Key Points – As Israel’s conventional strikes degrade Iran’s military and nuclear infrastructure, the risk grows that a desperate Iranian regime could retaliate with radiological “dirty bombs” against Israeli cities.
-While Israel’s attack may have preempted the completion of a fissile nuclear weapon, Iran possesses large stockpiles of highly enriched uranium that could be dispersed to cause widespread contamination.
-This threat makes Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in his role as commander-in-chief, a legitimate military target.
-The US, in turn, should use information operations to directly warn and deter any Iranian official involved in preparing such a weapon.
Israel Could Have a New Iran Problem: A ‘Dirty Bomb’
The Islamic Republic continues to fire missiles at Israel. Israel and its allies shoot down most, but a few continue to get through.
Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei continues to vow revenge. “Israel has prepared a bitter fate for itself, which it will surely receive,” he announced.
His time is running out. Israel’s strikes into Iran are more precise and effective than Iran’s missile and drone barrages. Every Iranian launch exposes batteries and launch sites Israel then targets.
While Israel can continue its air and missile strikes to degrade the regime’s nuclear and military sites and eliminate its leadership, the Iranian military essentially flails ineffectively.
What Will Iran Do Next?
As Khamenei and his Islamic Republic grow more desperate, the international community should brace for Khamenei’s attempt to make good on his threat.
The Iranian barrages so far demonstrate that despite repeated statements by Iranian diplomats like former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the goal of Iran’s arsenal was always Israel’s eradication; there was little “duel” in the regime’s duel use work.
Khamenei is 86-years-old and now among the last of his generation of revolutionary officials; he wants to see his life’s work achieved in the next days.
There is little doubt that the Islamic Republic has a huge stockpile of uranium, in quantities and with enrichment levels far beyond what it would need for either a civilian nuclear energy program or medical purposes.
The U.S. government erred when it arbitrarily defined Iran’s nuclear weapons capability as achieving 20 kilograms of 90 percent enriched uranium.
Essentially, the intelligence community twisted its intelligence by using an arbitrary definition to deny Iranian goals and achievements.
In reality, nuclear weapons can have great destruction at enrichment levels below 90 percent. The uranium in the “Little Boy” bomb dropped on Hiroshima, for example, had an average enrichment level of 80 percent, a level Iranian scientists had already achieved.
The Dirty Bomb Nightmare
Israel may have struck Iran before it could build a fissile nuclear weapon, but the Islamic Republic can still cause tremendous destruction short of a nuclear explosion. If Khamenei wants to make good on his threats, his next step will likely be to hit Israel with dirty bombs to spread radiation over large sections of its urban areas.
The same strategy would satisfy Khamenei’s desire for revenge against Arab states that help Israel. After all, if Jordan shoots down a missile with a radioactive warhead over its own territory, then the resulting radiation contamination it suffered would be, from Khamenei’s perspective, divine retribution.
What Should Israel Do?
With such a situation looming, Israel has no choice but to kill Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Iranian ayatollah is a legitimate target due to his constitutional role as commander-in-chief of the Iranian military.
What should the United States do? There is no substitute for an integrated information operations into any military campaign, even one in which Americans do not directly participate.
President Donald Trump should use his bully pulpit to make clear that any Iranian of any rank who participates in preparation of a dirty bomb will not only be killed, but their property will also be destroyed.
If the U.S. intelligence community has penetrated sufficiently, it should even announce the names of those it is watching and to which it is speaking in order to deter their action.
The current Israel-Iran war is bad; it behooves everyone to prepare for the fact that the Islamic Republic may intend it to get much worse.
About the Author: Dr. Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum. A former Pentagon official, Dr. Rubin has lived in post-revolution Iran, Yemen, and both pre- and postwar Iraq. He also spent time with the Taliban before 9/11. For more than a decade, he taught classes at sea about the Horn of Africa and Middle East conflicts, culture, and terrorism, to deployed US Navy and Marine units. Dr. Rubin is the author, coauthor, and coeditor of several books exploring diplomacy, Iranian history, Arab culture, Kurdish studies, and Shi’ite politics.
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doyle-1
June 15, 2025 at 8:42 am
Unlikely. Iran not as tricky or underhand or slimy as netanyahu or trump.
But iran, could in one go, tear up or tear open dimona with its last missiles.
Let’s see how trump, netayahu, G7, and IAEA going to handle that.
Or what the treacherous xi jinping going to do. Help netanyahu to clean up using cheap expendable plentiful throw-away chinese labor.
doyle-0
June 15, 2025 at 2:11 pm
The physical scrap between Israel and iran can be easily stopped if xi jinping of china has the balls and the moral fortitude to announce a full suspension of all rare Earth mineral exports until peace returns.
But xi, as the world’s top bribe given or graft-related dispenser, and world’s top expert on debt-trap diplomacy and non-market economics, does not want peace.
So, iran is likely to get the short end of the stick, and thus needs to implore putin to use nukes against nazis.
If anything bad arises, just nuke Taipei. It will give xi jinping the chance to show the world the states of his real balls.
James Ribe
June 15, 2025 at 3:35 pm
Actually, rather than killing Khamenei, we are better off threatening him. “If you do that, we will kill you and we will kill your son, who is supposed to succeed you.” That would give us a measure of control over him, assuming he doesn’t desire martyrdom at this time.
If we kill him, we don’t know who will succeed him or what they will do.
Doyle-3
June 15, 2025 at 4:42 pm
In the currently ongoing Israel-iran conflict, china is kaput. Forget iran. Forget dirty bomb(s).
Reason is china under xi jinping has been unable to fathom just exactly what the bloody bloody hell’s going on today.
Xi is totally fixated on following and meeting reuters recommendation to steroid-charge the economy and get mad maddening rates of growth plus hyperinflation in order to register stratospheric growth.
As a result, china is helping western nations to up their production of long-range missiles and military electronic systems via generous and cheap exports of rare earths and rare minerals.
Thus china is finished. Kaput.
Not iran. Not dirty bomb.
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Ton Juta
June 18, 2025 at 2:32 am
Thank you for this interesting article. There is one point I want to make: enriched Uranium is not all that “suitable” for dirty bombs because it is not very radioactive (due to its long half life). For example, 400 kg of 60% enriched Uranium is 19 TBq. The medical radiation source that was involved in the 1988 Goiana incident was 50 TBq, 2.5 times as much. Spent reactor fuel is much more “suitable”, because it is more “hot” with short-lived isotopes.