“The United States strike on three Iranian nuclear installations was reckless and useless. Now that it’s done, I sincerely hope that she has succeeded “begins Antony Blinken, former American state-secretary in a letter published Tuesday in New York Times.
Under Joe Biden, as the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken traveled the world, trying in particular to untie the crisis following the killing of October 7, 2023 in Israel and to help a settlement in Ukraine.
Apart from politics since the Democratic defeat in November, Antony Blinken therefore hopes that Donald Trump is true and that the strikes were successful. But he doubts it very hard.
In his letter, Antony Blinken first recalls how Iran, “main state support for terrorism” and “destabilizing force” in the Middle East, is dangerous.
Obviously, “that Iran is never allowed to produce or have a nuclear weapon”.
So why was this shot a mistake?
Because“” We should never have come there ”, an agreement with Tehran having been concluded in 2015 with the Obama administration, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union.
This agreement, he said, imposed on Iran “strict surveillance procedures”. “If Iran violated the agreement or refused to extend it at the expiration of certain provisions after 15 years, we would have been aware and we would have time to react, including militarily if necessary”.
But in 2018, continues Blinken, “President Trump has torn this agreement and replaced it with … nothing”, allowing Iran to accelerate its enrichment at high speed.
Mr. Trump, in short, is now trying to turn off a fire on which he himself poured gasoline.
Antony Blinken, ex-secretary of American state
In addition, thinks Mr. Blinken, Iran has no explosive weapons yet to actually activate its nuclear arsenal.
“To date – despite contradictory messages from the Trump administration – our intelligence agencies think that Iran has not yet made the decision to militarize its program. If this decision was made, it would take between 18 and 24 months to produce an explosive device. ”
In other words, diplomacy “still had time to operate, and the situation was not as urgent as Mr. Trump presented it,” said Blinken.
Moreover, according to his conversations of the last days with experts, everything indicates that “” Although Iranian nuclear infrastructure was severely damaged, they were not destroyed, “whatever Trump said.
“Mr. Trump’s strike could rush exactly what we want to avoid,” says Blinken, namely that Iran rushes to disperse its uranium stocks enriched in various secure sites and that it retains enough centrifuge to further enrich its stock in a short time.
In this scenario, “the Iranian regime could launch the militarization process, and go for the bomb”.
And preceding there was, argues the former American state of state who evokes “the Israeli strike against the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 which led (the president) Saddam Hussein to accelerate a clandestine nuclear program”.
Although the American strike has “undeniably delayed the nuclear ambitions of Iran”, recognizes Blinken, this country “could quickly rebuild, in locations and at depths practically sheltered from air strikes, while pursuing militarization in parallel”.
Earning time against Iran is a good thing, but for Blinken, the world would have had much more if the United States had held in the agreement concluded in 2018. “It gave us at least 15 years,” he notes, when we are now in charge of the extent that Iranian reprisals will have.
