{"id":122709,"date":"2025-07-23T17:05:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T15:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=122709"},"modified":"2025-07-22T06:19:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T04:19:01","slug":"23-05-110","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=122709","title":{"rendered":"New Book Details Iran\u2019s Path to a Nuclear Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"<h5 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.algemeiner.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"center alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/www.reunion68.com\/Biuletyn\/img\/algem.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"35%\" \/><\/a><span style=\"text-decoration: underline; color: #000080;\"><span><strong><a style=\"color: #000080; text-decoration: underline;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.algemeiner.com\/2025\/07\/21\/new-book-details-irans-path-to-a-nuclear-bomb\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">New Book Details Iran\u2019s Path to a Nuclear Bomb<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Shoshana Bryen<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\" \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.algemeiner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/2025-06-25T122155Z_1_LYNXMPEL5O0KY_RTROPTP_4_IRAN-NUCLEAR-SATELLITE-1.jpg\" width=\"100%\" \/><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>A satellite image shows airstrike craters over the underground centrifuge halls of the Natanz Enrichment Facility, following US airstrikes amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Natanz County, Iran, June 22, 2025. Photo: Maxar Technologies\/Handout via REUTERS<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Edwin Black\u2019s new book,\u00a0<em>Israel Strikes Iran: Operation Rising Lion \u2013 The 20-Year Backstory,\u00a0<\/em>is a must-read. Don\u2019t let the fact that you are unlikely to understand the details (unless you are a defense analyst or a nuclear weapons specialist) deter you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The lessons are in plain English.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Iran\u2019s intention to enrich uranium and build nuclear weapons was clear long before the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Iran\u2019s scientists were pretty good. With the help of other countries, plus funding by the West in the form of \u201csanctions relief\u201d or waivers, or by ignoring violations of sanctions, the Iranian scientists created weapons and plans.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Iran cheated before, during, and after the JCPOA.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>A lot of people knew that \u2014 and didn\u2019t act on what they knew.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>But there were other people, and we should be forever grateful to them.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Black, the award-winning investigative journalist and\u00a0<i>New York Times<\/i>\u00a0(<i>NYT<\/i>) bestselling author, has been watching and writing about Iranian nuclear progress for decades.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The introductory chapter, \u201cThe Twenty-year Wait,\u201d is Black\u2019s timeline, putting forward bits and pieces of information that culminated in Operation Rising Lion. He notes, \u201c<i>Israel Strikes Iran<\/i>\u00a0has been almost ready to publish for years \u2026 I wrote all but the final chapter material back in 2021 and 2022.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Yes, it is a bit self-aggrandizing, but he\u2019s more than entitled. Author of a dozen books \u2014 including the terrifying\u00a0<i>IBM and the Holocaust<\/i>\u00a0and equally terrifying\u00a0<i>Financing the Flames<\/i>\u00a0\u2014 Black is the master of the back story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">You know the Russian S-300 air defense system, right? But did you know that in 2008, Greece, which owned S-300s, held joint Air Force exercises with Israel? The\u00a0<i>NYT<\/i>\u00a0reported on them, but Black added, in\u00a0<i>The Cutting Edge News (TCEN)<\/i>\u00a0in July of that year, \u201cPivotal information \u2026 has remained below the radar. By swarming its jets into the S-300s massive electronics, Israel was able to record invaluable information about defeating, jamming and circumventing the Russian system.\u201d Oh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The article outlines Israel\u2019s leaps in air superiority, but notes that Israel presumed heavy Iranian retaliation. \u201cIsrael considers itself to be in a no-win situation because years of sanctions and intense diplomacy have not stopped Iran\u2019s cyclonic nuclear progress\u2026More than one Israeli official has stated that the only thing worse than attacking Iran is not attacking Iran.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Then his 2025 update.