crucial part.

question here as we move into more days of this. The Israelis have been signaling that they are going to proceed here to achieve what they think are their war aims.

And they can do that in a short period of time if the U.S. helps, or they can do it in a longer period of time if the U.S. doesn't. And, of course, the decisive way the U.S. could help, as you say, is with the B-2 bomber delivery system and those giant penetrating weapons.

And I had a source tell me today that he thinks those bombs will be delivered to Israel. But Israel has really no way to deliver them without a heavy bomber. Yeah. I mean, Israel can use – and it's risky. I mean, they can drop them from C-130s. And the C-130s would literally have to go right over the Fordow site and then drop those massive orange penetrators from there.

literally out of the back of a C-130. It's certainly much more difficult. The C-130s normally would be sitting docks in a situation where there were- Those are troop transports, basically, right? I mean, that's- That's right. I mean, I've flown in a C-130 and it's not that big an aircraft. That's exactly right. They're not used for bombing missions normally. They're used to transport troops, as you say. It is possible that the Israelis could do it. I'm not sure if they're contemplating that. But again, Israelis-

have demonstrated pretty incredible ingenuity and creativity over the years, particularly since October 7th. And they've been planning for this mission for years. So they may have some tricks up their sleeve with respect to Fordow, but it is clear that this is really an opportunity for President Trump. I mean, he can come in at the end

while the Israelis have done significant damage to everything but Fordow, bomb Fordow, destroy it, and then really, rightly so, claim victory. I think that would certainly be a powerful signal.

to the other members of the axis of aggressors, as we call them, China, Russia, and North Korea. The United States is prepared to use military force decisively. Obviously, this is with some risk of blowback, and we should talk about that. But meanwhile, the Iranians are signaling, okay, we're prepared to go back to the negotiating table. We will want to go back to Oman. And some regime officials are even floating out

the possibility of agreeing to zero enrichment, which is really interesting. I think this might be, again, an Iranian deception operation designed to persuade President Trump to tell the Israelis to end military activities and go back to diplomacy. Diplomacy is the only way Khamenei is going to save himself and potentially his regime. The Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Let's talk about President Trump in the U.S. role here, because there have been, I think it's fair to say, conflicting signals going back to last week. On the one hand, the president indicated in a couple of public statements that he thought he did not want Israel to attack. And yet it's pretty clear now, in retrospect, that he was aware that this was a possibility and even a likelihood. He acted to withdraw non-essential personnel from U.S. bases in the region.

last week before the attack. And once the attack happened, and it was demonstrably so successful in the first 24 hours, the president started calling it excellent and essentially embracing the attack, even as he has also said, well, Iran and Israel should settle this. It'll be easy to do

and Iran should come back to the table. So, I mean, how do you sort out these conflicting statements about U.S. intentions? It's always difficult to sort out conflicting statements by President Trump about his intentions. I mean, I think on one hand, to give him credit, I think he's trying to keep the Iranians off balance.

I think two is, I think he certainly played a role in the Israeli deception campaign. I mean, I think for sure he gave the Israelis the green light. Now, what is a green light? I often call it 50 shades of green when it comes to US green lights. Did he give the flashing green light that we are going to launch a joint attack with you? Clearly not. The United States was not involved in the offensive operation. Certainly very...

very involved in helping Israel defend itself from these ballistic missile attacks. But I think President Trump was involved in that deception campaign. And it may have been reluctantly at first, and then he, as you say, embraced it and began to actually keep the Iranians off balance and help the Israelis with this preemptive strike because...

because the Iranians had assumed that Israel was not going to go because President Trump had blocked them. Or if they were going to go, they were going to wait until the conclusion of the last round of negotiations, which was scheduled for this past Sunday. So everybody was assuming that the attack would take place this week, not last Thursday. And very interesting that President Trump was able to help deceive the regime.

Where he goes from here is hard to know. I mean, he's made it very clear in his truth posts that he prefers a diplomatic resolution to this. On the other hand, he's making it clear to Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, that there will be more hurt to come. The real question is, can Israel sustain a long operation without U.S. support? And I think we've got to be careful. I've told a lot of people to sort of curb your enthusiasm.

The Iranians have 3,000 ballistic missiles before the war started. They likely have at least 2,000, 2,500 left. The Air Force is hunting the ballistic missile inventories. They're hunting the 300, 400 missile launchers. But these are heavy blows against Israeli civilians. And Khamenei has made it very clear to his command structure that

to deliberately and intentionally kill Israeli civilians as a way of doing significant damage to Israel and to knocking Israel out of the war. We are going to take another break. And when we come back, I'll talk to Mark Dubowitz about the calculations in President Trump's mind about whether or not to assist the Israelis in taking out the Fordow nuclear enrichment facility when we come back.

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Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. That is Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast. From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. I'm Paul Gigot here on Potomac Watch with Mark Dubois of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The Israeli public though so far, including the opposition political parties, formed a real united front here in support of the effort, correct? Yes, politically for sure. You know, Israelis are in their bomb shelters. Fortunately, the last strike, there was a direct hit at a bomb shelter that obliterated the bomb shelter and miraculously the family survived. But Israel has never sustained this level of civilian damage to its infrastructure in

And Israelis are tough, they're resilient, but they're also exhausted since October 7th and this war that has gone on on multiple fronts.

