Stephen Kotkin stated that, History has a way of asserting itself to balance the scales, to a gathering in Singapore this March, referencing the tectonic shifts currently coursing through world order. The American attacks on Iran’s hard-targeted nuclear facilities conducted by B-2 stealth bombers and GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators have introduced engineering, intelligence, and constitutional contention to the center of U.S. foreign policy and Middle East strategy.
The technical proficiency of the strike was stunning. The GBU-57, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), is a 30,000-pounder developed to counter deeply buried, hardened targets. GPS and inertial-guided, the MOP’s steel alloy casing enables it to “drill” through reinforced concrete and earth, penetrating at least 200 feet, reportedly, before exploding its 5,000-pound warhead. The B-2 Spirit, the only deployable vehicle that can deliver the MOP, has two of such weapons per mission, providing the U.S. a one-of-a-kind ability to strike buried nuclear complexes that otherwise have immunity to conventional bombing.
Iran’s nuclear facilities, among the most fortified on the globe, bear witness to decades of development to resist such attacks. Centrifuge caverns and control centers are shielded by foundations of fortified concrete, earth, and stone, and are often buried beneath mountains. Several MOPs fired in rapid succession are designed to “burrow” deeper with each strike, exploiting any structural weakness introduced by previous explosions.
But technology on display is only half the story. The assaults were preceded by an initiative of targeted assassinations of Iran’s nuclear researchers and military leaders. In June, more than 14 nuclear scientists including Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi and Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani were killed in what Israel declared was a “significant blow to the regime’s ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction” in a co-ordinated attack. This strategy, uniting kinetic strikes with strategic targeting of human capital, is not new but has only rarely been so universally acknowledged. Israel’s intelligence establishment, long suspected of penetration at deep levels in Iran, was reported to have used both human sources and artificial intelligence in making target decisions and planning the attacks. This is the product of years of work by the Mossad to strike at the nuclear program of Iran, said Sima Shine, former head of research at the Mossad. Israeli networks inside Iran, made up of dozens of cells, have smuggled weapons, gathered intelligence, and conducted sabotage operations, using AI often to filter information and target attacks with deadly precision.
The engineering challenge is two-way. Iran’s retorts, ranging from advanced air defenses to cyberattacks, are a cat-and-mouse process whereby both sides continue to innovate. The Stuxnet virus, a U.S.-Israeli joint production allegedly, notoriously sabotaged Iranian centrifuges in 2010, marking the dawn of cyber-physical warfare. “This attack is the culmination of years of work by the Mossad to target Iran’s nuclear program,” exposing the level of Israeli penetration.
These moves come amidst fevered constitutional debate in Washington. Critics, both members of each party, have alleged that President Trump’s move to initiate the strikes without congressional approval violates both the War Powers Resolution and the Constitution’s allocation of war-making authority. “The Constitution makes clear that the power to authorize war lies with Congress,” Sen. Mark Warner stated, adding his voice to a chorus of legislators who argue that this type of unilateral military action sets a hazardous precedent for other wars. The theory of the administration relies upon the president’s Article II powers as commander-in-chief and the belief that short, limited reprisals in pursuit of vital national interests are not “war in the constitutional sense.” Yet, as legal commentators have noted, this paradigm is in significant measure the product of executive branch lawyering and has never received authoritative imprimatur either from Congress or the courts a source of continuing controversy.
Meanwhile, the 2020 Abraham Accords facilitated by Trump have reoriented regional balance. Originally hailed as a diplomatic coup, the accords have come to be reinterpreted by commentators as a form of “authoritarian conflict management” relaxing Israel and Arab states’ security and intelligence connections and steering clear of the Palestinian issue and cranking up repression against opposition. The technological dimension is obvious: Emirati and Moroccan investments in Israeli surveillance and defense industries have increased, and joint ventures in AI, cybersecurity, and drone technology have increased as economic ties improve.
The new balance of power also uncovered fault lines in the U.S.-Europe defense relationship. Kotkin’s observation that “Europe has been pocketing $350 billion a year in U.S. security assurance, for more than 30 years, spending instead on their quality of life” summarizes a growing perception that the old dispensation is no longer viable. While American military and technological resources are employed to subsidize new, high-stakes conflicts, the question of who pays and who benefits remains unresolved.
Where the ingenuity of engineering, tradecraft of intelligence, and governance in accordance with the Constitution once determined the course of American power in the Middle East, today the technological superiority is part and parcel of the political and legal infrastructure that authorizes its use, and the future of regional stability is as apt to hinge on the durability of alliances and norms as on the next generation of bunker-busting bombs or cyberwarfare systems.
