After degrading Iran's air defenses in response to its terrorist attacks, Israel is reportedly likely to launch a preemptive strike on the Islamic country's nuclear program by midyear. According to unconfirmed intelligence reports, such an attack would set back Iran's nuclear program by weeks or months while escalating tension in the region and risking a wider conflict.
The intelligence reports envision two potential strike options – Iran's Fordow and Natanz nuclear facilities – that would both involve the United States providing aerial refueling support and intelligence.
Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security advisor to President Donald Trump who now serves as vice president of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, recently told American Family Radio this will be a critical issue for President Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"The president has been very clear that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon on his watch," Coates said. "You can say that, but then what are you going to do about it? The Israeli strike on Iran in October really did provide a window of opportunity because they exposed how worthless Russian imported Iranian missile defense systems were, that they can reach out and touch them."
She says Israel must be decisive.
"We've been doing incremental strikes over the course of last year. We had the first direct attack from Iran on Israel. That sort of changed the paradigm a little bit," Coates noted. " I wouldn't do sort of a small message strike at this point. That's been done. If you're going to go in and take out the nuclear program, we need to take it out and set them back decades."
According to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has been enriching uranium since restarting its nuclear program. Trump has said he would prefer to make a deal to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and he believes Iran would prefer a deal over an armed conflict as well.
But a spokesman for the White House National Security Council has said the president will not wait indefinitely.
