Blinken: An Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Is An Unforgivable Mistake

According to Saednews, Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State in the Biden administration, in a report published by The New York Times, addressed the issue of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The text of this report is as follows:

“The recent U.S. attack on three Iranian nuclear sites was a reckless and unnecessary action. But now that it has happened, we can only hope it was successful. This is a contradiction faced by many former officials like myself who worked on Iran’s nuclear dossier in previous administrations. We all believed that Iran must never be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran without a nuclear bomb is already dangerous enough because of its support for proxy forces and threats against Israel; Iran armed with a nuclear bomb would act with far greater boldness in all these arenas.

So why was this attack a mistake?

First, we fundamentally should not have reached this point. In 2015, the Obama administration, along with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union, reached a comprehensive nuclear agreement (JCPOA) with Iran. This agreement placed Iran’s fissile material production program under tight control and extended the time Iran would need to acquire bomb-grade fuel (nuclear breakout time) to at least one year. If Iran violated the agreement or refused to extend some of its provisions after 15 years, we would know and have enough time to respond, including with military action if necessary.

In 2018, Trump tore up this agreement without offering a replacement. In response, Iran accelerated its enrichment and likely reduced its breakout time to days or weeks. In fact, Trump is now trying to put out a fire he himself stoked.

Second, fissile material is a necessary condition for making a bomb but not sufficient. Iran still needs to build an explosive device. Despite mixed messages from the Trump administration, our intelligence agencies believe Iran has not yet decided to weaponize its nuclear program. If it does decide to, it would take an estimated 18 to 24 months to produce a detonator. In other words, there was still time for diplomacy, and the situation was by no means as urgent as Trump claimed.

Third, experts I spoke with have serious doubts about the ability of the 30,000-pound MOP bombs (unique to the U.S. arsenal) to completely destroy the Fordow site and other deeply buried, fortified parts of Iran’s nuclear program. Early reports indicate that while Iran’s nuclear infrastructure was severely damaged, it was not destroyed.

Fourth, at the time of Biden’s administration’s military weapons, our concern was that Iran had or would disperse its stockpiles of enriched uranium (close to weapons-grade) in various secure locations while retaining enough centrifuges to further enrich those stockpiles quickly. In this scenario, Iran could hide near-weapons-grade material, begin the weaponization process, and rapidly proceed to bomb-making. Therefore, Trump’s attack precisely accelerated what we wanted to prevent. This might be a repeat of Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak reactor — after that attack, Saddam Hussein accelerated his underground nuclear program.

Finally, although there is no doubt that the U.S. attack delayed Iran’s nuclear program, Iran can quickly rebuild in locations and depths practically immune to airstrikes while simultaneously advancing weaponization. So while their program has been severely disrupted and buying time is a positive, this underscores that sticking to the JCPOA was a better option. The JCPOA gave us at least 15 years, not just a few months.

And the agreement prevented the risk of Iranian retaliation — such as the Monday missile attacks on our forces in the region — as well as the potential escalation of tensions, including threats to global oil flow through the Strait of Hormuz, terrorist operations on U.S. soil, or sophisticated cyberattacks.

Paradoxically, Trump’s actions were only possible because of the work of the Obama and Biden administrations. The Obama administration accelerated the development of MOP bombs and had plans for operations of this type. Biden ordered his team to practice, test, and refine these plans. In 2023, we also conducted the largest joint exercise in history with Israel, which was a rehearsal for this recent action.

By doing this, we laid the groundwork for Trump to either reach the new nuclear deal he promised for years or launch an attack. I wish he had chosen the diplomatic path we left for him. Now that the military die is cast, I can only hope we have done maximum damage — damage that gives the president leverage to finally achieve a deal that so far has eluded realization.”