How to ‘Lend’ Bunker Busters to the Israeli Military

Much has been said about the Israeli and U.S. commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Israel has already made some progress in eliminating or seriously damaging some nuclear sites:

The Israeli military reports that it damaged an underground area of Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz that contained a ‘multi-story enrichment hall with centrifuges, electrical rooms and additional supporting infrastructure.’ The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that at least one strike hit the Natanz nuclear site.

Missile and other munitions sites have also been targeted, since they also threaten the security of Israel:

Israel struck Shiraz Electronics Industries in Shiraz, Fars Province, on June 15, according to the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute. An Iranian munitions factory in Isfahan was targeted on June 15, the Critical Threats Project reported. Israel has also hit missile bases that reportedly stored solid and liquid-fueled missiles, including the Ghadir site, according to the Critical Threats Project.

Unfortunately, trying to destroy the most dangerous site provides a daunting challenge to Israel: the Fordo site. Conventional bombs may do some damage but will likely fall short of destroying the facility:

Secretly built in violation of United Nations resolutions under a mountain near the holy central city of Qom, Fordo was first publicly revealed in 2009. Initially described as an "emergency" facility built underground to protect it from potential air attacks, Iran later indicated it was an enrichment plant capable of housing about 3,000 centrifuges. In 2023, uranium particles enriched up to 83.7 percent were discovered at the Fordo plant, which Iran claimed were the product of ‘unintended fluctuations’ during the enrichment process.

I heard one commentator say that Israelis may need to approach Fordo on the ground and find a way to enter (probably with help from sympathetic Iranians inside the mountain). This approach would be extremely dangerous to pursue.

But on the recent podcast, Call Me Back, Dan Senor interviewed Amit Segal, who came up with a brilliant solution. He suggested a way the Israelis could use a U.S. bunker buster. He described the Lend-Lease program that the U.S. had participated in during World War II to support Britain when it lacked resources:

In order to remedy this situation, Roosevelt on December 8, 1940, proposed the concept of lend-lease, and the U.S. Congress passed his Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. This legislation gave the president the authority to aid any nation whose defense he believed vital to the United States and to accept repayment ‘in kind or property, or any other direct or indirect benefit which the President deems satisfactory.’ Though lend-lease had been authorized primarily in an effort to aid Britain, it was extended to China in April and to the Soviet Union in September. The principal recipients of aid were the British Commonwealth countries (about 63 percent) and the Soviet Union (about 22 percent), though by the end of the war more than 40 countries had received lend-lease help. Much of the aid, valued at $49.1 billion, amounted to outright gifts. Some of the cost of the lend-lease program was offset by so-called reverse lend-lease, under which Allied nations gave U.S. troops stationed abroad about $8 billion worth of aid.

If the U.S. consented to “lending” the B2 bomber and the bunker buster bomb to Israel (and remember we have already provided weapons), Segal suggested that an Israeli could fly the B2 bomber. Israel would have no problem paying back the debt.

I think his suggestion has some built-in flaws. First, I doubt an Israeli pilot has been trained to fly the B2. But perhaps he could sit in the cockpit and share that location with a person who was trained. (The cockpit accommodates two people.) The trained person (possibly an American pilot), co-pilot so to speak, would take command. Or perhaps a retired, trained American pilot could command the plane.

The main point would be to thoroughly destroy Fordo; other nuclear sites would be vulnerable to Israel’s conventional bombs, and the plans to wipe out the ballistic missiles could continue.

The war could be over in days.