On how to deter Iran

From The Boston Herald: Israel’s Channel 2 said U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would discuss a new package of military aid to Israel during his visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. After the meeting, briefing officers told reporters such a proposal did not come up. It’s still an excellent idea. Israel gets $3 billion a year in U.S. military aid, and it’s hard to see that it needs anything in the ordinary course of things at the moment. Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon — clearly only slowed by the proposed pact with the United States and five other major powers — is not or- dinary.

Israel has nuclear weapons it has never acknowledged. Their deterrent value against a nuclear-armed Iran — which has never repudiated past threats of its leaders to wipe Israel off the map — is extremely uncertain.

One U.S. weapon could boost Israel’s military capability and signal Iran that, realistically, its chances of a successful attack on Israel were extremely slim. That’s the bunker-busting MOP, “Massive Ordnance Penetrator,” a 30,000-pound bomb capable of penetrating 200 feet of earth or 60 feet of concrete.

Iran has thousands of centrifuges capable of producing weapons-grade uranium inside a mountain at Fordo kept secret until 2009. Most centrifuges are now supposed to be turned off. A group of Iranian dissidents has released commercial satellite photos of what it says are the surface facilities of another secret underground installation on the outskirts of Tehran.

Israel’s possession of the MOP would remind Iran of Israel’s history of pre- empting perceived threats — its warplanes destroyed nuclear reactors in Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007) and the Egyptian air force to begin the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

President Obama, determined to enhance Iran’s power and prestige, would never in a million years give Israel the MOP. Our country will elect a new president in 15 months; we can hope he or she will bring realism to the office.