Israel will defeat Iran, with or without America.

Israel would welcome American assistance against the Iranian nuclear regime, but Israelis have what most nations today lack: a rare combination of creativity, resourcefulness, and moral clarity.

Israeli soldiers on duty (photo: IDF/X)

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

For decades, Israel has asked the world to take seriously what Iran’s leaders have declared openly: “Death to Israel!” is not a metaphor. It is a mission statement.

Yet, time and again, the so-called “international community” has dismissed Iran’s genocidal ambitions as bluster, opting instead for appeasement, delay, and diplomatic theater.

America, Israel’s greatest ally, has been no exception. Despite billions in defense cooperation and a shared democratic ethos, Washington has repeatedly hesitated when decisive action was needed. Today, as the Iranian regime races toward nuclear breakout, Israel once again stands at the threshold of history.

And it should make one thing clear: America’s support is welcome, but not required. The message from Jerusalem is simple: We would prefer to do this together, but we are prepared to go it alone.

America’s involvement would shorten the timeline, reduce risk, and send a united message of Western resolve. But Israel has never built its security on the assumption that others will save it. And it certainly doesn’t intend to start now.

Israel has the capability, and the track record, to do what must be done, including a long, proud history of preemptive action against existential threats. In 1981, Operation Opera saw Israeli F-16s fly undetected into Iraqi airspace to destroy Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak. While the world waffled, Israel acted.

In 2007, Operation Orchard repeated the pattern: a clandestine strike on a Syrian nuclear facility built with North Korean help. The reactor was destroyed, the mission a success, and global silence (again) was the only thanks Israel received.

This is not theoretical capability. It is proven, surgical, strategic excellence.

Fast forward to September 2024: a daring, meticulously coordinated raid deep into Syrian territory destroyed an Iranian missile production facility built inside a mountain. IDF Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshan said the facility was “the flagship of Iranian manufacturing efforts in our region.”

The elite Israeli Air Force commando unit Shaldag carried out the operation with textbook precision. The facility, designed to be impenetrable, was neutralized. It was a quiet triumph. No speeches. No hashtags. Just results.

Some called this Israel’s “most daring” operation. Accompanied by airstrikes, more than 100 helicopter-borne troops raided the compound during nighttime, moved through what appeared to be a concrete-lined tunnel and industrial site, and destroyed the entire compound.

If “built inside a mountain” sounds familiar, that’s because the now-infamous Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, an Iranian underground uranium enrichment facility located 30 kilometres (20 miles) north of the Iranian city of Qom. The facility is built deep in a mountain because of repeated threats by Israel to attack such facilities, which Israel believes can be used to produce nuclear weapons.

To complicate matters, attacking a nuclear facility so close to the city of Qom, which is considered holy among Shia Muslims, brings concern of a potential risk of a Shiite religious response.

Military analysts and defense officials have long asserted that the only weapon capable of taking out Iran’s deeply buried Fordow is the U.S. Air Force’s 30,000-pound bunker-busting bomb, deployed exclusively by B-2 stealth bombers.

“Bunker buster” is a general term used for munitions engineered to destroy underground facilities that lie beyond the reach of conventional bombs. These weapons are specifically designed to penetrate reinforced layers of rock, concrete, and steel before detonating inside subterranean targets.

The most formidable of these is the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, a precision-guided, deep-penetration bomb weighing around 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms), including a 6,000-pound (2,700-kilogram) explosive payload. Constructed from ultra-high-strength steel, the GBU-57 can burrow as deep as 200 feet (61 meters) into the earth before triggering its warhead.

Currently, only the B-2 Spirit, America’s stealth long-range bomber, is configured to deliver the GBU-57, with a capacity of carrying two such bombs in a single mission. According to the U.S. Air Force, multiple bombs can be dropped in succession (either by a single aircraft or coordinated strike group), enabling deeper penetration with each subsequent blast and maximizing cumulative destruction.