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Iran\u2019s home-built air defense system, Bavar, was rushed to deployment. Israel\u2019s air defense systems surpassed all prior understanding and, Iran\u2019s April 2024 barrage of 30 cruise missiles, 120 ballistic missiles, and 170 drones managed to injure a seven-year-old Bedouin girl in Arad. Israel\u2019s retaliation was much more effective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Israel eliminated Hamas\u2019 Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, carried out the pager attacks on Hezbollah operatives on September 17, and then took out Hezbollah headquarters in Beirut on the 27th. Iran responded and Israel responded.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Now you start to see how this works.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Chapter Two is the story of the development of the Massive Ordnance Perpetrator (MOP) bunker buster, which began in 2004, as Black reported in a\u00a0<i>TCEN\u00a0<\/i>story in September 2009. You don\u2019t need to understand the details to understand their success.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">But in the 2025 update, you will get the details, and \u2014 as hard as it is to imagine \u2014 discover that hundreds, if not thousands, of DOD personnel, government officials, and staffers kept their mouths shut about it for more than 20 years.\u00a0<u>Spoiler alert<\/u>: Jump to the last chapter and read the paean to our people by General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The result: \u201cOperation Midnight Hammer played out as one of the most sophisticated and synchronized military operations since WWII\u2026 within the space of minutes, twelve MOPS dropped on Fordow, two MOPs plunged into the Natanz facility, and the Tomahawks pounded Isfahan.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">The development of Iran\u2019s bomb is Chapter 3, starting with an article in\u00a0<i>The Times of Israel<\/i>\u00a0in 2012. The article also shows the development of the Shehab-3 missile. The chapter starts with Pakistan, but it is actually a timeline on Israel\u2019s ops inside Iran \u2014 from stealing the nuclear archive in 2018, to the assassination of Iranian scientists, to sabotage of facilities across the country. It details American policy toward Iran \u2014 from Obama through Trump 1 through Biden and into Trump 2. For 12 of those years (guess which), the US doesn\u2019t look too good. But remember, during all that time, the military establishment was improving MOPs and plans \u2014 silently.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">As you read on, you get a comforting feeling, actually, that people in the US and Israel were determined to protect us all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Chapters Four and Five don\u2019t require much technical knowledge. They are the best chapters and maybe should have come first \u2014 we know the end of the story. But as you read them, everything you read before comes into focus. All the groundwork, the science, the diplomacy and lack thereof, the activities carried out in secret and in public, the coordination and cooperation between the United States and Israel becomes the stage on which Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer played out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Don\u2019t cheer yet. Black is nothing if not a realist, ending with a cautionary note: \u201cThe most important warning of this book is contained not in the text written above, but the text yet to be written below \u2026 Our destiny paragraph is yet to be written.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\">Wait for it.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #808080;\"><i><strong>Shoshana Bryen<\/strong> is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of\u00a0<\/i>inFOCUS Quarterly.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr style=\"height: 15px; background: #d0e6fa; width: 100%;\" \/>\n<div id=\"content\" class=\"content-alignment\">\n<div id=\"watch-description\" class=\"yt-uix-button-panel\">\n<div id=\"watch-description-text\" style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><em>Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion&#8217;68,<\/em><em><br \/>\nani te\u017c webmastera Blogu Reunion&#8217;68, chyba ze jest to wyra\u017anie zaznaczone.<br \/>\nTwoje uwagi, linki, w\u0142asne artyku\u0142y lub wiadomo\u015bci prze\u015blij na adres:<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong><em><a style=\"color: #000080;\" href=\"mailto:webmaster@reunion68.com\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">webmaster@reunion68.com<\/span><\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr style=\"width: 100%;\" \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Book Details Iran\u2019s Path to a Nuclear Bomb Shoshana Bryen A satellite image shows airstrike craters over the underground centrifuge halls of the Natanz Enrichment Facility, following US airstrikes amid the Iran-Israel conflict, in Natanz County, Iran, June 22, 2025. Photo: Maxar Technologies\/Handout via REUTERS Edwin Black\u2019s new book,\u00a0Israel Strikes Iran: Operation Rising Lion [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=122709"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122835,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122709\/revisions\/122835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=122709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=122709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=122709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}