Israelis will only support this if they believe that the prime minister has a plan to end this successfully. And successfully means fully neutralizing Iran's nuclear weapons program and really making sure that the regime doesn't have the ability to inflict the kind of damage that it's inflicted against Israel for a number of years. And that suggests a fairly long campaign. Do you credit the leaks attributed to a US official

that President Trump told Netanyahu, do not try to kill, target and kill Ali Khamenei? And what do you make of the president himself saying, well, maybe we'll get Vladimir Putin in here to mediate? I don't know if Trump said that to Netanyahu, but I think it's a bad idea if he did, because I think the only thing that's going to break the nuclear will of Khamenei is if he believes he's going to lose his life and his regime. And as long as he fears that, then

then he has to calculate a way out of this. If he believes that President Trump will prevent the Israelis from targeting him and his regime, then he thinks he may be able to sustain this, continue firing ballistic missiles and emerge out of this with some semblance of victory, which he will define as survival. President Trump bringing in Putin is interesting. I think it really demonstrates that Trump wants a diplomatic resolution. He wants Putin to tell Khamenei, look, he

You've been battered by the Israelis. You are going to continue to get battered by the Israelis. You got no choice. Come to Oman, do a deal and resolve this peacefully or the Israelis are going to resolve this militarily and still hinting that maybe the United States is going to intervene. But the threat of U.S. force, the threat that the Israelis will take out Khamenei and the regime

is the only thing at the end of the day that is going to help President Trump get the kind of deal that he wants to get. The issue of regime change in Iran, obviously, is in the background here. A lot of speculation that this is a real strategic goal of Israel, not expressed by any Israeli officials that I have heard. They're focusing on the military assets and the nuclear assets. But clearly, from a historical point of view,

the 1979 revolution against the Shah is what has led us to this point, the revolutionary regime which persists in Iran. And if that could fall, it would make an enormous difference. These regimes are always...

look very strong until they aren't. That's the habit with authoritarian regimes. I guess, how vulnerable do you think the Ayatollahs are at this stage? And of course, the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is their military support.

Absolutely right. I mean, these regimes look tough until they're not. Look at the Assad regime after, I don't know, 50, 60 years that went down. It was clear how hollowed out that regime was. I think the regime in Iran, look, it has the capabilities to repress Iranians. I think the regime's internal oppression apparatus is getting targeted by the Israelis. I think it's very important as they're taking out military security and nuclear targets. They go specifically at

that apparatus that the regime uses for internal repression. And the reason for that is because regime change, which has gotten a bad name in Washington, is not about 500,000 mechanized US or Israeli troops invading Iran. It's about providing maximum support to the Iranian people that have been on the streets since 2009, yelling death to the dictator. American president, are you with us or with the dictator? Now, I don't think the United States has a strategy that

to provide maximum support for the Iranian people. Unfortunately, I do think the Israelis

do have that strategy. And I think they have built capabilities to try and help Iranians when they take to the streets and also to go after the regime apparatus so that their ability to repress Iranians will be diminished. But I don't want to overstate that. I think the regime, at the end of the day, has the resources, is lethal. I mean, they broke the back of women life freedom by launching chemical attacks against Iranian schoolgirls, just to underscore how brutal and lethal they are. And they will fight to the death.

I do think work should be done on targeting the support base of the regime, the 20% of Iranians who support that regime and the 1% in the elites, because there are fractures and fissures within that support base that can be intensified. And that's what you want to do ultimately, is you want to send a message to the support base, look, this is the way things are going. You want to keep defending Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guards, you may end up also

meeting your fate, or you could start to hedge and to really find a way to a better future for Iran. I think that, again, targeting the support base, providing maximum support to the Iranian people is something that is on the Israeli agenda. And a lot of that from the US point of view could be helping them with communications, making clear that they're getting a message that isn't the propaganda from the regime.

over the internet and getting messages into the public about the real state of affairs here. That would be enormously helpful. I don't get the sense that the U.S. is doing that. Now, probably Israel is, and

And Netanyahu has made very clear in his public statements by urging the public in Iran to rise up. But if you could get that persistently from American radio, internet, and whatnot, that's just very important. Yeah, I agree. I mean, Elon Musk, I think, has done the Iranian people a favor by switching on Starlink inside Iran, which is very useful because the regime has shut down the internet and obviously are

Iranians, if they can't communicate, they can't mobilize, or they can't mobilize, they can't organize protests, and then they can't do the kind of wide scale opposition activities that are really necessary. So I think that's been useful. I would hope, and I'm unfortunately very skeptical that the US government and our intelligence community have either focused on this or have the capabilities. And I'm skeptical the president really wants to move in this direction. I think for him, when he hears the phrase regime change, his brain kind of freezes

And all he thinks about is Iraq and Afghanistan. We're obviously not talking about that. We're talking about the very successful strategy that Ronald Reagan implemented during the Cold War of maximum pressure on the regime, maximum support for anti-regime dissidents.