Israel, for its part, has acquired its own bunker-busting arsenal from the United States, including the GBU-28 and BLU-109 munitions. These are typically deployed via F-15 fighter jets and are effective against shallow or moderately fortified underground targets. In 2024, Israel reportedly used a series of BLU-109 bombs in a successful strike against longtime Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, killing him inside his fortified underground bunker in Beirut.

However, Israel’s bunker-busting arsenal falls short of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator’s extraordinary depth capability and is unlikely to breach highly hardened facilities like Fordow.

Fordow itself was constructed with this kind of warfare in mind. Located beneath a mountain near the city of Qom, Iran’s seventh-largest urban center, the facility is estimated to sit between 80 and 90 meters (260 to 300 feet) underground, specifically designed to withstand airstrikes and most known bunker-busting attacks.

There’s also the danger that a serious attack on Fordow could trigger a radiological incident. With 1.4 million residents living just 20 miles (32 kilometers) away in Qom, the risk of fallout from a failed or partially successful strike is a constant strategic concern.

Israel’s military strategy is not just about effectiveness; it’s also about ethics. For all its technological superiority, Israel consistently chooses restraint where others would unleash chaos. This is not weakness; it is strength under control and a commitment to moral warfare in a region defined by barbarism.

Iran seeks domination; Israel seeks deterrence. Tehran funds terror across multiple time zones, not for defense, but for ideological conquest. Israel’s military campaigns, by contrast, are always reactive. They are not born of empire, but of existential necessity.

And, thus, brute-force bombing is not Israel’s only option at Fordow. One of the more subtle and successful tactics it has employed involves targeting power infrastructure feeding nuclear facilities. Disabling external power sources can cause cascading failures in enrichment operations without triggering catastrophic detonations. It’s this blend of technical ingenuity and strategic patience that makes Israel’s defense capabilities so formidable.

In other words, bunker busters may be effective, but Israel has plenty of tools in its shed, many of which never make the headlines.

At play here is not simply a question of arsenal, range, or budget. Israel has all of those in respectable measure. But what truly sets it apart, and what so many of today’s Western nations seem to have lost, is a rare combination of creativity, resourcefulness, and moral clarity.

This isn’t just visible on the battlefield; it’s woven into every aspect of Israeli society. For a tiny country surrounded by enemies and with few natural resources, Israel has managed to become a global hub of innovation.

It leads the world in water technology, having pioneered drip irrigation and desalination systems now used in countries from India to California. Israeli scientists have developed life-saving medical devices, such as the PillCam, ReWalk exoskeletons for spinal injury patients, and revolutionary cancer detection tools. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are home to thriving tech ecosystems, spawning startups across cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, medical, agriculture, biology, and climate tech.

This culture of innovation isn’t born in comfort; it emerges from constraint. Surrounded by hostility, with little margin for error, Israelis have learned to turn scarcity into strength, adversity into advancement. Where others see obstacles, Israel sees opportunity — and solves problems not only for itself, but for the world.

So, when skeptics wonder whether Israel can succeed in degrading or destroying Iran’s deeply fortified nuclear infrastructure without American help, they’re asking the wrong question. The issue isn’t whether Israel has the same tools; the issue is that Israel thinks differently. It adapts faster. It imagines the impossible, and then quietly makes it happen.

Whether it’s using cyberattacks to disable centrifuges, deploying decoy drones to mask elite ground raids, or targeting power grids instead of hardened bunkers, Israel continually rewrites the rules of modern warfare. It has developed not just advanced weaponry, but an advanced mindset, one forged in existential necessity.

While some nations spend fortunes building weapons they hope never to use, Israel hones tools it knows it may have to rely on at any moment. This is not born of recklessness, but of experience, of being forced to stand alone more than once.

While many Western nations have grown sluggish — paralyzed by process, addicted to consensus, and dulled by comfort — Israel remains sharp, fast, and fiercely self-reliant. It has to be. Its very survival depends on it.

And in this high-stakes confrontation with Iran’s nuclear regime, that mindset will prove more decisive than any single bomb.

---