Since the outbreak of the war against Iran, which in the meantime has spread across a significant part of the Middle East, experts and analysts who understand the current dynamics very well—perhaps even better than some top military commanders (if we judge by the current state of the war!)—have started to emerge (not in the mainstream, of course).
One such person is Theodore Postol, a longtime professor of science, technology, and national security at MIT, specializing in nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and missile defense. He is the recipient of the Norbert Wiener Award for the social responsibility of scientists and engineers. He is a man who has spent decades exposing false claims about the effectiveness of American air and missile defense systems. He truly knows how far Iran is from “the bomb,” but also rightly warns about a nuclear conflict (initiated by Israel, not Iran) that may be much closer than we think. Today, we will take a detailed look at his analyses and expert commentary.
As a central source, we will use his extensive interview (actually a lecture) given to Glenn Diesen, a Norwegian political science professor who has himself, via his YouTube channel, become a very valuable source of information (featuring many guests offering a wide range of quality interpretations about the new war).
In the current war against Iran, scenarios are unfolding that Postol has been warning about for years. He wrote and spoke that the U.S. and its allies would put themselves in a situation where they spend billions and billions of dollars on complex defense systems, while a country like Iran would rely on the mass use of relatively cheap ballistic missiles and drones. That combination carries enormous destructive power while simultaneously exhausting expensive Western defenses.
Postol openly states that even the first week of the war has shown how a struggle is taking place between two concepts. On one side stands a network of U.S. bases and Israeli military infrastructure relying on interceptors and radars. On the other side stand thousands of drones and ballistic missiles supported by modern guidance systems and intelligence data that Iran receives from China and Russia. Further analysis here is crucial to understanding what is really happening behind the propagandistic images of interceptors that supposedly stop “almost everything.”
Iran as a Potential Nuclear Power and the Scenario of Extreme Escalation
One of the most disturbing parts of Postol’s lecture concerns the possibility of nuclear escalation. He reminds us that Iran is today in a unique position. Formally, it does not have nuclear weapons, but it possesses the knowledge, infrastructure, and stockpiles of enriched uranium that make it a country with a very short time gap between the political decision and the actual production of nuclear warheads.
Postol claims that if Iran makes a political decision to proceed with the production of nuclear weapons, it cannot be stopped by either conventional or nuclear attacks. He explains that the final phase of enrichment and weapon assembly can take place deep within tunnels and underground complexes for which a potential attacker has no reliable coordinates. Such infrastructure can survive multiple strikes and continue production. In other words, at this point, even “preventive nuclear strikes” would not be able to stop Iran in this endeavor.
He particularly emphasizes that we are talking about uranium-based weapons whose concept has been known for decades. In the past, such devices were developed by countries with much more modest technological bases than today’s Iran. Postol believes that Iranian experts can use already known principles and available computer simulations to construct a weapon without a test explosion. In other words, the first nuclear strike could simultaneously be the first and only “test.”
According to his assessment, Iran possesses sufficient quantities of enriched uranium for roughly ten atomic bombs. For Israel, this clearly represents an existential risk. Israel has only a few key urban and industrial centers. This is not a vast continental space like Iran. A few strikes on the areas of Tel Aviv, Haifa, and smaller but infrastructurally critical locations could destroy the country as a functional political and economic entity.
Postol also emphasizes that he does not see Iran as the side that would first use nuclear weapons against Israel. His concern goes in another direction. He talks about Benjamin Netanyahu as a man who, in these circumstances, acts irresponsibly and dangerously, even using the term “maniacal killer” to convey the level of risk he sees in Israeli leadership. In a scenario in which Israeli leadership concludes that it is losing the war and the state is seriously threatened, Postol believes there is a real danger of a nuclear strike on Iran.
At that moment, according to his view, Iran would certainly respond, after rapidly producing its own warheads. The period from decision to the first nuclear response is measured in weeks, not months. Such a sequence of events would open an era of nuclear war in the Middle East and create the possibility of the conflict spreading toward a global confrontation of major powers, primarily because Russia and China are already deeply involved (he considers this very likely to be true) with intelligence and technological support for Iran.