And the Israelis have run a campaign of decapitation. They're going after the top echelon of the security apparatus. And as they weaken the security apparatus, if you marry that with a campaign of maximum support for the people while targeting the support base of the regime by intensifying these fractures, now you actually have a very interesting and comprehensive campaign that starts to look like

The Reagan campaign against a much more dangerous enemy, which by the way, had thousands of nuclear tipped ICBMs already aimed at our cities. So that was a much more formidable enemy. This is a much weaker enemy and undermining, weakening Khamenei and the regime is something the Israelis are going to do. It would be great to see the US support them. Well, just from an American point of view, what puzzles me is why the president at this stage would not want to destroy Fordow.

with the heavy bomber, give Israel the capability of doing that or assisting them with the B-2s. Because one of the things that cannot emerge from this, it seems to me, except at our peril, is the Iranian capacity to enrich again. Yeah, it would take six months or 12 months or two years, however long. But if that site at Fordow survives...

They will be able to do it and probably with help from that access that you talked about, Russia, China, whatever. And we can't let that happen. We have to take advantage of this opportunity to really shut that down. And it puzzles me that the president would not want to do that.

at this juncture because the consequences of not doing it are severe. Look, I agree completely with you, Paul. I think he's hearing and is under relentless attack from isolationist voices within the MAGA coalition that he promised not to get America involved in any more wars and this is going to be World War III.

and thousands of Americans are going to die. And these are the arguments that he is hearing. I was heartened that he pushed back against that in recent days and said, I was the one who invented America first. He wasn't, but anyway, he invented America first. And I'm the one that

understands America first. And by the way, there is no America first if Iran has nuclear weapons. So good to see him pushing back against some of those isolationist voices. But I think politically within his coalition, this is a real challenge for the president. There is a way to do this. A real Trump flex move would be get Israeli pilots to Missouri, put them in B-2 bombers, and then call a press conference and say,

We now have B-2 bombers with 30,000-pound massive ornate penetrators that can slice through the concrete in the mountain of Fordow.

I am going to allow the Israelis to use the B-2 bombers in their current operations. Or Ali Khamenei, you send lead negotiator Arachi to Oman. We have a one-day negotiation and you sign a piece of paper and you've agreed to fully dismantle your program. And then we do what I offered you a couple of months ago. What President has said, to paraphrase, either the Iranians are going to agree to blow up

up their own nuclear program under US supervision, or somebody will blow up that program for them. This was, I think, almost verbatim what he said.

And that could be an interesting way to cast a shadow of power across the negotiating team or the negotiating table. I am skeptical he'll do that. I am worried that he may fall into the Iranian trap of showing up in Oman, negotiating agreement, because this is the only thing that saves Khamenei. And then what Khamenei will do is wait three and a half years for Trump to be out of office.

You'll rebuild the program and that's where he's going to go for the bomb because he'll think at that point he's got a Republican or Democratic president who is not Trump and is not prepared to even entertain the possibility of military force. The other point I would add, Mark, from an American deterrence point of view is helping the Israelis at this stage and really eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat and demonstrating the will to do it militarily at this juncture.

would go a long way to reversing the collapse of deterrence that we saw after Afghanistan. And I think the Russians and the Chinese and the North Koreans are looking at this episode and saying, hmm, I wonder what Trump is going to do.

I know that there are voices telling Trump this, that you can reestablish deterrence if you help make this a success. I think it's an incredible model for the United States, right? You find an ally that is willing to fight and die in its own defense. You give that ally sophisticated American military equipment. That ally uses that equipment.

in brilliant, creative, and deadly ways against an American enemy. They take all the risk. They go in, do exactly what the Israelis have done, destroy air defenses, open up the skies, take out the majority of Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure, take out the IRGC high command,

go after the regime in ways that have been really quite brilliant. And then the United States can step in and symbolically and literally use its power, its B-2s, its massive ordnance penetrators, right? These are symbols of American power and finish the job. Trump can claim the credit, rightly so, for having taken out the nuclear weapons program of a dangerous ally that was building intercontinental ballistic missiles and

that are aimed only at America. They don't need ICBMs to destroy Tel Aviv. They got the ballistic missiles they're firing already. Those ICBMs are only nuclear tipped and they're only used to threaten America with nuclear blackmail. President Trump, I mean, talk about a

Trumpian flex move, that would be it. And as you say, that would be the signal to Beijing, Moscow, and Pyongyang that the United States is a force to be reckoned with and that we will defend our allies who are willing to fight in their own defense. All right. I think we will leave it at that with that peroration, Mark. Appreciate it. Thank you for coming in. Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

We are here every day on Potomac Watch. Thank you all for listening. The spirit of innovation is deeply ingrained in America, and Google is helping Americans innovate in ways both big and small. The Air Force Research Laboratory is partnering with Google Cloud, using AI to accelerate defense research for air, space, and cyberspace forces. This is a new era of American innovation. Find out more at g.co slash American innovation.