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US President Donald Trump's decision on whether or not to join Israel's attack on Iran is fraught with useless and contradictory facts.
Its intelligence community has estimated that Iran could be up to three years away from creating a viable nuclear weapon. Israel has alleged, without providing evidence, that Tehran was rushing to create a bomb with a much shorter timeline. Neither can be right.
Israel has shown in the past five days that it has a precise understanding of the location and infrastructure of the Iranian security establishment - which it has exploited to deadly and brutal effect. But the United States' intelligence-gathering machine is unmatched.
And so Trump's decision will be influenced by conflicting information and reasoning. Why strike a country that your spies assessed - even before this conflict - as being a nuclear bomb away, and likely even further away now? Why engage in a conflict for the sole purpose of stopping something that your intelligence community has assessed will not happen?
Joining the Israeli effort presents its own challenges, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues. Iran is secretly rushing toward a viable device. If so, then Iran is engaged in a covert effort that is unlikely to be deterred by a single, final strike on the widely publicized “mountain lair” uranium enrichment plant at Fordow. It would involve multiple strikes on multiple, hidden targets.
The potential use of a GBU-57 bomb against bunkers at the Fordow nuclear plant by the US is also not guaranteed to penetrate the structure. Tests have suggested it could happen, according to a 2019 New York Times report, but Trump may be reluctant to enter another conflict with a “maybe.”
A dire scenario for the American president would involve joining an Israeli effort, destroying Fordow, and then discovering that Iran's nuclear program somehow survives. Iran's leadership could then take an immediate step toward a nuclear weapon to preserve its survival.
Israeli intelligence has been remarkably accurate over the past 18 months, but only in October 2023 did it fail to detect Hamas' unprecedented attack. Nothing is perfect. And that should haunt Trump's current thought process.
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