Amid Iran’s nuclear talks, US stores conventional bombs
Amid nuclear talks, Pentagon rattles bunker busters
Military is developing weapons powerful enough to cripple Tehran’s most heavily fortified nuclear complexes.
WASHINGTON — As diplomats rush to reach an agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. military is pushing to develop conventional bombs so powerful that strategists say they could cripple Tehran’s most heavily fortified nuclear complexes, including one deep underground.
It is part of President Barack Obama’s military option: up to 20 bunkerbusting bombs that are America’s most destructive munitions short of atomic weapons. At 15 tons, each is 5 tons heavier than any other bomb in the U.S. arsenal.
In development for more than a decade, the latest iteration of the MOP — for massive ordnance penetrator — was successfully tested on a deeply buried target this year at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. U.S. officials say the huge bombs are a crucial element in the White House deterrent strategy and contingency planning if diplomacy goes awry and Iran seeks a nuclear bomb.
Obama has made clear he has no desire to order an attack, warning that U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s air defense network and nuclear facilities would spark a destabilizing new war in the Middle East.
“A military solution will not fix it,” Obama told Israeli TV on June 1. An attack “would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it will not eliminate it.”
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, speaking to reporters Thursday at the Pentagon, sought to downplay the likelihood or the utility of an attack.
“A military strike of that kind is a setback, but it doesn’t prevent the reconstitution over time,” he said.
U.S. officials have publicized the new bomb partly to rattle the Iranians.
“We will always have military options,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at the same Pentagon news conference Thursday, “and a massive ordnance penetrator is just one of them.”
With negotiators in Vien- na facing a self-imposed deadline on Tuesday, the White House views a layered military response as a potential fallback if the emerging deal — which would block Iran’s ability to build a bomb for at least a decade in exchange for easing of economic sanctions — collapses and evidence shows that Iran is building a bomb.
Contingency plans include airstrikes by cruise missiles and stealth bombers on Iran’s major nuclear facilities, including the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, a heavy-water reactor at Arak and a nuclear enrichment site at Fordo, inside a mountain and forti- fied with steel and concrete.
B-2 stealth bombers would be required to drop the MOP, which is designed to burrow 200 feet underground before it detonates.
The Air Force and bomb builder Boeing first flight-tested the GPS-guided MOP in 2008.
Development ramped up in 2010 after Fordo was uncovered.
Analysts offered mostly pessimistic predictions of how Iran would respond to a U.S. attack on its nuclear facilities.
“A military strike would result in the worst of all worlds,” said Dalia Dassa Kaye, director of the Center for Middle East Public Pol- icy at the nonpartisan RAND Corp. “It may eliminate some facilities. But it would not eliminate Iranian scientists’ technical knowhow and would likely further incentivize Iran to pursue a weapon at all costs.”
Iran could increase support for regional militant groups and perhaps back a terrorist attack on the U.S., she said.
A U.S. attack also could spark a broader war. Iran has hundreds of mediumrange missiles, according to defense intelligence.
“A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would … lead, potentially, to all-out regional war,” according to a recent study by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
In 2010, the U.S. and Israel reportedly slipped a destructive computer worm called Stuxnet into Iranian computer systems.
The cyberattack destroyed centrifuges that enrich uranium but did not lead to overt Iranian retaliation. U.S. airstrikes almost certainly would spark a different response.
“It would create huge problems,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a military analyst at the Brookings Institution. “That said, it’s hard to rule out if talks fail.”