According to US intelligence and Israeli military sources from the Axios news portal, the IDF managed to destroy a secret Iranian nuclear weapons development base in the Parchín military complex, just forty kilometers from the capital, Tehran . The base, known as Taleghan 2, was part of the Amad nuclear program for military use that Iran abandoned in 2003, after the Ayatollah. Ali Khamenei considered the use and simple possession of nuclear weapons to be a sin.
However, the information from Israel went the other way and we must remember that Israeli intelligence is so involved in Iran that it managed to assassinate the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallahin a Tehran hotel the day before the president’s inauguration Pezeshkian. It is for this reason that during the attack on October 25, it was decided to include this objective despite the promise made to the Administration. Biden that no nuclear or electrical installation whatsoever would be bombed.
If the Israeli version were confirmed, Iran’s credibility would have been greatly affected, since last week, without going any further, its Foreign Minister forcefully insisted that it had not the slightest intention to produce nuclear weapons. The debate has been present in Iranian society since the start of the war in Gaza and especially after the assassinations by Israel of the leaders of militias linked to the Shiite regime. It was also in Parliament that, on October 9, 39 deputies requested the resumption of the investigation with a view to obtaining a nuclear weapon, but this proposal was rejected.
An Overview of the Trump Doctrine
This is not the only consequence of this act. At first this made us think that the attack was much more aggressive than we had been told. Both countries preferred not to place too much importance on it, but the military damage inflicted on Iran could be significant enough for them to reconsider their threats of another attack in the near future. In fact, just before the American elections on Tuesday, November 5, There has already been speculation of an imminent attack from Axis of Resistance positions in Iraq.something that ultimately didn’t happen.
It also calls into question, as we said, the extent to which Netanyahu decided to listen to Biden and his secretary of state, Anthony Blinken. The US administration may have insisted on avoiding any damage to civilian structures, but it was unwilling to oppose an attack on active military installations. It is also possible that, directly, the Israeli government did not inform its ally, which we have observed in recent months with some frequency. The attack would be more in line with what was publicly stated by Donald Trumpwho asked Netanyahu ignore Biden and “end Iran’s nuclear program in one fell swoop.”
In this sense, we should expect the new administration to further tighten the screws on the Khamenei regime, as Trump already did during his first term. Even though the president-elect has shown interest in concluding a new agreement with Iran to control its nuclear program, which would replace the one he signed Obama in 2015 and from which Trump himself left in 2018, the truth is that all foreign policy appointments have a strong pro-Israeli profile and the businessman’s hatred towards Iranian leaders comes from afar: in 2020, he for the first time ordered the assassination of the head of the Quds Force, General Souleminiat Baghdad airport. To get revenge, Iran staged an assassination operation before the elections that came to nothing.
The Russian dilemma
The Israeli attack also reportedly damaged other Iranian military installations, including air defense equipment. It is for this reason that Netanyahu never tires of warning that if Iran attacks again a third time, the response will be much more forceful… and the regime in Tehran will not be able to do much. So far, each country has attacked the other twice, but the damage is very different. Some believe that a humiliating defeat of Iran by conventional means might force it to embrace the creation of a nuclear weapon as a deterrent, but that excuse no longer holds. if the Iranians were already investigating the military use of the enriched uranium they have.
Khamenei and Pezeshkian cannot count on the support of the Poutine or not completely. Relations between the two countries are excellent, as demonstrated by the last BRICS meeting, to which Iran was the guest. The Russian Prime Minister Mijail Mishustinvisited Tehran just the day before the second attack on Israel, which has always raised suspicions about the extent of its military alliance. However, two factors make it unlikely that Russia will turn to aiding Iran against Israel.
The first, obvious one, is that virtually all of Russia’s war hardware is currently in Ukraine, including air defense equipment that Iran desperately needs. The second, more complicated, concerns precisely the negotiated solution to the war. Putin hopes that Trump will cut off arms supplies to Ukraine or reduce them to a minimum. He also hopes that this will force Zelensky to sit at the negotiating table and cede, under American pressure, control of the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, already unilaterally annexed in September 2022 by Russia.
In other words, as part of his imperialist obsession, Putin needs to get along with Trump, because, militarily, he remains involved in a war of attrition in which, even if his soldiers advance little by little, the human losses and materials are gigantic. Apart, Russian economy nears bottomless path if Western sanctions remain in place. Here, Trump could also be an important ally, forcing Russia to think twice before coming to Iran’s rescue and, in turn, placing Khamenei and his terrorist militias in a very difficult position.
