Who is driving the Iran-Israel-US escalation?: Deterrence hawks

Twelve minutes

180 ballistic missiles. October 1, 2024. Shahab-3s and Fattah-1s on trajectories aimed at Nevatim Air Base and Mossad headquarters. The flight time from Iranian launch sites to Israeli targets is twelve minutes. That is not a gesture. That is an attempt.

Iran’s enrichment has climbed from 3.67 percent under the JCPOA to 60 percent confirmed, with particles at 84 percent. The cascades at Fordow are buried under granite. Breakout is measured in days. Every day of diplomatic stalling is another day of centrifuge spin. The diplomatic realists prefer cyber sabotage. We note that Stuxnet delayed enrichment by roughly eighteen months. The JCPOA delayed it by seven years. Neither bought resolution. Resolution requires the credible threat that noncompliance produces consequences worse than compliance.

The realists say the JCPOA was working. The JCPOA was a lease with an expiration date. Iran was permitted — permitted, under the deal’s terms — to arrive at industrial-scale enrichment within fifteen years. We opposed it not because negotiation is useless but because that negotiation traded a permanent threat for a temporary pause.

The non-interventionists ask why America is involved. Because a nuclear Iran does not stay in the Middle East. Saudi Crown Prince MBS told The Atlantic that if Iran gets a bomb, Saudi Arabia will get nuclear weapons without a doubt. We are not modeling a second Pakistan. We are modeling a nuclear power whose trigger finger belongs to a parallel military answering to a supreme leader whose succession mechanism has never been tested under the pressure of a live nuclear standoff.

Where we concede ground: Iraq. We said Saddam had WMDs. He did not. That credibility deficit is earned.

What would change our mind: Iran verifiably freezing enrichment above 5% with no-notice inspections for 36 months.

Read the full synthesis: Who is driving the Iran-Israel-US escalation?