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Source: https://thedispatch.com/article/israel-intelligence-iran-nuclear-weapons/
Preempting Future Iranian Threats
(The Dispatch) Reuel Marc Gerecht - If the Iranian theocracy remains, or if an Islamist military dictatorship replaces it, Israel will still face a virulently antisemitic regime likely still seeking a nuclear weapon. Israeli intelligence will need to be pitch perfect if it's to preempt future Iranian threats since the entirety of the clerical regime's nuclear weapons program will now be hidden. After Israel's attack, the counterespionage services within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Iranian intelligence ministry, will become ferocious in their efforts to uncover spies. In this dragnet, a lot of innocents will get picked up. Many will get tortured to death. This inquisition alone could greatly delay the effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. The deeply buried nuclear sites now will likely remain abandoned, regardless of whether they were completely destroyed, since reoccupying them would signal nefarious intent and might bring new Israeli and American raids. Digging new ones would take too long. Numerous easily concealed surface facilities may now be a better bet. If the Iranians don't have a backup to the Isfahan conversion facility for making enriched uranium into metal plates, which has been destroyed, then they will probably have difficulty building another one quickly. The writer, a former Iranian-targets officer in the CIA, is a resident scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.