“People have to go and get it,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, referring to the possible operation at a congressional briefing earlier this month.
There are some indications that an operation is imminent. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon has imminent plans to deploy 3,000 brigades of combat troops to the Middle East. (At the time of writing, the order has not been placed.) The troops will come from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in “joint forced entry operations.” On Wednesday, Iran’s government rejected Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt said the president is “ready to unleash hell” on Iran if a peace deal is not reached — a plan about which some lawmakers have reportedly expressed concern.
Drawing from publicly available intelligence and their own experience, the two experts outlined a possible outline of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. He told WIRED that any version of the ground operation would be incredibly complex and pose a significant threat to the lives of American troops.
“I personally think that a ground operation using special forces supported by a large force is extremely risky and ultimately impossible,” Spencer Fargasso, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, told WIRED.
nuclear ambitions
Experts say any version of the operation would take several weeks and involve simultaneous action at multiple target locations that are not close to each other. Jonathan Hackett, a former Marine and Defense Intelligence Agency operations specialist, tells WIRED that at least 10 locations could be targeted: the Isfahan, Arak and Darkhovin research reactors; Natanz, Fordow, and Parchin enrichment facilities; Saghand, China and Yazd mines; and Bushehr power plant.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Isfahan likely has the majority of the country’s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which could be capable of supporting a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, although weapons-grade material typically consists of 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says the other two enrichment facilities may also contain up to 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and the power plant and all three research reactors may contain up to 20 percent enriched uranium. Faragasso emphasizes that any such supplies should be treated carefully.
Hackett says eight of the 10 sites – with the exception of Isfahan, which is probably intact underground, and “Pickaxe Mountain”, a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz – were mostly or partially buried after last June’s air strikes. Just before the war, Iran filled the Isfahan facility’s tunnel entrances with dirt, says Faragasso.
The riskiest version of a ground operation would involve US troops physically receiving the nuclear material. Hackett says this material will be stored as uranium hexafluoride gas inside “large cement vats.” Faragasso says it’s unclear how many of these pots may have been broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops will have to bring in excavators and heavy equipment capable of removing huge amounts of dirt
According to Hackett, a comparatively low-risk version of the operation would still require ground troops. However, it will primarily use air strikes to destroy nuclear material inside its facilities. Fragasso says that ensuring nuclear material is inaccessible in the short to medium term would entail destroying entrances to underground facilities and ideally collapsing the underground roofs of the facilities.
soften the area
Hackett told WIRED that based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump’s negotiations with Iran are “likely a ploy” to buy time to move troops.
Hackett says the operation is likely to begin with aerial bombardment of areas around the target sites. He says these bombers will likely be from the 82nd Airborne Division or the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a “rapid-reaction” force, and the 31st MEU, the only Marine unit continuously deployed to strategic areas abroad, have both reportedly deployed to the Middle East.
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