There are three ways the world could strike Iran’s threatened nuclear warhead – and the outcome of EVERY one is terrifying: MARK ALMOND

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has been warning the United Nations for well over a decade that Iran’s hardline Islamic regime is on the brink of developing a nuclear warhead.

His doom-laden rhetoric has become almost part of the global background noise. Like the attention-seeking shepherd-boy in Aesop’s fairytale, he has cried, ‘Wolf!’ so many times that the reaction of most world leaders is now to ignore his false alarms.

But the ancient fable ends with a dark twist, when a real wolf attacks the sheep. And this week saw the UN’s nuclear watchdog finally sit up and take notice, approving a resolution that accuses Iran of breaking its pledges not to develop nuclear weapons.

The country’s Islamic fundamentalist government has always claimed that its nuclear programme is simply about ‘clean energy’. But that is an obvious lie. Iran could always have simply purchased nuclear reactors from Russia and generated ample electricity – but without the plutonium fuel vital to the production of nuclear weapons being under Tehran’s control.

Not only would that have been a far cheaper option, but it could also have led to the lifting of Western sanctions. This would, of course, have been a big win for most of the country, but not its supreme leader, 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei.

He has proved willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of his subjects, the people who suffer most from the deprivation resulting from sanctions, by choosing instead to pour billions into nuclear laboratories buried a mile or more underground.

And if the mad mullahs do succeed in developing nukes, they will unleash hell on a neighbour they have long wanted to bomb back to the Stone Age.

Nothing less than a complete abandonment of uranium enrichment in Iran is acceptable to Washington and that is what Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff will seek to achieve if his scheduled meeting with representatives of the Iranian regime goes ahead in Oman on Sunday.

 Iran’s hardline Islamic regime is on the brink of developing a nuclear warhead (Pictured: The nuclear enrichment plant of Natanz, central Iran)

The Americans are calling the Ayatollah’s bluff by suggesting that they could facilitate the enrichment of uranium to the level required for electricity production, but not to a weapons-grade level, outside Iran under strict US control through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

But the IAEA believes Iran could already have enough enriched uranium for as many as ten warheads, an estimate based on the copious traces of radioactive heavy metal detected at unofficial bomb-making facilities, deep underground in remote regions. The Ayatollah has made a pretence of condemning nuclear weapons research for more than 20 years. In 2003 he issued a fatwa (religious edict), declaring that Islam forbids the development, production, stockpiling or use of such bombs. But the fatwa means nothing – because Shia Muslim law also permits believers to lie in self-defence, especially when they feel they are facing persecution.

And the real truth is revealed in a joint statement by Iran’s foreign ministry and its own Atomic Energy Organisation, announcing it will replace its current centrifuges, crucial for enriching uranium, with state-of-the-art equipment at Fordow, one of its main nuclear sites.

The IAEA’s resolution marks the first time in more than 20 years that it has accused Iran of breaching its promises. This time, they too believe the wolf is preparing to attack. The obvious target is Israel, which Tehran has repeatedly threatened to destroy. In 2005, the then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared ‘the occupying Zionist regime must be wiped off the map’ – a bloodcurdling call repeated by many others over the years in Iran’s theocratic regime.

Ten warheads of a similar destructive power to the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945 would be far more than the number required to obliterate Israel. Just three might be enough to wipe it off the map – one on Tel Aviv, one on Haifa and one on West Jerusalem.

Those three cities contain about 10 per cent of the nation’s total population. But Israel is a tiny country, and radiation fall-out from three bombs could make the entire country uninhabitable.

Israel’s famous Iron Dome missile shield, as well as its David’s Sling, Arrow and Thaad air defence systems, are not impenetrable. Last month, Houthi rebels in Yemen hit Ben Gurion airport between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with what they described as a ‘hypersonic’ missile – manufactured and supplied by Iran.

Until this year, many observers thought Iran’s uranium facilities were less of a real threat than they seemed, because warheads and missiles are useless without a third component: the detonator.

But now, it appears scientists at the Parchin facility south of Tehran have successfully manufactured a trigger powerful enough to set off a nuclear explosion.

All the pieces are in place. The last hope for Western politicians praying for a negotiated solution to the crisis, and not a military one, is that Iran’s launching pads are out in the open.

Unlike China and Russia, which can prepare their nuclear missiles for launch in secrecy, inside concrete bunkers, the Iranians have to position and fuel their weapons on the surface – a process that can take 40 minutes. In theory, that gives the West an opportunity to launch a retaliatory strike first, using conventional or nuclear weapons. The Israelis’ strikeback missiles are kept on permanent readiness, capable of launch within three minutes.

Some ultra-hawks in Israel believe a unilateral atomic strike is justified: using a nuke to stop the nukes, says Mark Almond (Pictured: Israeli F-15 Eagle jet)

To wait until Iran is less than an hour away from hitting Israel is a high-risk policy. But the West has always baulked at the alternative until now – to approve a knock-out strike against Fordow and the Iranians’ other subterranean facility, Natanz, both in inaccessible mountainous regions.

Some ultra-hawks in Israel believe a unilateral atomic strike is justified: using a nuke to stop the nukes. But this is likely to fail for two reasons. Firstly, most of the energy in a nuclear blast is confined to the surface. Whole cities can be vaporised but bunkers deep underground might well survive undamaged. Secondly, a worldwide escalation in hostilities sparked by such an attack would probably be unstoppable. Russia could feel emboldened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, for example.

More likely, and more effective, would be a series of bunker-busting bombs – blasting an ever-deeper crater until the enrichment facilities are destroyed, even if they are protected by concrete a mile thick.

Could this work? There are two problems. One is logistical: how does Israel get the bombs to the target? Iran’s air defences have scarcely been tested, and might easily be capable of picking missiles or planes out of the sky. To launch a mega-attack and fail to damage the nuclear facilities would risk all-out war.

The other difficulty is a moral one. Crucial segments of the Iranian programme are based in or near Tehran. The entire ten million population of the capital city is being used as a human shield. Could Britain and the US stomach civilian casualties, especially if it provoked a wave of terrorist reprisals?

Without US help, Israel would not be able to obtain the bunker-busters nor the heavy bombers required to strike Iran’s nuclear boltholes. These bombers could fly from British bases in Cyprus or the Chagos Islands. This raises the danger of terrorist blowback to ‘very high’, but backing off means giving in to terrorism and nuclear blackmail.

Many watchers are praying that Israel has a brilliant undercover attack planned. Ukraine’s great success smuggling drones under Operation Spider’s Web for mass attacks, deep inside Russia, might be a model. Pinpoint bombing of the entrances and ventilation shafts at Fordow or Natanz, for example, could put a uranium facility out of action for months, trapping the scientists inside to suffocate or starve.

It’s a grim prospect. But now Iran appears to have primitive nuclear weapons, every possible outcome is terrifying.

•  Mark Almond is director of the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford.

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