As the Trump administration weighs whether to send ground troops into Iran, one option at the president’s disposal — developed by both US Central Command and the US’ Israeli allies — would send Special Operations units into the country to seize and destroy key nuclear sites.
The option is one among many that is likely to be considered once the focus shifts to actually destroying Iran’s nuclear capabilities, according to military experts and those familiar with long-developed options on the table.
The US Army’s special missions unit known as Delta Force has long readied a “counter-WMD mission, where their job is to go in and get loose — we call it loose nukes operations — where it could be any fissile material or centrifuges or anything else associated with that, to actually go in and get it and remove it,” said Jonathan Hackett, who served as a US Marine Corps interrogator and a special operations capabilities specialist. “They haven’t had to do that very often in the past, if ever, but they practice that. They’re proficient at that. That is one option that exists on the table that’s probably not widely noted in the press, but does exist,” he said.
Last June, Trump declared Iran’s nuclear facilities to be obliterated, but the facilities — and Iran’s nuclear capabilities — are now the subject of renewed focus. One of Trump’s stated goals in this war is to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
So far, the US and Israel have focused their energies on destroying Iran’s Navy and ballistic missile industry. Key nuclear sites like the one in the central city of Isfahan — believed to, in deep underground tunnels in the mountains, contain enough uranium for up to 10 atomic bombs — have been largely left alone.
Iran also appears to already be making preparations to try and fortify Isfahan against an attack by the US: A report published late January by the Institute for Science and International Security found “new efforts by Iran to bury the middle and southernmost tunnel entrances [in Isfahan] with soil.”
And a ground attack on Iranian nuclear facilities has long been considered by the US government and its Israeli allies, according to one former official who had direct knowledge of some of the conversations.
That official told Semafor that during former President Barack Obama’s time in office, the then-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak proposed to the White House plans that would include Israeli (not US) commandos on the ground in places like Isfahan, Fordow, and Qom.
The Obama administration, according to the official, thought the plan was “crazy.”
Under more recent administrations, though, the former official said CENTCOM developed plans for US raids on Isfahan and other sites. Another person familiar with the situation told Semafor that there are “contingency plans to temporarily occupy certain locations,” though there are also many unanswered questions.
“How long would it take? How permissive is the environment? What are the material hazards and logistical requirements? To how many of these places must we go in order to effectively remove or destroy highly enriched uranium and plutonium?” the person familiar with the situation added, emphasizing some of those key questions.
